agile nearshoring solutions
DESCRIPTION
Introduction to the concept of agile nearshore outsourcing. The combination of agile processes with nearshore outsourcing offers a lot of benefits. This presentation explores the basic ideas of agile and nearshore outsourcing and how both approaches can be combined.TRANSCRIPT
Agile-Nearshoring.com Agile Teams 2 Build Your Dreams!
Agile Processes
Values, Focus, Transparency and fast results.
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Agile Values – Agile Manifest
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Bildquelle: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/hidden_asset/file/26/scrum1280x1024.png This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License, which means you can copy, distribute, and display the images including in commercial and derivative works as long as you include attribution to Mountain Goat Software.
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Openess (eg. in the retrospective)
Respect (eg. trust the team)
Focus (eg. team: Focus on the sprint goal, get not
distracted. PO: Select the most important stories.)
Commitment (eg. Keep your promises)
Courage (eg. Have the courage to decide, not to accept
bad work, keeping your estimate)
Scrum Values
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Nearshoring
Time to market, more flexibility, cost reductions and external know how
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Definition: Nearshoring
Onsite
Inhouse Onshore Nearshore Offshore
Germany
Europe
eg. Ukraine
eg. Asia
eg. Vietnam
Source: IT-Near- und Offshoring in der Praxis (Nicklisch, Borchers, Krick, Rucks), Page 5
Continent
Country
own resources
Resources of a external provider
Same building / location.
Inhouse Offshore Nearshore Costs are well known Significant cost reduction
possible: Low labor costs, high transaction costs
Significant cost reduction possible: Low labor costs, medium transaction costs
Everybody shares similar
Culture (cultural backgrounds)
Cultural differences exist Less cultural differences, team culture usually dominates
Interaction: Developer teams work on-site or close by
Developer teams are far away and visiting them requires a lot of time and money
Developer teams usually can be visited in one business day (including return flight)
Same Rhythm Some regions do have huge time zone differences, coordination gets more complicated
Only minor time zone differences, same rhythm can be established
Less Flexibility because all resources are fully allocated to save costs
High flexibility, high variance of quality of the assigned developers
Highly flexible for standard technologies
Everybody speaks the same
Language (...)
Depending on country English is well established as second language
English, Russian, some German, French
Legal security Depending on the country there might be huge legal ramifications
Legal systems are quite similar, sometimes under EU law
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Reducing Time to Market
Flexible developer resources with special skills
Significant Cost reduction possible, risks shared
Very good Education and know how
Only minor Cultural differences
Good language skills, English as second language
Experienced providers, customers from the US
Success rate using Nearshoring is higher then with Offshoring
Nearshore Outsourcing
www.agile-nearshoring.com
WHAT: Outsource the right tasks and processes Not every project and component can be successfully outsourced. Some issues to take into consideration:
Data privacy and intellectual property (Data and know how)
Degree of specialization & Dependencies between software systems and interfaces
Coordination effort
WHO: Chose the right partner For the decission whether distributed development is possible the following issues should be taken into account:
Know how of the development team & Experience and willingness to work based on agile principles
Communication: Speaking the same language and allow intensiv cooperation between teams
Compatibiity between Processes of customer and provider (dev team)
Legal security: Minimize legal risks
HOW: Be prepared and gain experience Before starting there should be project plan and a vision how to work together
Be well prepared before starting a major project.
Start with a Pilot project - Gain experience and learn from that
Nearshoring – What to take into consideration?
Agile Methods and Nearshoring – does it work?
Yes of course!
www.agile-nearshoring.com
“Outsourcing, when not managed properly, can be a dangerous and dare I say, deadly business. There are plenty of well documented near death experiences of outsourcing initiatives that ended in complete disaster fo both parties.”
Nick Krym, Pragmatic Outsourcing
Risks
www.agile-nearshoring.com
No real partnership If one side dominates the relationship problems will arise quickly.
Communication problems Missing open communication is a major risk. Language barriers.
