Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Offshoring IT Services: A book review

The book titled "Offshoring IT Services", by Mohan Babu K, published by Tata McGraw-Hill is a must read if you want to update yourself on the current trends in the field, and also learn some valuable basic concepts of IT offshoring and IT projects.

The author, an experienced IT professional, who has a project management certification, has included his real life work experiences to serve as example in many instances. Which makes it easier to visualize the issue being discussed and understand its real life picture. The " Case Point" section in the chapters are an interesting read, they serve as case studies in nut shell. The diagrams and illustrations are well placed and serve their purpose.

The book has depth and while reading it you can see that it is a well-reserached book. I suggest that the author market is as a text book, as there are few books on offshoring and outsourcing which are written to serve as text books.

On the shortcomings of the book, I have listed them below:

# on page 19, the speaker is introduced not in the same page but at the end of the chapter.

# for chapter 3, Framework for Managing Global IT Projects,adding about the concept of" 24 hour knowledge factory" would add to the depth of the matter being presented.

# chapter 4, Offshoring:The IT management Context,instead of presenting IT management as "project management", I would suggest to include other management aspects too.


# Offshoring models, which appears as an Appendix, would be better placed as a chapter by itself with more discussion and material.
Also there needs to be more discussion on emerging markets around the world

As a student of outsourcing, I would say the book has added to my knowledge and sometimes made me realize that I need to do more reading(as some new developments mentioned in book caught me off guard).

Go and get the book, if you are serious about outsourcing. But if you are into outsourcing just to make sense out of Lou Dobbs, I don't think this is the right one for you.

Bhumika Ghimire,2006