PROJECT MAVERICK INTERNSHIPS: A UNIVERSITY’S ONSHORE ALTERNATIVE TO OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING Michael G. Wells, Minnesota State Mankato, Information Systems & Technology Department, 238 Wissink Hall, Mankato, MN, 56001,
[email protected], (507) 389-6659 John R. Olson, University of St. Thomas, Decision Sciences, 1000 LaSalle Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55403,
[email protected] (651) 962-5078
ABSTRACT This paper will outline a unique and very successful student internship experience for students in information system programs. This internship experience is an onshore alternative for companies looking for alternatives to offshore outsourcing of information systems projects. The unique feature of this model is the partnership formed between a university and its industry partner. The industry partner uses the university and students as an “outsourcing” agent to complete both software testing and software development tasks. The project leadership is provided by a third party intermediary who ensures the overall quality of the work being completed on a project. Not only is this “onshoring” project of great benefit for the university and its students, but preliminary anecdotal feedback from the industry partner shows a dramatic cost/benefit advantage over outsourcing to offshore vendors. Throughout this paper, traditional offshore alternatives will be compared and contrasted with this “onshoring” alternative. In addition, this manuscript will also present some exploratory research results as to the overall effectiveness of the program according to the student interns on the project. KEYWORDS: internship, outsourcing, onshore, offshore INTRODUCTION Outsourcing of software development and software testing has increased considerably in recent times [2]. The benefits of offshore outsourcing are well documented in the literature. Led by India, China and others, these countries have established themselves as low cost alternatives to organizations‟ own workforce. Hidden in offshore firms‟ costs are: costs of communication with offshore vendors, coordination of offshore outsourcing activities, and time spent creating detailed specifications for testing [1]. As an alternative to offshoring, our university has developed an “onshore” alternative, Project Maverick, which provides an innovative educational opportunity for students. Project Maverick is a collaborative effort between our university, industry partner(s), and university students. Specifically, the cooperative project is a collaborative effort between Maverick Software Consulting (MSC), the university‟s Information Systems & Technology (IS&T) Department, and Information Systems (IS) students. This paper will identify Project Maverick‟s structure, implementation issues, people and resources, tasks, and benefits.
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PROJECT STRUCTURE Several issues make Project Maverick‟s structure an attractive onshore alternative to sending work offshore as well as a unique educational opportunity for students. The structural design of Project Maverick addresses many offshore sites‟ inferior infrastructure, geopolitical, objectivity, security, culture, language and time zone issues. There are three key players involved in project maverick: the university, a third party contractor, and an industry partner. For this project, each of the key project partners provide resources to help ensure the project is successful. The university provides a faculty member to serve as the Project Director as well as student workers with enough technical expertise to complete software development and software testing tasks. The second project participant, Maverick Software Consulting (MSC), contracts with clients looking for an onshore alternative for software development and software testing projects. In addition, MSC provides an Onsite Team Lead, who is physically located at the client‟s site to gather project specifications and pass them to Project Maverick. The Onsite Team Lead functions similarly to an offshore alternative‟s stateside liaison. Finally, MSC provides a Project Manager who is physically located on university space to manage the student workers. See Figure 1. Project Maverick‟s structure is similar to an offshore outsourcing vendor in that a higher paid employee manages a large group of offshore employees who are performing the dayto-day activities such as software development or software testing. Often, offshore vendors need to have a presence at the organization contracting with them to gather requirements. FIGURE 1 – PROJECT MAVERICK STRUCTURE
University Campus Site
Off-shore Site
Client‟s Work Project Specifications
MSC Project Manager
Project Specifications Student Worker MSC Onsite Team Lead
Student Worker
Student Worker
Completed Projects
Faculty Project Director
Client‟s Site
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PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION Many of the issues of implementation are similar for both onshore and offshore alternatives. One of the largest impediments to successful implementation is working with a university‟s employment guidelines. The following outlines key elements related to how we implemented an onshore alternative at our university. Contractual negotiations were the most difficult task during project implementation. The contractual negotiations for Project Maverick required more than just an agreement between MSC and the university. Students are employees of the university, but they sign agreements with both the university and Maverick Software Consulting. In addition, any contractual agreement between an industry partner and our state university must be reviewed by the state‟s Attorney General‟s office. In addition, MSC has contractual agreements with its clients outlining their statements of work. Project Maverick‟s contractual responsibilities were divided during negotiations between Maverick Software Consulting and the university. For Project Maverick, the university is required to provide a faculty Project Director and student interns. The university provides a physical location for the project, complete with