The Use of Outsourcing as a Business Strategy: A Case Study

In this chapter, we discuss how a leading telecommunications software development company went about outsourcing some phases of the system development life cycle (SDLC) of network management systems in order to achieve both the short-term tactical goals as well as the long-term strategic goals. We present a framework consisting of seven factors that should be used by companies using outsourcing as a business strategy. This framework was used to analyze the outsourcing practices used by this company. The framework includes the driving forces for offshore outsourcing, the selection process of outsourcing vendors and the infrastructure (communication links, hardware, software, and organizational structure) that was needed to insure that the outsourced work meets company’s internal quality requirements, which are derived from CMM5 and ISO9001 certifications. We also present the challenges of making these things happen, what worked well, and the lessons learned.