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Is your outsourcer agile enough?

How to decide if your outsourcer is up for the enterprise challenge

By Minda Zetlin, Computerworld, 03/12/12

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Page 5 of 7

Perhaps most important is a willingness to face up to the profound changes that a move to agile requires. "There was one large logistics company in Europe with an outsourcing agreement with a very well-established systems integrator," Adamopoulos recalls. "The systems integrator's model wasn't helping the logistics company. It wasn't getting new features fast enough and was losing market share. Every time IT executives had a conversation with the outsourcer about agile, the outsourcer would make some minor change, but then things would go back to status quo."

The logistics company hired Emergn to train both its own team members and its contacts at the outsourcer in using the agile methodology. Once they were trained to employ agile properly, they were able to shorten the average release time for a new feature from 300 days to 47 days, Adamopoulos says. "The logistics company reclaimed about 21 million euros in revenue that year because they were able to move feature releases up 10 months. In the past year, they've also regained a fair amount of the market share they'd lost."

He was especially impressed with the outsourcer's ability to completely change the way its developers worked. "That was a huge win, and it's gotten companywide recognition at the outsourcer," he says. "They're beginning to use the agile methodology within their own organization as well. They recognized it was something they needed in order to remain competitive."

Large or small, an outsourcer willing to make changes like these is probably a good bet if you are facing the challenging prospect of outsourcing agile development.

Can we talk?
When people on the East Coast arrive at their offices at 9 a.m., it's already 7:30 p.m. in Bangalore. That might not be a big problem in the old-fashioned world of waterfall software development, but if you're using agile, which requires constant communication among developers, testers and the business users of the software, having team members in different time zones poses a serious challenge. What can you do? Here are some tactics that have proved effective for successful outsourced agile projects:

1. Write detailed requirements. "When we need to exchange information about detailed requirements, the time difference is a challenge," notes Rene Rosendahl, senior manager in the project management office at Kelley Blue Book. "We're mitigating that by providing more detailed written information than would be needed if it weren't offshore. The goal is to minimize the questions that come back to us."

2. Use collaboration technology. Kelley Blue Book uses a tool called VersionOne to manage agile projects and keep the lines of communication open within its agile teams. And that's not all. "We are heavy users of instant messaging and email," Rosendahl says. "So if someone's gone home for the evening and offshore team members need information from that person, they might get it via email or IM."

3. Ask offshore workers to match your time zone. Many developers in other parts of the world approach agile development for U.S. companies by working hours that, to them, are odd. "Most of our team based near New Delhi are operating on Eastern time. That helps a lot," says Shane Aubel, CIO of the outsourcing company Tarika Technologies. The Indian workers are at their jobs from around 11 a.m. their time to 7 or 8 p.m., he adds.


For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.

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