Obviously, whether in house or outsourced work is better varies with context.
I thought Gar's article was excellent, but I can still see situations where outsourcing is better.
No need to get religious about this.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- Gar notes:
> One big advantage of having work done in-house rather than
> contracted is simply that the odds of the people doing the
> work identifying with the company the work is done for is
> much much greater.
On the other hand, what I see a lot is that the in-house team gets asked to do something they've never done before, and so they set out to learn about it, and approximately build their first "waffle"[*] ... instead, maybe the outside team has done the task several times and understands it enough to make the thing the right way the first time.
I used to have a cartoon on my wall that showed two Eskimos standing next to an idealized-looking igloo ... except that it was upside-down. One says to the other: let me guess, you've never actually built an igloo before, right?
/jordan
[*] "Software is like waffles; you have to throw the first one out"
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