Background: In the last decade the IT outsourcing industry has faced substantial changes
due to the digital revolution and the dramatic fall in international telecommunications. The
new situation has created a trend in IT outsourcing called offshoring. The term offshoring
refers to outsourcing to another country, commonly low-wage countries such as India or
China. The authors of this thesis were contacted in November 2006 by representatives of
our case-company and learned that they were interested in reviewing their IT offshoring
projects. The following questions were asked:
– What specific problems occur when working with offshoring projects?
– What factors are central for an efficient work-process in offshoring projects?
– How can the problems at the case-company office be dealt with?
Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to map out the problems and challenges that managers and
team members working with offshore projects face in their daily work and to make suggestions on how these
problems can be dealt with.
Perspective: The thesis is a case study of an IT-company and is therefore strongly tied to
the work-processes of the specific case-company. The focus is on IT outsourcing offshore
with its specific problems, such as non-collocated teams etc. Thus, it does not focus on the
common problems of working together in a team and problems with lack of good
management.
Method and Theory: The thesis is conducted with exploratory, hermeneutic and abductive
approaches. The primary data is collected from interviews with the personnel and the
secondary data is gathered from literature and journals. The thesis has been conducted with
focus on the factors discussed within the Offshore Project Success Model derived from
scholars Balaji and Ahuja.
Result, Analysis and Conclusion: When interviewing the personnel different aspects and
difficulties connected to offshore operations appeared, especially with the planning,
implementation and knowledge integration phase of the offshore resources. It seemed like
the process had been carried out without clearly defined targets and evaluations, which has
resulted in uncertainties at the management level considering the success-level of the
projects. The conclusion of the thesis focuses on three main problem areas, namely;
team/team communication, corporation/office communication and education and implementation support,
discussing the certain problems connected to these area...
