I like blogs. I do read a quite a few of them and think that can be a great source of information, thoughts, news etc. I write this blog, because I think many people look for informal information about outsourcing and everything which is related to it.

There are 2 things I do not understand though in the social media world:

• Twits which say nothing valuable.
• Blog posts which are just copies of other sources with no reference to the source.
• Blogs which are only used as SEO tool to promote authors, sites, products. Basically sets of keywords hidden in not interesting text.

Maybe I’m actually not educated enough that all 3 above, which I don’t like and the others which I do like are somehow related to each other, and that is how information gets spread across the Globe. It perhaps may be true.

Recently I wanted to install on my mobile the tool, which would automatically update somewhere in the space my location, so for example my wife could check where I am, or I could check where my kids are. The story behind this was that when I take my motorbike and go for a few hours, or rarely for the whole day, I do not pick up the phone and my wife with such tool could check where I was at any time. I found the tool, but decided not to install it because firstly I wasn’t sure my wife would use it, but also despite the fact that this information would not be public, I thought that leaving such traces in the Internet might not be what I would dream about. Maybe I’m just crazy. About the kids – I thought I would install in on my daughter’s mobile, as she very often has her mobile in the silence mode, so I can’t reach her. If she does not go straight home after school I’d like to know if she is where she is supposed to be (other activities like dancing class for example). It’s really about security rather than control. That was not implemented either, but I still seriously consider it. That all being said I wonder what is the reason for some people to send twits like: “I’m approaching the office. Luckily no traffic this morning”, “Passed the guard- average crowd in the lift”, “Sitting at my desk, what a great weather for being in the office, not outside”. If that is for your wife/kids/sister/dad – great, but why would you put it in all your profiles like Plaxo, LinkedIn, Company blogs, Facebook? Do you think all these people who have you linked somehow are interested in it? Or if all your twits say how great is the company you work for doing today – what is the value of it? Especially when a year after you mention in your blog that luckily that tough year is over. I often read great twits which share interesting information, thoughts, worth seeing things. But you can’t send 30 of them each day. Simply days aren’t typically that interesting – at least in the reality I live in. I do follow some people who mix those very valuable with the ones I’d ignore, but I wish they split their profiles somehow, so I do not get what I’m not interested in, which is typically their private activities.
I must say also I did something stupid some time ago. I’m not sure and cannot find, if I wrote about it in the past somewhere in this blog. Anyway here goes the story: Long time ago I wrote a post about the new technology which we (PGS Software) were investing at that time. I mentioned that we were not sure if that is the technology of the future, but that does not change the thing that we will put money and effort in getting competence in it. I thought it was fair. I got a call from my customer who told me that I was an idiot, and should not put such posts as they could lead someone to think that we were not fully dedicated to learn and invest in the technology, and that may ruin the business. I read the post again, polished it, but the customer insisted on removing it at all. Finally I removed the “questionable” part. Now I regret I did. Not because I did something wrong, but because this is MY blog, and I want to share what I think. If I change my mind – I will admit it. This is very possible that I’m a complete ignorant and do not understand the power of Twitter, blogs etc, and all what I wrote above is a pile of garbage, but I want to be honest and fair. Maybe my customer was right – who knows? But what I write is what I think today. In Poland we say: “Only the cow does not change its opinion”. I may, and probably will many times change my opinion. That is why I read blogs, that is why I value interesting twits, I read books and magazines. They are my important sources of information. But I want to share what I think is important for my partners, clients or people who are just looking for reliable information. Not less, not more.

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It’s strange. Typically July and August are the most quiet months in Outsourcing. You basically work on the projects which started before Summer. This year is very different for us. We have started many projects in last few weeks. We also keep getting many new enquires. These are all good news. I wonder how much of that comes from recession going away, marketing or any other reason. In the global market companies like ours which probably possess 0.00001 (or less) of the market feel all the global trends, but can easily go against them as well. Sometimes that comes from good management and marketing strategy, but can be random as well. These days we get a lot of requests from existing old customers, so I’m trying to believe that it comes from good management and quality we provide ;-). But because we get many new requests from potential customers, that shows that the picture of the economy changes quite fast. UK market which was affected significantly by the crisis, is the one we see recovering very fast. Many start-ups look for new ways of getting to the market. They have great ideas and  – believe it or not – they have funding as well. Sometimes it’s tight, but that is when our experience comes with help. We can do things cheaper just because we have done them hundreds of times. At the same time many existing customers carefully increase their teams. Only in July, if I remember correctly, 5 of our existing customers increased their teams. That is a lot for the company of our size.

