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Field trip to Vestas's IT organization in Manila.

We are four students: Jesper Larsen and Tue Lassen (Bachelors in political science) & Claus Laustsen and Rasmus Knap (Bachelors in IT) from Aalborg university, who are currently studying IT management as our Master.

As a part of our 9th semester we are writing two scientific papers in collaboration with Vestas. Furthermore an aspect of our 9th semester has been concerning sourcing strategies and project management. Therefore it is relevant for us to visit Vestas's IT organization in Manila. Besides Vestas we are going to visit two other offshored IT-organizations, NNIT and Excitor.

The papers are as mentioned being composed in cooperation with Vestas which offshored a part of their IT organization to Manila back in 2008. The papers concern the following:

1. How has Vestas IT-organization developed their IT-capabilities and structure over time in the efforts to become a strategic (trusted) partner to the business.

2. To describe and define the IT middle managers role in the IT organization.

The purpose of our trip is to collect data for the two papers and in general learn about and experience the practical aspects of offshoring. We are thereby gaining practical knowledge regarding the challenges IT organizations face when they offshore parts of the IT function, that we can compare to the theoretical literature we have been presented to in class.

We consider this a unique chance to explore the different processes in an offshore organization and learn how leadership and management can be performed.

The purpose of this blog is to summarize and reflect upon the experiences gained from visiting three offshored IT organizations.

Ready to go to Manila? Not quite - the economical aspect

As a student everybody knows that one is on a tight budget and consequently we needed resources to cover parts of our expenses. We therefore have petitioned different funds which have responded positively. The realization of the trip became imminent once the petitions were accept, which was a great relief for all of us.

The blog will be updated regularly and pictures will be shared as well.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

If you send me crap, I'll give you crap!

Finally it looks like we have come to an agreement about the breakfastJ. There seems to be some communication issues between the reception and the restaurant.   The Filipinos are very service minded and always smiling. One thing you have to bear in mind though, is that when talking to Filipinos, not aware of western culture, they tend to say yes even though they should have said no, because of their service mindset – they prefer not to disappoint you.
Today we visited NNIT’s hub here in Manila. NNIT is a separate IT division of Novo Nordisk and their main focus is the development of software. The head of the NNIT hub, the general manager actually started his own development company in Manila, which was later bought by NNIT. We got an interview with the general manager and a project manager. From visiting NNIT we learned that the competences of the developers in Manila are equal to developers in DK. The main difference is that it can be harder for the Filipinos to understand the business due to the distance. From the various companies we have been visiting in Denmark, we have heard that some of the main issues for outsourcing are a lack of competences in Denmark. As in it isn’t possible to find people with e.g. specialized SAP knowledge. But as the general manager said: why make a full scale outsourcing project, if you only need specific competences? It would be easier just to get the competences to Denmark.
A typical issue in outsourcing is managing contracts, such as requirements specifications. In software development a requirements specification is the contract that states how a given system should be used and which functions it should consist of. In Denmark, and western countries there have been a lot of issues concerning these specifications both internally (just think of failed IT-projects at governmental level, such as “tinglysning”) and externally (outsourcing). The project manager in NNITs comment to requirements specifications was “if you send me crap, I will give you crap!” - And that might just be the issue about Danish requirement specifications or requirements specifications in general?


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