Demise of Offshore in an Agile World

Posted on 4/12/2008 by Rajeev Singh

The increasing adoption of Agile software development and management practices is starting to create an interesting dynamics. Agile adoption is not restricted to collocated teams anymore. Distributed projects have also been executed for long using these practices. But offshore projects are now being experimented with Agile. The primary difference between distributed and offshore is that the entire development, QA, and analysis, in offshore project is located away from the product owners/project managers. Another subtle distinction, which exists in the consulting world, is that offshore teams are typically all-consultant teams with little or no client members.

Agile, as practioners recommend and as teams experience, is a very disciplined approach to software development. It also demands a redefinition of the concept of a team. In the agile world a software development team is not just the developers, analysts, and QAs. A team also includes product owners, product managers, and program managers. This is a team of equals and is empowered. Every team member can and should make decisions that benefit the project and propells the team.
Given the team dynamics and interplay required for the success of Agile teams, offshore projects usually struggle a lot. They don't achieve the velocity that the team is capable of if they were collocated or distributed. Physical separation and time zone differences erode the benefits that collocated or distributed agile teams reap. The wastes created due to offshore hurts the agility.
I sometimes wonder what the future of Offshore is. How about offshore consulting? Will the politics and lack of trust that inherently plague client-consultant relationship restrict Agile exclusively to co-located or distributed projects? If Agile is the way to go forward, does that mean demise of offshore?

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