I’ll be in the UK next week to visit some of our clients and new potential partners. I’m wonder how the business looks like from perspective of the people who actually do business there every day. But also as I have many friends in the UK – I’ll be interested to hear how they see the changes in the daily life.

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This year we have decided to scale up PGS holiday internship program. On July 1st the first groups of trainees have started both in Wrocław and Rzeszów offices. We are going to have more than 40 trainees during holidays period this year! And moreover none of them is going to make a coffee or to learn how to operate fax machine:)

We want everyone to be really involved into projects they are assigned to. And these are going to be software development projects - some trainees will be working on our internal projects and some other will cooperate within already existing real teams. Either way – it is going to be a productive time for everyone.

We strongly believe into talents and creative ideas of young people. It is extremely important to give students a good opportunity to understand the way software is commercially produced. It lets to join theoretical deep knowledge with practical experience resulting in the best possible preparation for future career.

Good luck everyone!

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I thought this was covered so many times in so many places that it is waste of time to talk about it again. Offshore software development seems to be very well described topic in the Internet, if you are willing to search for it. But I still get the same questions again and again from our potential clients. That means that it is worth discussing it. I have a lot of personal experience in working with Indian companies. And yes – it is possible to be successful there. I actually worked with many great Indian IT specialists. But this is naive to think, that India is a paradise for Software outsourcing.

Let me lay out some points here:

1. No – There is NOT an unlimited number of good developers in India. Like anywhere in the world the best developers are in scarce. The same applies to India or any other destination. Yes – you are right. All the best are already hired and well paid. This won’t be easy to get them in your team.
2. No – you will most likely NOT be able to maintain the stable team. The industry standard attrition has been over 50% already 3-4 years ago. It is worse now.
3. IP – You will always have much better confidence that your rights and ownership is well protected in any EU-member country. Imagine that you have to go to Indian court to try to protect your rights. Poland and other countries have a well established law, which lets you easily protect your IP.
4. Salaries. No they are no longer much lower than those in Eastern Europe. In fact the best developers there earn as much as 80% of what their colleagues in the US or Western Europe. The financial advantage is a myth based on the fact that you  can get fresh graduates fairly cheap. But they will expect high raises each year, and they will not feel embarrassed to change their job overnight if someone pays them more. And more may mean 50 or 100% increase. In fact the salaries in countries like Poland are more or less on the same level. As I mentioned – perhaps fresh graduates are the only exceptions.
5. Work style. What you will get in Poland is basically the same as in any other European country. That needs no proof, as Poles are already everywhere :-) -  Especially in the UK and Scandinavia. When you work with India you need to be prepared for communication and cultural barriers. They are not a myth, they do exist.

To summarize I truly believe, and a lot of publications prove, that Poland among other Eastern European countries is considering its location, talent pool, size, political stability, proper infrastructure and law system far better option for most of the clients in Europe than any Asian based partners.

And you can get here within 2 hours from many European airports – very often cheaper than taking a train to another city in your country.

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The new app for our great client went live last weekend. I think in the area of social networks this is wonderful idea of sharing your favourite music. IT Outsourcing has one great advantage: you get a chance to participate in excellent new projects like this. Check it out: MyHot3 !

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We have recently seen many requests for services from the clients who have not yet had any experience with outsourcing. We are always trying to help them. We actually very often teach them how to make their project a success. Last Friday I had a call from the UK based company asking me why is it better to use us rather than hiring local developers other than just cost. I was surprised to see that a person who is new to the concept of outsourcing already realized that cost is the driver, but cannot be the only one. They wanted to outsource some of the .NET development. I do not want to repeat all the arguments I used, but one is common across most of the service companies. In last 3 years I was able to count over 320 separate projects done by us for our customers. All of them went live. All have been accepted and paid. What organization has such an experience in house? This is only possible for those (like us) who do it for living.

