Offshoring Information Technology

European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 439 . doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000624 ‘Offshoring’ is a fairly recent addition to the ever-lengthening list of terms that the IT industry and its academic arm have provided to the language. As if to demonstrate the apparent need for such a term, your reviewer was exposed to two projects with a significant ‘offshoring’ element at about the time the book arrived for review. One of these was producing code considered to be of excellent quality, based on highly detailed specifications and intensive testing; the other appeared more problematic, with talk of cultural differences making it necessary for UK-based staff to spend significant time at the offshore location to guide software development. It’s fair to say that this book would have highlighted the factors that seem to contribute to success and the issues and risks that arise for such projects. The book appears comprehensive in its coverage of the various topics and while it does not have a particularly strong critical perspective, neither is it a straightforward advocate and ‘how-to’ of ‘offshoring’. When some topics appear rather simplistically presented, the reader’s mental ‘yes, but what abouty’ is often answered a few pages on with an acknowledgement that the real world is often not as simple as a ‘handbook’ might suggest. For example, a discussion of the levels of take-up of the Capability Maturity Model by the Indian software industry concludes with observations about the real value and relevance of such schemes, rather than leaving the assumption that attainment of the standard somehow allows one to take the capability for granted. The book is also properly cautious about how much weight can be placed on the results of the industry surveys that are cited. Another interesting characteristic is the attention paid to the perspective of the providers of offshore IT development services, and the associated discussions of the issues of building software industries (as distinct from individual firms) in developing countries. This does not lead into a discussion of offshoring IT in the context of wider questions of globalisation but it may provoke the questions and thus serve as a jumping-off point for such debates. It is not entirely clear who would benefit most from reading this book, and in fact it is probably more of a resource to consult than to read right through for some of the audience, with a certain level of repetitiveness across chapters that are largely self-sufficient. As indicated above, it seems more aimed at the practitioner; for students, it is more suitable for MBA or similar levels, not so much because of its level of sophistication as for the need for the reader to bring their own sense of perspective. The case studies, somewhat reminiscent of the style of Harvard Business Review case studies, may lead the more junior student to some odd conclusions and it would not be surprising to see some puzzling discussions of sauna etiquette in an undergraduate essay drawing on the book. It is also likely that younger students will either be confused by the extensive use of industry jargon (many variations of x-shore, such as nearshore, farshore, bestshore, etc), acronyms (MBWA, MBFA, MBEA all make an appearance), and neologisms (‘anger-mail’), or that their essays will be littered with the terms. European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 439 & 2006 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/06 $30.00