Case Study

US Bank Compares China to India in Outsourcing Project
For the purposes of this report all companies involved will remain anonymous.

In early 2004 a Chinese based outsourcing firm was approached by a US credit card bank. Because the bank was looking to find a long term partner, and was unsure if high quality development could be achieved in China, the bank gave the same project to a tier 1, CMM5 company in India to compare results.

Throughout the life of the project the China based team eclipsed the performance of the Indian term. As early as requirements analysis phase, the bank was reporting that they had more confidence in the China team due to the quality of the questions being asked on the customer supplied documentation. The bank felt that the open questions from the China team indicated a deep understanding of the system and attention to details. This superior performance continued through to the software delivered for User Acceptance Testing. During UAT, the bank found far more faults in the system delivered by the Indian team. As a result, the bank put the system developed by the China based team into production and provided several follow on projects.

The relationship between the bank and the Chinese firm matured further into a dedicated relationship called an ODC (offshore development center) where the outsourcing firm is retained on a long term basis working on mission critical systems for the client.

Obviously results differ from firm to firm, but this example shows that Chinese companies experienced in managing projects and their highly skilled teams, can reach the highest capability levels.