office equipment, heat, light, a single telephone line, air conditioning, janitorial services, secure access system, parking spaces, and Internet access. In terms of project sustainability, our university is responsible for all payroll activities and reporting associated with Project Maverick. Maverick Software Consulting is required to provide employees for the roles of Project Manager and Onsite Team Lead. Prior to starting work, MSC is required to perform background checks and drug screens on all student workers. In addition, all student workers must sign confidentiality and intellectual property rights agreements provided by MSC. In the physical space, MSC provides hardware, software, and office supplies. In terms of project sustainability, MSC must provide all training to student interns and maintain all hardware and software. MSC is financially responsible for the Project Maverick Director and student employee‟s salary and fringe benefits, rental of university space, setup costs, travel costs, additional phone charges, and the university‟s indirect costs. RESOURCES AND KEY PERSONNEL This section describes the roles of the key personnel involved in Project Maverick. In order to implement Project Maverick, it was imperative to have an industry partner completely dedicated to this project. As the third party intermediary, MSC provides two employees dedicated to the project: an Onsite Team Lead and a Project Manager. MSC provides its clients with a dedicated Onsite Team Lead who supplies an alternative to its client‟s off-shore strategy. Each MSC client has a large number of projects they off-shore outsource. As an onshore alternative, some of those projects are now sent to Project Maverick for completion. MSC‟s Onsite Team Lead is located at their clients‟ site and gathers specifications for each project. These specifications are passed to the Project Maverick Project Manger. The Onsite Team Lead‟s additional responsibilities include: resource management, training, client management, and client assistance.
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The Onsite Team Lead ensures all student interns have a project to work on. He also tracks the status of current projects through weekly meetings with the Client Project Leads. A Client Project Lead is a dedicated MSC client employee in charge of a project for which Project Maverick students are working on. There is typically one Client Project Lead per project. Sync meetings are used to ensure tasks assigned to Project Maverick are progressing according to specified timelines and/or to quickly identify if additional resources may be needed. MSC‟s Onsite Team Lead also participates in larger weekly client status meetings. These meeting are typical project status meetings where a client‟s project group is updated on the status of project tasks. MSC‟s Onsite Team Lead works with their client to ensure training needed for new projects is provided for anyone involved in a project. The Onsite Team Lead is responsible for ensuring students have an appropriate security access to a client‟s software and systems in order to complete their assignments. He also works closely with a client‟s security specialists to supply appropriate access for students. He is available to give students advice, answer questions, and supply technical expertise. MSC‟s Onsite Team Lead ensures all a client‟s needs are being met. Any issues a client has are resolved by through meetings with clients, Onsite Team Lead, and Project Manager. The Onsite Team Lead has regular meetings with the Project Manager to determine any issues with a client or students have become a problem. If there is a problem, the Onsite Team Lead, Project Manager, and Project Director work together to devise a solution. MSC‟s Onsite Team Lead also solicits input from the Project Manager and student interns to determine new areas of expansion for additional project work for Project Maverick. MSC‟s Project Manager is physically located in the university‟s on-campus work space. His main responsibilities are to manage the day-to-day operations of Project Maverick. He distributes project specifications to student interns and tracks the progress of each project. MSC‟s Project Manager‟s additional responsibilities at Project Maverick include: managing student interns, training, being the contact person for the physical site, interviewing, and directly contacting the client. Along with its industry partner, it is imperative to have the support of the university‟s administration and a faculty champion. Typically, the faculty champion serves as the Project Director. At our university, the Information Systems & Technology (IS&T) Department provides a faculty member who serves as Project Maverick Director. This position serves as a liaison between university personnel and MSC. The director has regular status meetings with MSC‟s Project Manager and meetings as needed with MSC‟s On-site Team Lead. He interacts with the university„s host department, college dean, accountants, chief financial officer, and contract specialists. Some of his responsibilities include coordination of initial site preparation, student recruitment, contractual issues, regular staff and status meetings, student payroll, and long range planning of the project. He is the university‟s employee compensated to oversee Project Maverick. Student recruitment is perhaps the most important aspect of Project Maverick. Students are recruited through emailing lists, presentations about Project Maverick during classes, personal contact with faculty, fliers, and current Project Maverick student contacts. Students are eligible for employment on Project Maverick when they have completed the three semester introductory sequence of programming courses. Project Maverick typically looks for a one year commitment from students who want to work on the project. These students are paid a competitive wage while working on real world information technology projects under the guidance of the Project
