I can't comment on Infosys specifically, but in general the business these outsourcing companies are in is doing well-defined, incremental enhancements to corporate back office systems that already exist. Here the ability to reliably, repeatably deliver to a fixed cost, timescale and quality level is key.

It is a fundamentally different game from developing new software for sale, where inovation and time-to-market are critical. Those things are not amenable to a rigorous, process-driven "software factory" approach. (Although - different - Indian entrepreneurs also excel at them, as witness the large number of them in leading roles in Silicon Valley startups)

Thanks Tobias, Karun and Alan for sharing your inside experience with me. Well I agree with you the game for established processes is a different one, than it is for new software tool. Also true it very much depends on how you implement a QM program, but I even found ISO 9001 producing much paper and little effect in my old company. I felt we were all pretty committed in my old company and it was not a commitment issue. But I still shy away from CMM 5. But on the other hand maybe I just had the wrong consultants :-)

CMM is only important for customer who is afraid of working with people living and working thousands km away.. The main problem of Offshore programming is the capacity to do a good document with all the business cases. The customer can do it but it's not very good for the person in charge of that (he or she will have all the pressure from the users because 70% of the problems are from the gap between the users and the system at the same moment -when the system is ready). The provider can do it too but he needs to have near to the customer a good local team and the price will be not "offshore"... Especially in France when it's forbidden to work for a salary below the local average salary. It's the same problem to close the system. You need to be able to do that in "offshore"country and not at the customer. In US it's possible to take the it people from india, to pay them like in India but to have them in US. In Europe, and especially in France, it's forbidden and i think it's good law to avoid social problem and "exploitation". Then the price of people is not the principal stuff of offshore. The METHOD is the principal element. CMM and ISO are not methods. It's only label to show that you have money to pay it ;-)) and arguments for customer's people in charge of administrativ documents. offshore companies are more "politically correct" if they have some labels like western countries. Other big problem with iso and cmm. Nobody verifies it. I was in offshore exhibition in London few months ago. All indian and roumanian companies "had" cmm 4 or 5 and officially 1000 people at minimum.. It's very funny. if somebody want to verify, the company takes for 1 or 2 days people like for film ;-)) and the western people believes all things .. Tubbydev (www.tubbydev.com) has people in Russia. In fact we have 60 people but if we say that we are 1000 and 950 in Siberia DO you think that somebody will verify ?..

You are right, CMM and ISO's are more marketing tool. But if you really work with CMM 5 in your project (I do not know, if this can be chosen per project really) it will slow down the speed of work.

The exxagerations of most companies in terms of headcount and quality measures are much known. You can'T verify this, even if you fly over, it's usually just holiday period or whatever....

What is your experience with Russia?