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From: joelonsoftware <rssfeeds@spamassassin.taint.org>
Subject: Jakob Nielsen on Offshore Usability: "To save costs, some
    companies are ou
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:28:26 -0000
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URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020917.html
Date: Not supplied

Jakob Nielsen on Offshore Usability[1]: "To save costs, some companies are 
outsourcing Web projects to countries with cheap labor. Unfortunately, these 
countries lack strong usability traditions and their developers have limited 
access -- if any -- to good usability data from the target users." 

Offshore usability is a specific case of the general "offshore design" problem. 
Put simply, software teams are not successful when 
design or management are done in a different physical location than 
programming. Once I actually had a job where I was in New York, my direct 
manager was in Singapore, _his_ manager was in Hyderabad, and if I needed 
any management input I had literally no choice but to go to the CEO because at 
least he was awake during the same hours as I was. You can't get things done 
like this. A good project team relies on hundreds of small interactions a day. 
Here in the Fog Creek offices, we have 10 small conversations about FogBUGZ 3.0 
development every day. 

What I don't understand is people who think it's OK to move the developers ten 
time zones away from their managers and expect good results. Those same people 
would scream bloody murder if you told them that you were going to 
send the whole _management_ team to Bangalore or Beijing.

[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020916.html