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Maverick Director, Project Manager, and On-site Team Lead. Work schedules are flexible and students are given an opportunity to work up to 40 hours/week over breaks and in the summer. Sixty percent of each student‟s work hours must be done between normal business hours, i.e., 8:00am – 5:00pm. Work done on Project Maverick is counted as a student‟s internship requirement. TASKS Project Maverick completes tasks previously outsourced to offshore vendors. There are absolutely no differences between the work performed at the onshore site, i.e., Project Maverick, and offshore sites. This is critical in order to provide an actual alternative to offshore outsourcing. Project Maverick conducts both software testing and application development projects. The tasks Project Maverick is asked to perform are actual projects that Maverick Software Consulting‟s clients send to offshore sites. All client data is stored at MSC‟s client‟s sites and students VPN into the client‟s network when accessing data. BENEFITS AND EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS The university, MSC, clients, faculty, and students all receive tremendous opportunities and benefits. Anecdotal testimony from the industry participant and client indicates a greater cost/benefit is found with Project Maverick‟s onshore site alternative than offshore vendors. Specific benefits for each constituent are identified below. The university increases its partnerships with industry. These partnerships provide on-campus work and internship opportunities. Often industry partnerships result in scholarship dollars for students. In addition, a collaborative partnership with industry benefiting students gives administrators a success story to share. MSC is able to place fulltime employees at each client‟s site and on-campus. Similar to offshore sites, they are able to generate income from student interns while providing a low cost alternative to their clients. In terms of Project Maverick, it allows MSC employees to provide exceptional work opportunities to students at the university they are alumni of. Great satisfaction is gained by providing guidance and mentoring to student interns. MSC‟s clients are provided with a low cost alternative to offshoring. An even bigger benefit is potential employee recruitment. A client gets a firsthand look at prospective fulltime interns who are trained on their systems, development tools, and testing procedures. Project Maverick assists faculty involved with this project by allowing them to stay current in their discipline. This includes many opportunities to build a faculty member‟s academic vitae through research, student mentoring, and industry partnership opportunities. Students gain invaluable real world experience to put on their resume while working on-campus with flexible schedules. Through Project Maverick, students can satisfy their internship requirement and make enough money to pay for school. In addition, they have an inside track on fulltime positions at MSC‟s clients.
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In the short time it has existed, Project Maverick has been nothing short of a success story. During the first semester, Project Maverick hired ten students. MSC and their clients were so impressed with the work completed by Project Maverick students; MSC increased their workforce by 50% after one semester. Project Maverick currently employs twenty students, the maximum the space will allow. Project Maverick has had eight student workers graduate from the university. All graduates accepted fulltime positions, five of them at MSC‟s clients. Other campus recruiters have become aware of Project Maverick and the high quality of students involved with the project and have begun to actively recruit them. In addition, other companies have contacted the faculty Project Maverick Director and MSC‟s President about starting an oncampus project and/or becoming a client of MSC. CONCLUSIONS Although few quantitative conclusions can be drawn from this research yet, there are lessons for both academics and practitioners to learn. Industry participants in an onshore alternative have provided testimonials about the productivity of student interns. In addition, there is the obvious benefit of pre-trained employee recruitment of student interns. With regards to software testing and/or software development, not all tasks are likely to be best done by onshoring, but some percentage of them will be best done by not sending them to an offshore outsourcing vendor. However, the main benefit of this article remains the road map provided for industry participants and universities to set up onshore alternatives to offshore outsourcing. Specifically, to be able to provide a unique, very successful alternative to a traditional internship experience. Traditional internships typically cover three months over the summer spent working on small projects. Project Maverick interns get the benefit of working at their internship for a minimum of one year. The technical expertise gained by prolonged exposure to software development and testing is invaluable as these graduates enter the workforce. The issues identified within this research will help achieve the goal of implementing an effective, cost efficient internship program as an onshore alternative to offshore outsourcing. FUTURE RESEARCH Although this very exploratory research finds only anecdotal support for this type of project, it is qualitatively obvious there are great benefits. The next step is to quantify these benefits, especially the reduction in costs for participating organizations. In addition, longitudinal research can be done with Project Maverick students to see if they perceive the onshore project as providing them with adequate technical knowledge once they begin their careers in information systems. All in all, Project Maverick provides a unique internship experience for students and can be implemented at any university that has faculty and industry champions. REFERENCES [1] LaLonde, B. (2004), “From Outsourcing to Offshoring – Part 1,” Supply Chain Management Review, March 2004. [2] Levina, N. and , Ross, J. (2003) ,“From The Vendor's Perspective: Exploring The Value Proposition In Information Technology Outsourcing,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 27, Issue 3. - 816 -
