India strikes again



This blog is created by iBlog which is sold by Lifli Software, a firm in India. Their product is very fine and their email support has been to the point and clear.

Recently I was at OOPSLA 2003 in Anaheim and talked to an old friend who has been looking for work for some three years. He was lamenting about the movement of jobs to firms outside the USA. While I understand his frustration at a personal level, it is pretty clear to me that the trend will continue.

What software will stay locally produced? Not much I am afraid. The leveling of wages we have seen in manufacturing will occur in software. And more rapidly since the movement of IP required to make software can happen much more rapidly that manufacturing methods.

Leading edge development will continue here but less and less as time goes on. One off software, software that is very tailored to a specific local task, will also continue to be locally produced since the IP transfer cost can not be spread out. Once the American monopoly on the desktop is broken, just a matter of time, the business models that have driven the software explosion will no long work as reliably.

So how can Agility help with all this? It appears that the most agile teams are when the customer and the developers are co-located. Perhaps if the competitive pressures are very intense the increased productivity of co-located agile teams will keep work in the US. I would suggest that you do not hold your breath.


Posted: Fri - November 14, 2003 at 02:45 PM      

©