Been there
As a team we decided to train our replacements from the Indian subcontinent very, very conscientiously. We spent 3 month dragging out operational manual we ever had and impressed on them how important following those guidelines exactly is.
We even let them do small practice tasks, sometimes aiding them a little like a fairy would do in the background to smooth over parts where reality dared to defy the prescribed operational procedure. The new offshore team had a good feeling and we documented meticulously our efforts and how many percent of our task were handed over. We even got the severance bonus.
As you all can imagine, things got entertaining when the fairies in the background had their last day and the newly trained offshore team tried to do some real work following those official guidelines.
Chaos without end, as most guidelines were totally disjointed from reality and many crucial tasks never made it into the operational manuals. Many of these magic task made certain the billing system, the ordering system and inventory management system involved made sure those systems exchanged data.
The perfect irony of it was, we even had an official task to make sure the operational procedures matched the manuals. We usually resolved discrepancies by having the trainees remove stuff not documented.
The company never recovered from this outsourcing exercise.
The coat, because we took them when we left.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
