Agile Outsourcing to India: Structure and Management

Abstract

The combination of low labor costs, technological sophistication, project management skills, and successful software establishment makes India a particularly attractive location for software production outsourcing. Furthermore, in most situations, information and communication technologies render virtual presence practically equivalent to physical presence, thus enabling effective communication and cooperation in a distributed mode. This chapter introduces a project structure creating agile conditions for large outsourcing software projects. The agility advantage is achieved by scaling down a large project into a number of small-sized projects working in agile settings. We divide the work into R&D activities, located onsite, and production activities, located offsite. The proposed approach makes Agile applicable to the stressed condition of outsourcing environments without compromising the quality and the pace of the software development effort. Creating a context congenial to agile methods hinges on maintaining a good balance between the functions and sizes of onsite and offsite teams, on redefining the developers’ roles, and on reorganizing the information flow between the different development activities to compensate for the lack of customer onsite, team co-location, and tacit project knowledge.