An opportunity to make our first steps in Germany emerged about a week ago, when we were invited by the Wielkopolska ICT Cluster to participate in Berlin-Wielkopolska 2010 Forum, a first conference of collaboration between these two regions.

As nearly everything what is made for the first time, the conference wasn’t surprisingly successful. On the other hand I managed to establish some interesting local contacts and people enjoyed the idea in general – so it could be good start for more future events of this kind.

I have never been to Berlin, even though it is closer to Poznan than Warsaw is (it was shocking for me when I discovered it)! No borders now so travelling was smooth and easy.

It turned out that schedule is so tight we weren’t able to see some more of Berlin. At least we had chance to see a bit more of the most modern technology park in Europe (as Germans say) – one I can tell, they have invested there a lot! It’s called Adlershof and it’s astonishing how fast it grows. I discovered that they’re open for cooperation and they’re kind of forced by the law to reply to my enquiry so it is good news for me – I will definitely take advantage of it.

I hope we’ll find some proper business partners in Germany this year – hopefully the process began.

First of all communication issues occur. Foreign countries, far away from Europe, may be in different time zone – so time difference is serious and time span to communicate bilateral is much shorter. Furthermore there could be different cultural habits, so even such trivial thing like different national holidays and ceremonies, free of work, may harm communication between parties. Not to mention other cultural and legal distinctions – like different labour policies, pauses in work, number of working hours allowed in a week etc. On the other hand there is also distance, what we must take under our consideration – sometimes there is need to work on site, not always remote working is possible or required. Thus we must take into account significantly higher transportation fees, as usually the ordering party, not the provider, pays it.

Last but not least is the most important drawback – serious quality lacks. All difficulties mentioned above lead up to substantial problem with maintaining constant quality control and jeopardise the overall outcome. For most demanding clients and complex projects it is unacceptable.

But there is a solution. Just outsource your software development from Europe to… Europe! Doesn’t make sense? Actually it does – you can find in Europe a country, where no communication, cultural, territorial or quality issues occur. source: Wikimedia CommonsIt is Poland – central European country, with IT professionals meeting highest European quality standards, but still with labour costs considerably lower than in Western Europe. Thanks to being a member of the European Union, Poland is a convenient partner in software business, because there are no legal obstacles to cooperate with Polish IT companies both remotely and on site.

What about the quality? Polish programmers have always shined with their outstanding programming capabilities – which is why some of the world’s best known technology companies, including Google (with currently 2 research centres in Poland), Motorola and IBM (in collaboration with Wroclaw Research Centre), have decided to set up research centres just in Poland. Polish IT professionals have very strong academic background what guarantees the highest level of IT developers’ education. Adducing the last TopCoder’s country rankings (TopCoder is the world’s largest competitive software development community with 226,851 developers representing over 200 countries) 4 polish universities have placed the top 25 school worldwide: University of Warsaw (1st place in 2005!), University of Wroclaw, Jagiellonian University and Poznan University of Technology.

Staying with TopCoder competitions – these programmer rankings are based on individual and university achievements and Poles regularly lead both sections. In 2005 Poland has left the US behind and taken first place in TopCoder’s country ranking. Currently (2009) Poland take third place.

Listed below are some more of the successes achieved by Polish programmers – in the Imagine Cup, the world’s premier student technology competition, hosted by Microsoft Corporation:

• Imagine Cup 2009 (Cairo, Egypt):
  MashUp – second place
  Interoperability Award – second place
  H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak Special Award – winner

• Imagine Cup 2008 (Paris, France):
  Embedded Development – third place

• Imagine Cup 2007 (Seoul, South Korea):
  Algorithm – first place

• Imagine Cup 2006 (Delhi, India):
  Algorithm – first, second and third place (!)

As highlighted above – Poland turns out to be a perfect destination for outsourcing software development, with no obstacles typical for outsourcing countries outside Europe, with outstanding IT capabilities and highest quality standards but still in attractive prices. Sounds like a bargain – and in fact it is! So when you are going to develop a software and you need to enlarge your development team for this or you simply don’t have staff available to make it – don’t hire anyone but use outsourcing to Poland. It is fast and convenient way for delivering high quality, complex software on place, on time, on budget.

After quite successful beginning of this year we had another office party – it helps us not to forget where we work Simply a statement from our marketing materials which says “Members of Espeo are its greatest value” it’s totally true! And what was this time? A mysterious place in deep woods with classical tenpin bowling facilities – it was truly something! None of us was experienced in it – so it was seriously challenging for every member of our crew. How astonishing emotions were there, you couldn’t simply imagine.
Leading was changing every single minute, every point counted, every move was… a crap   There were some moves worth seeing, but basically – we were poor. Especially… me,  to be honest. At first it wasn’t going so badly – but as the time passed by, so did our “talent”. Nonetheless there were winners – however I wasn’t among them.

We really enjoyed it. And we enjoy what’s going on around us. A temperature is rising, a sun is less and less timidly showing behind the clouds and our company is growing thanks to proper watering. After the raining times there is a rainbow on the sky. Now let’s find the rainbow treasure!

Although our cars are seriously wounded by this critical conditions and getting to the
office on time is becoming a challenge – development process stays unimpressed and
evolves as was meant to. Simply astonishing way of dealing with complex IT projects -
despite the world is so unfriendly outside, in house it all works like a Swiss watch.
Public transport is struggling with major drawbacks, roads are black no more and are
becoming a one, huge ice rink, selected schools are going to be closed, flight are being
canceled one after another – but developers from Espeo are doing their job as usual.

What can I say – guys still make a huge impression on me, even when I’m no longer the
“new one”. As a sales person all I can do is to stay aside, admire their achievement and
make sure there will be always some challenging projects in a queue.

I look at my mates in the office and I see they know that it is 2010 now. However they don’t seem to bother – it looks like they have a new energy to work, to have a fresh start in a new year.  Good for them! Having a spare time is something, we can’t afford nowadays – and it could be even harder, as some new challenges are right ahead. And you know what? I can read from our developers’ faces that they were expecting it! Even more – they were waiting for it, as new challenges are like an air to breath for them, like a petrol for a racecar – “too much” is not in their vocabulary.

What can I say – let the 2010 begin!

It all started during our office Christmas party. We were divided into two groups, with different goals to achieve. What surprised me the most, was that making two groups was the difficult part – as everyone wanted to be with everyone   After two teams were made – all following steps were processed as they were planned to, without a scratch, and all were delivered on time. The level of understanding and an easiness of acting as a team was astonishing.

The next day I was even more mystified when I discovered, that during typical business activities concerning software development, all was lead in the same way as it was still a Christmas party – with a great understanding, effective cooperation, perfect communication and in awesome moods.  In this moment it became obvious to me – it is the way how software should be developed. Ever.