The great strength of technologists is that we innovate constantly, always looking for a better world. The great weakness is that we sometimes fall in love with the solution, the technology itself, without regards to its applicable value in the real world. How do we determine if a given solution really has a chance of being adopted? The two biggest determinants of a solution are usefulness and usability. Usefulness "

Over the last week, I have had several discussions about the challenges to successful outsourcing. One person was dealing with manufacturing products in China; another was managing outsourced server maintenance and operations; yet a third had a financial technology management service provider. In all the cases, the question was the same: how do you know when it is good to outsource, and how do you make it succeed? Successfully outsourcing anything is far beyond the scope of a single article.