Interpretation of „Agile“ Tranferring the agile values and principles to the project reality. A lot of experience is required!
Dependency on the service provider Absolut dependency should be avoided since you may lose flexibility
Assembling the Team / Team Members A „bad“ team can‘t meet the expectations. Invest into senior members.
Cost increases & Attrition rates Missing transparency of costs, wrong assumtions and high attrition rates are major risks.
The overal costs can be higher as expected due to process costs (communication, management) and lower productivity.
Law & Contract Risks must be shared equally.
Software Engineering Risks Even cheap rubbish is too expensive to buy.
Risks
www.agile-nearshoring.com
“I stopped a development project by a team of five ‘very senior’ offshore engineers after 3 months due to quality issues. Two months later the project was completed by one in-house resource.”
Nick Krym, Pragmatic Outsourcing
“We stopped a development project being delivered by an offshore senior developer and several mid-level ones due to quality and productivity issues. A single mid-level in-house developer later delivered the project with oversight from a senior developer in less time than it took us to ramp up the team in Bangalore.”
Nick Krym, Pragmatic Outsourcing
Horror Stories
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Partnership Relationship between Customer and Provider is like a marriage
Business case exist, responsibilities are clarified
Openness & Trust
Communication Continuous open communication
Close customer interaction, customer is available for answering questions
Focus & Reduced Complexity
Engineering Practices Using industry best practices and standards, getting things done
Unit testing / Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration, Configuration and Release Management
Agile Values and Processes are used in daily work
Minimizing Risks Short iterations with usable increments, reviews with the customer. Customer gets
business value (usable software) while the project is running.
Success Factors
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Visits / Co-Locating At least key players must know each other in person and have met
several times. This helps creating trust. The more meetings in real – the better the results (worth the
investment of time and money) Hint: Meetings could and should include having some fun together.
Daily Meetings (Scrum Daily) and ongoing communication Video Conferencing, Shared Desktop Instant Messaging Project Management Tools
Strong customer involvement Transparency instead of obfuscation Customer is able to really manage the project
Best Practices & Tools
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Best Practices & Tools
Kommunikation/Collaboration VoIP, Skype, Netviewer, WebEx,
Instant Messaging, internal Twitter, Video Conferences, Security tools
Project Management
Jira, MS Project, XPlanner (Agile), ScrumWorks (Agile), TargetProcess(Agile), tinypm (agile), ExtremePlanner, IceScrum, SilverCatalyst (agile), Excel , Agilefant , Agilo, VersionOne
Requirements Engineering
Doors, IBM Rational Requisite PRO, Enterprise Architect, Excel Liste
Knowledge database Wiki, Twiki, Confluence
Configurations Management SVN, CVS, Maven, Jam
Continuous Integration Hudson, Quickbuild
Software Quality UnitTest, Selenium, Metrics, Code
Style checker… Bug Tracking Jira, Bugzilla
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Focus on Communication Same time zone: Direct Communication (synchronous) possible, instant Feedback Communication is a core practice (Focus) for agile methods
Responsibility Agile Methods based on sharing same culture and values Taking responsibility encouraged by agile values
Creating Trust by having Transparency Nearshore location simplify visits – important for better transparency and building trust Short cycles (iterations) result in usable software increments Agile methods are based on transparency : Important for all distributed projects.
Focus on Quality Higher quality to fast Feedback Using modern engineering practices (XP, TDD, ...)
Experience A lot of providers are very experienced with working in distributed projects. Scrum is used a lot by Nearshoring providers, XP is well known, too
http://www.agilerussia.ru/ http://scrumtrek.ru/ http://www.agiledev.ru http://www.agilebelarus.org http://www.agileukraine.org/ http://www.scrumguides.com/ http://agileee.org/
Agile Methods and Nearshoring are a perfect match because ...
www.agile-nearshoring.com
More information available on our web site
www.agile-nearshoring.com
Get in contact with us for discussing further details:
0721-754069-85
Contact