My name is Patrick Kelly, and I founded LabVIEWexpert.com to fill a void that I saw in the marketplace. Back in 1997 and 1998, I worked for National Instruments as an Applications Engineer and a Field Engineer. I would often visit customers to talk about LabVIEW, DAQ, or GPIB, and how they could build a system themselves using the tools. But many of them wanted or needed integration assistance. I often felt like the manager of a Home Depot explaining how a person could remodel the kitchen themselves, and many people were asking for a qualified contractor.

Since I saw so much need for integration assistance, I began looking for the right partners to help my customers. At the time, there were three kinds of solutions when it came to outsourcing test software development.

1. Use a Staffing Agency

2. Use a one-man shop (Independent Contractor)

3. Use a traditional Engineering Outsourcing Company

As I surveyed the choices, I found many problems.

First, the traditional Staffing Agency does not understand the Test & Measurement industry. If you wanted some particular skills, the Staffing Agency would look through their database and try to match keywords (ie. LabVIEW) with resumes' text. Since they don't understand the industry, this often resulted in sub-par candidates, meaning you would have to spend considerable time and effort interviewing candidates. When an acceptable candidate was finally found, you had to pay the Staffing Agency a 20-40% commission. Worse still, the Agency provided no assistance in managing or mentoring the engineer. You got one person, not a team, and you were responsible to assess how good (or bad) your new engineer really was.  [NOTE: The only company that I could find that executes this model effectively for Test & Measurement is justTESTjobs.com, which offers an online service as well as an executive search capability at a much lower commission.]

The second choice, an Independent Contractor can seem like a great solution. The problem: many engineers become independent because they were laid off (and the reason they were laid off might cause a problem for your organization). Often, these contractors are not worth their hourly rates. To find the right person, you need to have a good process to filter through the resumes and interviews. Few companies have a good process for filtering test software engineers.

The traditional Engineering Outsourcing Companies also seem to be a great answer. Here you have a team of engineers who would work on your project. Each member of the team would have a skill set appropriate for the functions of your project. Unfortunately, it often didn't work out this way. Most of these companies have a senior engineer who interacts with you, while the work is being done by mid-level or junior-level engineers. This would be fine if they could pull it off; however, these companies are notorious for cost overruns and software without all of the features.

The big problem here is a conflict of interest. The traditional company bills on a time and materials basis, instead of a fixed-price, value-based fee. Therefore, if they have junior and mid-level people doing the job, it will always take longer than with senior people. When you compare the hourly bill rates of the two, and calculate total costs, it is nearly always more expensive to do time and materials billing with junior people. (Study after study shows that top software engineers are 10 times more productive than medium software engineers. So, as a rule of thumb, unless the bill rate of the senior people is 10 times more than the junior, you will be paying a higher total cost).

That's why LabVIEWexpert.com does two things that a traditional firm chooses not to do. First, we only use senior engineers on your project, choosing the right person for each project task. (It should be noted: when we say "senior", we mean "results and experience", not "gray hair". This is an important distinction.) Second, we always look for ways to give the customer fixed prices. When we are on a fixed price, both parties have the incentive to be efficient. Not every situation allows for a fixed price, but we analyze every project thoroughly for that opportunity.

The big difficulty with both Engineering Outsourcing Companies and the Independent Contractor is finding a good one. Both of these solutions can be great if you can find the right people.

And finding the right people was the crux of the problem. My solution was to create LabVIEWexpert.com.

LabVIEWexpert.com lowers the risk of your test automation project.

We qualify, validate, and mentor all of our engineers so that you get the best people for the job every single time. We bring the "Power of Team" to your project. (For example, a typical project might use a LabVIEW expert, a Database expert, a Sensors expert, etc.) We manage the project so that these experts come in as needed, work specifically on their specialized task, and move on to another project. You get the experience of a team, but pay a fraction of the cost. That's the "Power of Team", and that is how we lower your risk!

Click here to see a list of the services we provide.
 
 
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LABVIEW is a trademark of National Instruments Corporation. The marks LabVIEWengineers, LabVIEWexpert and LabVIEWexperts and the domain names LabVIEWengineers.com, LabVIEWexpert.com and LabVIEWexperts.com are used by Luisa Valle & Associates, Inc. under a license from National Instruments Corporation. The goods and services offered by Luisa Valle & Associates, Inc. are not affiliated with National Instruments Corporation.