Agile the Perfect Match for Offshore

By: Rob Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Much debate has existed over the last few years on the topic of Agile development processes and their suitability for managing/coordinating offshore development projects. Our experience at Coherent Solutions during that timeframe is that Agile is superior to traditional "planned" methodologies for managing offshore teams (although traditional methodologies can be used effectively as well). This experience, however, is counterintuitive to what one would expect. Intuitively, one would think offshore would require more process overhead, more documentation, and more control and that Agile would be a poor match.

Even the author's of the Agile Manifesto (agilemanifesto.org/principles.html) would not have predicted that Agile could work in an offshore context in 2001 when they stated "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation." Indeed, much of the content generated at the dawn of Agile emphasized actual physical proximity of team members to maximize communication efficacy. While proximity no doubt aids communication, the richness, ubiquity, and low price of communication technologies circa 2009 make it much less important than it was almost ten years ago when the Manifesto was written.

So what is it about Agile that is so well suited for offshore teams? About a month ago I attended the 2009 World Business Forum (us.hsmglobal.com/contenidos/uswbfhome.html) in New York and had the good fortune to hear a number of excellent speakers discuss the current economic climate and management strategies. I particularly enjoyed two speakers, Gary Hamel (www.garyhamel.com) and Patrick Lencioni (www.tablegroup.com), and although they were talking about management strategy and organizational concepts in general, I found much of what they said relevant to the power behind Agile methods in an offshore development context.

Gary Hamel discussed a hierarchy of employee traits analogous to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In ascending order these capabilities are (1) obedience (2) diligence (3) intellect (4) initiative (5) creativity (6) passion. The first three (obedience, diligence, intellect) are table stakes for organizations-essentially they represent smart people who work hard and do what they're told. With a highly educated global workforce Hamel asserts that these traits are commodities that are easier to buy than at any previous point in history. The second three traits (initiative, creativity, passion), however, drive true innovation. These traits are particularly notable because they cannot be commanded by organizations. Instead, they must be offered voluntarily by team members. This implies the creation of a culture that encourages this high value-added behavior.

Patrick Lencioni humorously discussed the five dysfunctions of teams. This link here >>> www.successmagazine.com/get-rid-of-dysfunction/PARAMS/article/723 gives a full explanation, but in summarized form they are (1) Lack of trust (2) Fear of conflict (3) Lack of commitment (4) Avoidance of accountability (5) Inattention to results. They are similarly hierarchical in nature. For example, Fear of Conflict (2) cannot be fixed until Trust (1) is built within the team. Accountability (4) can't exist until there is (3) Commitment from the team members. They all culminate where the rubber meets the road-inattention to results.

Anyone who has worked on software development projects understands the impact people have on results. Software development is a quintessentially creative and intellectual endeavor (Hamel's second three traits). It is not a mechanical process (Hamel's first three traits). Further, it is the ultimate team oriented endeavor. Therefore, the state of people's morale, energy, and willingness to collaborate makes a big impact on the productivity and quality of results. What is often lost in offshore outsourcing projects is the individuals on the other end of the phone (offshore) are actual people too. They have their own ideas, moods, and energy. What Agile does so beautifully is provide a framework for team building that constructively engages everyone as first class team members channeling ideas and energy for the benefit of the team. It is our experience that this framework maintains that personal level of engagement even when used with a distributed team. Offshore team members feel more involved in the team resulting in a higher level of personal commitment, productivity, and innovation. In short it maximizes the high value-added traits Hamel cited as necessary for success.

Agile's attention to the softer side of management yields real benefits. It should not, however, be mistaken as a "kum ba ya" methodology. It is highly focused on results and this characteristic is equally critical to its effectiveness in offshore development. As stated in the Agile Manifesto's principles, "Working software is the primary measure of progress." Properly run Agile teams are held accountable to this measure combating Lencioni's previously mentioned two highest team dysfunctions. The distributed and sometimes cross-organizational nature of offshore outsourcing teams makes accountability and focus on results challenging. Utilizing a document heavy or plan heavy methodology only exacerbates this by providing secondary measures of progress that make results easier to obscure (e.g. a pretty design model as opposed to a software module that passed x unit tests). Agile's laser-like focus on the bottom line of working software effectively strips the complexity of software development and offshore outsourcing to its core and focuses everyone on actual results. This ensures the necessary transparency to manage offshore development teams and facilitates proper alignment between the offshore development team, its customers/users, and its customer/users' management.

Agile methods and offshore development teams are two independent phenomena that are no doubt here to stay in the software development industry. Historically, these phenomena were seen to be incompatible. Increasingly, however, leading organizations have discovered they are actually complimentary. This discovery has allowed these organizations to capture even more value from their offshore development partnerships and unlock the innovation needed to compete in today's hyper competitive environment.

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About The Author: Robert is VP of Service Delivery at Coherent Solutions. Coherent Solutions is a software development outsourcing company that creates opportunities and solves problems for its customers as they tackle the complexities of building commercial grade software.