by Nick Krym

Finding a great outsourcing coordinator

About six months ago one of my old friends, VP of Engineering for an East Coast based company, asked me to help him to find a good offshore manager / outsourcing coordinator. That by no means was an easy task and in this case, a not-so-rich relatively small company, it was even more challenging. It took us about two months and few dozens of candidates to find someone who we perceived as a great match. A few weeks later our pick hit the ground running and now, three months after starting the work, he is continuing to exceed our expectations and has proved to be a rock star of an offshore manager. I guess that’s at this point we can give ourselves a pad on a back a look back and see what we did:

First, the task & landscape: the task was to find someone who would manage/coordinates offshore activities for a small product development company. The company’s product, written primarily in Microsoft technologies, has been around for ~15 years and inevitably grew in complexity, size and not so much in quality of code within. Some of the new product development and the lion’s share of maintenance has been outsourced for almost as long as the product development itself. SDLC is a modified waterfall with some elements of agile. The outsourcing team size has fluctuating around average of twenty.
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by Nick Krym

Staying Healthy – progress update

A couple months ago I started a “healthy” thread with a discussion about Staying Healthy on the Road, the topic that should be near and dear to most of us involved offshore  and in particular to road warriors.  I guess it’s high time to take the stock of my advancement on the path to better health. Bottom-line-upfront: the progress has been somewhat limited. Nevertheless, I made some progress and am going to continue till I reach my goals. Here where I’ve got myself so far –

  • BMI – I started at 31.6 and assuming 7 lb loss am at 30.6. That still puts me in dreaded “Obesity” category (Normal weight = 18.5-24.9, Overweight = 25-29.9). The good news is that less than 5lb will move me to an Overweight category, I’d say not so bad. Check yours using a BMI calculator.
  • Resting Heart Rate – I consider this is a very important metric. Three month ago I was in “Below Average” group with RHR around 78, today I am in “Average” group with 72. This is a huge step forward. See where you should be at here.
  • VO2max – pretty important metric as well. See Maximal Oxygen Consumption Test (VO2max). I was at 29.47 and am now at 32.14, and that moved me from “Below Average” to “Average”. Not too bad for a couple of months.

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