Many people are trying out Agile Work in software development. The current industry climate is one that has focused business stakeholders’ attentions on re-examining their core priorities. Where Agile optimizes on “Time to market”, the offshoring “over-the-wall” approach to software development seeks to optimize on raw dollar cost.

What do you do if your organization is attempting both? There are some good resources on-line about this already, however I have yet to see good case-studies with published figures. Also, much of what’s out there comes in the form of mini-articles that are no more than promotional ads for X proprietary “agile-offshore” solution. Regardless, some of the following may help avoid the worst problems of integrating two quite different approaches.

• Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development: by Martin Fowler
• A look at Valtech’s approachfrom within the project. This calls itself a case-study, but no metrics are provided
• The sad and understandable ruminations of Jonathan Nolen on his blog, regarding Agile offshoring and his expectations of the project. These attitudes and cocerns are quite common – this is a good poster for the kind of feeling you might find from developers.
• Vincent Massol’s presentation to Javapolis. No proofs or metrics, though some lessons learned are provided.
• A forrester research article on Agile Outsourcing. Note: this is only the abstract – the article is $350. (I should ask for a commission. 🙂
• Some practical advice on agile offshoring from a Thoughtworks fellow.
• Good points about customer proxies that are very applicable to offshoring with agile
• A very good summary of an ongoing conversation about fixed-bid contracts and Agile. It relates to the agile-offshore issue given that often projects are offshoring because of cost-sensitivity, and are thus fixed-bid.
• A look at criteria for choosing offshore partners based on Agile business readiness.
• Article by Scott Ambler on agile outsourcing.

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