I've witnessed two occasions in succession where "outsourcing" failed right in India where an Indian start up "outsourced" to a firm just in the next street. Th

I've witnessed two occasions in succession where "outsourcing" failed right in India where an Indian start up "outsourced" to a firm just in the next street. The usual suspects listed in the article like "Cultural mismatch", "Lack of face to face communication", etc., were not the factors in this case. Lack of clear requirements specifications, payments agreed to on-paper milestones vs. payments against actual working code, insistence / payment of advance money to the tune of 50% even before any actual deliverables (Some firms don;t even start work with that. Their logic is that - start ups go bust more than they succeed and they do not want to wait till you succeed to get their money.), lack of technology awareness from the founders (founders were non-technical in the web domain), etc., The factor of cost arbitrage did not play any role here. These were the learning points: - They should have picked up a good firm based on known references rather than go with the cheap one based on a google search. - Tie payments to working deliverables rather than abstract things like design sign off etc., - Track, monitor regularly - Be aware of the technology you are outsourcing. If you are an enterprise IT consultant and you are going to outsource the web work. Be sure to read up on Php or whatever technology they use and ask/think through relevant questions/ improvements Edit: Modified the list into bullet points.