About 2 weeks ago some relatives asked me for an advice on whom shall they take as an architect for the house they want to build. Of course I had no idea :-). But I knew one thing – take an individual who does design houses for people for living. Not the one who does schools or shops (even very famous one). Take the one who has most likely made all the mistakes you need to make getting experience in doing your job right.

Software development is no different. You need to gather experience. Like Senior knows much more than Junior developer, companies which delivered hundreds of projects know much more than most of the internal organizations.

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We have had a very interesting discussion this week at PGS. The subject has been: “What is better: investing in a fairly safe project with reasonably high probability of success with a limited return rate, or investing in a project with Global market, high risk, but in case of success – enormous return?” I think I’m quite conservative. If you have $x for investment, only a small fraction of that x can be spent on high risk projects. Also – before we start high risk projects we should prove that we know how to make “small” money on the safe projects.Today we have only one project which has no defined customer yet. It’s a product we hope to place in many places, but haven’t got a paying customer yet. All the other projects already have business partners who will invest their money as well to sell the product once it’s ready. This is much safer.

We currently have 4 R&D projects going on. I get mad, as they go slower than I would dream they should. But I do remember Dilbert… So now I have to carefully define what I really need to limit the time needed, and to get the best ready-to-market product in the limited time. And what is great – the team challenges me every time I come with any new idea. I also learned how to write specs, which mean something. I remember the first time I wrote my specs, one of the leaders came to my office saying the worst customers give us better documentation :-). But it does not change a thing that everything goes so slow… Having 70 developers company you would think that you can get any project completed by tomorrow. But most of them actually deliver customers’ projects and cannot work on anything else, so I need to wait. So I practice my patience. Meanwhile I get specs ready for new projects to work on. We get more of them, so the pipeline is full until the end of the year. I wish I could the results now…

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I’d like to share something I’m very proud of. I’m just getting my quarterly report for Stock Exchange ready, so it can be published tomorrow. One of the things I calculated while preparing it was our customer base in numbers. And here are the results 2010 Q1/2009 Q1:

• The number of clients grew by 34%
• The number of clients which did work with us in 2009, and are not with us this year: 4 out of which 2 went out of business at all, 3rd and 4th have significant financial problems.

That means that all of our customers have stayed with us despite these very tough times. Thank you!

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Every new customer who comes to see if we may be a good partner asks for references. This is a very reasonable request. We have a list of case studies, which we carefully build after each project is completed. The problem begins when it comes to REAL references. “Show me the websites”, “Where can I see your work?” Well… the answer is tough. It’s very often either in the Intranet of some corporations or on public websites for which we had to sign in blood that we would never disclose the fact that we had done them. Why? Because we are the doers. As doers we sell the work to the companies which pretend that they are doers. They sell it either directly to large clients or to marketing agencies which sometimes admit that they subcontract some of the work. So there is a food chain, where we are always at the end. Not a great position. On the other hand this gives us a very rare opportunity to be the last part of the chain for many chains :). That means that we often work on different projects for… competitors.But that also means that we have a great experience in many different areas.

So how about such references: We have done projects for a manufacturer of a motorbikes I like the most, for a producer of IT hardware I use the most, for Telecom companies which operate globally and very likely operate your mobile, for financial institution which logo is most likely in your pocket, for hard disk producer which is likely in some of your many PCs, for printer and copy machines producers which probably stay in your home and/or office.

None of that has been done directly for those customers. Not yet. But we are all very proud of it anyway. And it’s fun!

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I just got the Top 200 report prepared by Computerworld magazine in Poland (published by IDG http://www.computerworld.pl/numery/numer_2144.html) for 2008. I know it’s not very fresh. It has been released last June. Anyway I think it’s worth mentioning here:

PGS Software appears on the several lists there. In 2008 we have been:

• 17th biggest exporter of IT services in Poland;
• 216th on the list of all Polish IT & Telecom companies;
• 104th on the list of top IT service companies
• 27th on the list of all outsourcing companies
• 52nd on the list of the fastest growing IT companies in Poland

I wonder where will we be this year (2009). That has been a difficult time for everybody, so the landscape may completely change. Anyway – we need to climb on those lists every year.

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