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Embedded Software Outsourcing Horror Stories |
| Tales from
the Frontline
Many of these stories will sound unbelievable. Some of them you'll find humorous (unless you're the innocent victim who relayed the story. When you're the "lucky" one experiencing the stress and frustration, it's not easy to make light of the situation... you're the one in the frying pan! ) We're sharing a few of the stories we've heard so you know we truly understand the tough situation you're in and the decision process involved in contracting work to an outside company. |
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Unfortunately, many of you
will identify with these stories - they're just too commonplace nowadays.
We are trying to reverse the trend and thinking about using an outside company, although some of our competitors sure are making it difficult by leaving a path of destruction!) (Send us your outsourcing
horror story and we'll
send you a T-shirt.*)
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Story 1: "The Customer is Never Right"
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We supplied
the contract house with everything they needed to get the job done.
The first thing they did was tell us how our tools and equipment were out-dated,
and besides we were using them incorrectly. (Due to legacy issues and budget
restrictions, constant hardware and software upgrades are not a way of
life here.)
The next thing they did was re-format all of the code on the project, including code outside the scope of their portion, to meet their own formatting preferences. |
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| Any request
for information was like pulling teeth. They made me and everyone
on my team feel like we were imposing anytime we asked them about the project
(usually technical questions.)
The most appalling thing is that towards the end of the project, they debated us on how a portion of our system worked!!! It was very insulting to have them infer that they understood our system better than we did. They have been blacklisted from our entire corporation. |
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Story 2: "The Underbid"
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The contract
house gave us a very competitive fixed-bid on a project. This raised
some concerns, but not enough to rule them out - money talks, and we were
trying to spend as little as possible. In retrospect, going with them was
a big mistake, but hindsight is always 20-20, right?
As they got further into the project, the scope of the project "grew". Why? Because they did not give the project's complexity any credit when they bid. We were not adding features or functionality - they were just beginning to realize the scope of the work. It was clear their sales force had over-committed their engineering staff in a terrible way. Their engineers resented us and their own management, and it showed in their dealings with us. |
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| Not even
halfway through the project, they admitted they had underbid - now they
needed more money to complete the project. (Ironic, since one of
the primary factors in choosing them was the attractive pricetag.)
The project was completed by our own staff in-house once we decided we'd cut our losses and sever our relationship. I don't know if we would
outsource again. I feel like we bought software development services
from a used-car salesman.
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Story 3: "Bigger Isn't Always Better"
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You would think that a multi-billion dollar company that charges very high hourly rates for its staff would be the best firm to hire for a high-stakes project, right? So did we. As it turns out, the amount of "red tape" we had to cut through just to get anything done was ridiculous. The protocols we had to follow to initiate any action on their part were very time consuming. Getting anyone on the phone was difficult. Getting a technical person on the phone was a miracle. The "calls-per-contact ratio" (as we began to call it) was extremely high. Email would go unanswered, or worse, it would be answered by more than one person, often with conflicting information. |
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| We also
experienced a lot of frustration splitting hairs about what was and was
not covered in the contract. It seemed like they were not interested
in demonstrating "good faith" or working with us towards a solution.
The engineers implied several times that their managers told them to do the minimum required to fulfill the contract. What they considered to be the minimum required certainly differed from our expectations. The relationship was anything but smooth. |
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We'll trade you a T-shirt for a story!
Do you have an "embedded software outsourcing horror story"? If so, we'd like to hear from you!
All we ask is that you allow us to share some or all of your story on our web page. We will "clean it up" to protect your identity and that of the guilty party, and run it by you first before we make it available to the public on our web page.
Send
us your horror story and we'll send you an ECS T-shirt if we add it
to this page.
Offer good while supplies
last - we have many shirts, but we also bet a lot of you have stories to
tell.
Only one T-shirt per development group/project, please! U.S. Mail addresses only.