Will Jobs Move Back to Silicon Valley from India?

India Knowledge@Wharton How can people even think this is possible for a sizable team is beyond me. It's not about India, In my mind it's about global delivery. There are many ways to skin the cat. First the most obvious - Indian companies will adapt to the new reality of a stronger currency, and an eroding obvious savings. Right now indian companies are making insane margins, and the years to come will see those margins shrink to North American services like margins. The big players are focussed, but every smaller player I talk to, they are all running after three things at once, the direct side effect of this lack of focus, they need to have fat margins in services to cover for all those product tentatives they have. They will do less and less of exploration, and more and more of services, which will allow them to optimize their operations - and keep to be competitive. Second let's say a company is sick an tired of India right now, right fully so, if this CO can't have north of 100 people in its own Captive Center, it will at one point throw in the towel, I believe their next step will be to look elsewhere to another country. We have numerous conversations of people frustrated with their inability to make things work in India, and they want to know where else to go to be easier for them, they're not about to stop outsourcing. Third companies are outsourcing and sticking to it, doing global development has to be leveraged. The name of the game is distributed development, it's to go where the talent is. So maybe it's not India, and maybe it's somewhere in a lower cost location as close as a neighboring state combined with a lab in Eastern Europe that floats your boat - but by all means central development is a thing of the past.

Outsourcing the User Experience

Software Magazine - Outsourcing the User Experience The author speaks to std outsourcing objections but worth a ready anyway. I find UX an activity that should be outsourced, or companies should collaborate with external blood as often as they decide to do design, even if they have an internal design team. The external perspective from the selected partner, the ability to handle various tasks that would not be done otherwise for lack of staff, the involvement of users - they are all things that will lead to better user experience and better products that users will passionately adopt. Too often designing new products is done in a vacuum thinking we know better than our users - needless to say this is wrong. From a presentation I will be doing in NY this week at Outsourcing World NY - Get your customers on your innovation bus it will yield results. As a business we have business goals, and they don't always mesh with your users goals, it's a fine line to navigate, outside perspective can help turn rocks the internal team doesn't see anymore.

1-800-GOOG-411

Here goes the traditional 411 operator call - 1-800-GOOG-411. With Google maps and now this service it's amazing how my cell phone has become useful when visiting another city or in town here when looking for a place. Complement this with Zagat for places to eat/go and you're golden.

Project Management

We had this great session on Project Management at OSEF last week. The panel and the audience were both very opinionated. I think it made for a great session because people had a firm stance on what it means to them. We touched on the various aspects and challenges of the role - scheduling, scope, estimation. Notice I mention Role, and not job - one of the big point that was driven home last night is that all the members of the team have to be a project manager some sort - we all have to evaluate, track etc. The estimation can't come from the top, it has to be something the team converges on. We briefly talked about the differences in services and products estimation - in services you rarely know who is going to be executing on your estimate, while in product it's clearer. An interesting concept - if you keep your delivery pulse regular and often enough("Shipe like a clock"), you will have less requirements creep to deal with. Why? it seems that because there is regularity people tend to buy into the fact that if you say next release, next time, they know there will be a next time, and makes us all more reasonable about the addition of requirements. All in all you want your project Management to be transparent, flexible, accountable and a team effort. This will lead into buy in from the troops and as the team delivers regularly and on time the top brass will also buy in.

Thanksgiving weekend

This weekend, my significant other and myself went to NY. We had planned this back in April, using our aeroplan points we booked flights and hotels and off we went. The trip down was stressful, getting in NY is hell, weather, air traffic, can ground you for hours. On top of that we had a connection in MTL - and when we got to MTL, we weren't booked on the MTL to NY flight anymore... we got there and we had planned this weekend to be sigh seeing and good food. Our first restaurant was Babbo. We got there with expectations as high as the empire state building, and they have been surpassed. The food, the service were awesome. The octopus is surreal, the pastas pumpkin (luna) subtle and sweet and so many more. The next day was Mesa grill, this one was a little disappointing, especially after babbo. I think we're both much bigger fans of Italian food than south-west. The food was good, the services was also good. My taste buds are just not as tuned for tex-mex food. I have to say I had a side dish corn and cheese that was very good, the sweetness of the corn and the bitterness of the cheese were a good match. The overall ambiance was very much like a happening place, I could have been in MTL on in a "resto branché" on St-Laurent. Next was Union Square Cafe a NY classic, it's been around forever - since 1985 - it didn't click with the server right off the bat, but the french toast brioche desert was really worth it. Last but not least was Tabla for lunch just before getting flying back. Oh my, what a good surprise. It's too bad we didn't go there for dinner, I'm sure it's amazing. The decor was great, the service top notch, and the food absolutely right up there. I'm not a big fan of fusion food, but here it's american ingredients with indian spices. It's a winning combination, original and well done and very good! Highlights - crabcakes as appetizers were the best I've ever had, veal roulades as my entrée was also excellent. So the ranking - babbo, very close second tabla, union square café and mesa grill. NY is as crazy as one would expect, we walked around town from way down south in financial district all the way up to 125th street, we walked around central park which I hadn't done before and was a pleasant surprise. As Madonna says - Ny is for people who never sleeps! For us we were so full after our dinners and tired of walking that by 10pm I was punching out. great weekend, great souvenirs!