How The Off-Shoring Changing The Entire Complexion Of Project Management?
It is seen that most of the business organizations mainly who are going international tend to outsource their activities which are having high cost top the countries where the labour cost is cheap. The development of the trends in outsourcing rapidly in the local as well in the international countries helps in reducing the overall operational and maintenance costs of the project and for reducing the overall workloads of the internal staffs and the management managing the complex projects locally and nationally as well (Vinnem et al., 2012). This initiative of outsourcing of the projects will provide high stability and competitive advantage for the companies going local and international.
The study is basically focusing on how the off-shoring or the outsourcing of any project will be changing the entire complexion of project management and the underlying principles of managing the specific projects which are outsourced as well. The paper should be analysing the five step project lifecycle stages which is useful in the evaluation and the identification of how the outsourcing projects should be managed effectively as well. It should also be describing that what are the risks and the quality issues in each of the stages should be introduced. This paper will also highlight the effective strategies to be developed in order to minimize the risks and issues identified from an off-shore project if not been carefully examined.
The project life cycle is basically a model which is useful in identifying and assessing a typical outsourcing project. The duration of the life cycle processes has been quite long and each of the stages require detailed analysis for the evaluation and feasibility of an offshore project (Love & Edwards, 2013). It is seen that the five stages of the project life cycle are conceptualisation, design, implementation, finalization and control. It seems that off shore project is the one which is technically handled by the people who are operating it from the other countries or other regions. So there are always high risks involved in managing and controlling an off-shore project. So there are various types of risks which can be associated with an off-shore project.
At the conceptualization stage the first risk which is to be identified would be the alignment of the company strategy with the decision of off-shoring a project (Love & Edwards, 2013). The next risk which is identified at this stage would be undefined goals of any off shore project.
In the design stage, it is divided into two divisions which involve the transformational and conventional. In this stage the first issue to be identified could be the inappropriate business decisions. The next risk could be resource deprivation in the design stage.
The implementation stage is the stage where all the plans were noted down during the design stage and then it has been exploited as well. The planned options are tried and after that the backup plans are tried as well when the master plan gets failed. At this stage the first risk which is obtained will be the decisions made by the managers of the project could not be able to change it if required the changes at any moment during the implementation (Love & Edwards, 2013). The next risk could be lack of communication as the stakeholders are not been able to interact with the managers frequently.
The finalization stage is teh stage where all the plans were implemented totally and the project now is all set to be started. There are many off- shore projects which might fail; in this stage. So the first risk which is identified at this stage would be the poor management of the idle resources. The next risk could be the development of conflicts in any off shore project as conflicts in the views of the different stakeholders taken place.
The control phase is the last one where the managers are making the stakeholders to be coming up on board for discussing any single query they have it for elimination of any inconveniences in an off-shore project (Loosemore et al., 2012). In this stage, the first issue which is highlighted could be the criteria for monitoring and employment for the project. The next risk could be the unhealthy relationship between the members present in the management team involved in any project.
It is very difficult to maintain high quality in any off-shore project experienced or completed by any local or international organizations operating in this competitive market. There are huge quality issues to be identified and assessed for an off shore project to be successfully implemented by the national as well the international organizations as well. So at each stages of the project life cycle stage there are some of the quality issues which have been assessed for the successful implementation of an off-shore project (Kotlarsky, Scarbrough & Oshri, 2014). The quality issues at each of the project life cycle stages are explained below
At the conceptualisation stage, the quality issue could be that the implementation of the project with high quality. The project outsourcing process is quite critical and in project outsourcing there is the issue of positioning the strategies in the foreign market which prohibits the outsourcing of any projects (Gatzert & Kosub, 2016).
At the design stage, the quality issues could be that the off-shoring or the outsourcing projects may get failed due to the inappropriate decision making (Stark, 2015).
In the design stage, the outsourcing projects could not be able to identify and resolve all the possible risks associated with this project and the solutions gets failed to the issues in outsourcing project. According to Loosemore et al. (2012) the management of outsourcing project could not found out enough resources for which the outsourcing projects fails in the global context. The management of outsourcing project could not be able to involve high amount of resources and this is due to lack of innovation from the managers to allocate the resources in any outsourcing project.
At the implementation stage, the off-shoring decisions could not be changed by the project managers managing the outsourcing project. The managers’ of-shore projects could not be able to change the decisions taken on the project is the biggest issue. The outsourcing project does not meet the quality standards as the project plan could not be able to change it. According to Loosemore et al. (2012) stakeholders have the problem in communicating with each other due to the less contacts made and the updated progress is not analysed properly develops sub standard project.
At the finalization phase, the first quality issue to be identified could be the application of idle resources mainly at the project lowers down the quality standards. In off-shoring projects the managers could not track of the viability of the resources and how it should be used in the future and make them spent on activities like advertising. The poor management of the resources results in poor operations so it lowers the satisfaction for the clients involved in off-shoring projects. Bidanda, Arisoy and Azim (2006) state that the inadequate training of the managers for the offshore projects reduces down the quality of the project. In off-shore projects the difference in views develops conflicts which degrade the quality of outsourcing decisions and the projects.
At the control stage, the first quality issue to be identified could be the improper monitoring of the overall off-shoring project (Bidanda, Arisoy & Azim, 2006). In an offshore project, the personal relationship is vital to be developed as if the management relationship is poor then the off-shore project experiences collapse. According to Kotlarsky, Scarbrough and Oshri (2014) states that the monitoring and the employment criteria in off-shore project is complex and non understandable so this could be the challenge in managing the off-shore projects.
There are some of the strategies to be developed in order to reduce or eliminate the risks and the quality issues in an offshore project. The quality and the risk related issues needs to be minimized so that the outsourcing decisions made by the local as well the international organizations could be able to get success (Betz, Oberweis & Stephan, 2014). First of all it is very important that there should be adequate training programs needs to be assessed and implemented for the managers by which the off shore project could be successful and high standards of quality could be set for the offshore projects (Ahola & Davies, 2012).
The next could be the improvement in the communication between the managers and the stakeholders by which they can be able to operate in the international as well the national working environment (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). There is the need of attending and organizing regular meetings and addressing all the issues so that communication gets improved and healthy relationships with the managers took place. The managers should have the proper understanding of spending the idle resources effectively and tactically as well. There is the need of conducting specific research in a comprehensive way such that all the different alternatives have been placed well (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). There is the need of surveying for calculation and for setting the highest standards for expenses incurred as well. The managers need to have innovative thinking in order to identify that in which of the areas the resources should be properly utilized and exploiting secured methods in getting the resources together for the running of this project (Kotlarsky, Scarbrough & Oshri, 2014). There is the need of considering of having the worst case scenario for the project to be set and aligning the organizational goals with the project outcome.
Conclusion
From the study it is evident that the five step project life-cycle stage is essential in determining that how the offshore projects should run in this competitive business environment. The managers handling the off-shore projects should be able to manage and assess the stages in order to implement the off-shore projects successfully as well. It is concluded that the defined goals, communication and resource allocation and its application are the most important activities to be recognized during the running of an off-shore project. It is evident that the outsourcing decisions are getting successful only if the careful analysis are performed and if the sound projections should be constructed. The outsourcing of the off-shoring of any project is done only if the project is either huge in size or if the project has complex activities to be performed.
References
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Betz, S., Oberweis, A., & Stephan, R. (2014). Knowledge transfer in offshore outsourcing software development projects: an analysis of the challenges and solutions from German clients. Expert Systems, 31(3), 282-297.
Bidanda, B., Arisoy, O., & Azim, M. (2006). Project management for outsourcing decisions. Global Project Management Handbook, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
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