In the early days of Java development, we all watched as many consulting companies around the globe sprouted like weeds along a busy highway. They all enticed their potential clients with prospects of less expensive and better designs. Who wouldn't want to pay less for good Java programmers? So of course my company decided to outsource the Java development of a core product to a foreign consulting firm. It seeme In the early days of Java development, we all watched as many consulting companies around the globe sprouted like weeds along a busy highway. They all enticed their potential clients with prospects of less expensive and better designs. Who wouldn’t want to pay less for good Java programmers? So of course my company decided to outsource the Java development of a core product to a foreign consulting firm. It seemed like the most logical and economical choice: Pay skilled foreign Java coders a fraction of what their American counterparts were earning and do it without sacrificing features, time, or quality. Ah, but life isn’t always about the money, now is it?What does a company give up when it decides to outsource? It gives up some form of control. In our case we gave up the control of our software development. You may say that you don’t really give up control because you write the requirements and you sign the checks. But who ultimately becomes the subject matter experts? Who knows the software like the back of their hands? Not you. Not today. Not ever. In our case we had to deal with a seven-hour time difference, communication problems, different holidays and customs, consultant turnover, subject matter expert arrogance, ineffective scheduling, schedule push back and breakage of working code. Not to mention the fact that on any given day you were never sure if all of the resources assigned to your project were really working on your project.If the underlying goal was to save money it quickly became an unreachable goal. The promised savings of a cheap labor contract were negated when the first milestone was missed. You can’t change horses in midstream and no one wants to trade a headache for an upset stomach. So you press on even though you know this outsourcing decision was a bad one. Had you spent what you needed to spend on American labor instead, your capability to make immediate course corrections would be effectively managed. As my project heads into the sunset of its final days, the vicious cycle of fixing annoying last-minute change requests almost always results in the two words dreaded most by all project managers: schedule slip. I consistently find myself fighting illusive windmills and kowtowing to upper management knowing full well that circumstances that should be within my control are now far beyond anyone’s control. These outsourced runaway cowboys get to ride shotgun over their unarmed American cowpokes and continue to rob us blind as we humbly sit out on the prairie impatiently waiting for them to declare the project completed. Data Management