Minding The Store

Outsourcing your software development is often a slam dunk idea from the management level because you can take advantage of advanced technical skills for a short term project and then they go away and do not put a stain on your budget long term. In fact, because you represent consulting fees differently on the books than you do salary and benefits for your IT staff, using talents of contractors does have an adverse effect on your annual report. It is just an expense of each individual project which is figured into the cost of doing business.

But many times the change of approach to outsourcing some software development can have negative results that were not taken into account at the executive management level. In order for any outsourcing effort to be successful, it has to be done in cooperation with in house IT staff. As an IT manager, you have to be thinking about the impact that sending this work off site might have on your existing staff.

In any business, it is very easy to take in house staff for granted. After all, they work here and get paid if they are ordered to work with contractors, that is what they will do. But there are good reasons to be concerned about how well the team will accept idea of working in a team setting with a contractor to whom the work of the department was outsourced. The only way that kind of partnership can work is if in house staff is willing to be open and work in a creative fashion with the contract workers as well.

It is not at all uncommon for in house staff to feel threatened and intimidated by the sudden arrival of contract workers and to resent that the work of IT has been outsourced. To an IT software developer, their job security is in capturing each software development project and being successful in developing that work for the company that employs them. If they see a trend in management to outsource that work, staff can draw the conclusion that they are not appreciated or that their jobs are in jeopardy.

There are some serious repercussions to allowing these fears to fester in your staff. For one thing, if the employee base resents the contract developers, they may sabotage the contractor’s success. When information is needed from IT staff, employees can stone wall that delivery or deliver incorrect or incomplete information to make the contractor look bad. To the employee, the failure of the project would communicate to management that it was a bad idea to outsource and it might stop any future thoughts of outsourcing all of IT which would end their employment.

Just as much of a concern is the issue of morale. If your current staff begins to feel distrustful of the executive management team and that distrust even extends to IT management, that can hurt the productivity of the department at large and have a serious impact on the company when it becomes harder to make things happen using staff personnel. Moreover, if the staff feels threatened and suspects that they are being replaced, they may simply find other jobs. And if IT experiences a sudden surge in resignations when the decision to begin outsourcing begins to happen, that causes the company to lose valuable experience and training which is harmful to the business.

It is management job to make sure the transition is smooth to a blended software development model in which contract workers develop projects in cooperation with staff developers. The key individuals in making this happen are IT management and project leaders who know the workers in the department well and can detect resentments and communications problems. By counseling with employees, assuring them of their value to the company and emphasizing that outsourcing some work keeps their work loads reasonable, you can do a lot to keep a happy and productive staff working on important duties to benefit the business.