Agile for Outsourced Software Projects

Distributed development is a popular alternative to developing software. The most common way of doing so uses outsourcing primarily to reduce costs and ensure the timely completion of projects.

The agile methodology can be great for outsourcing projects, but location, language, and cultural differences must be considered.

At Sophilabs, relying on our experience as a nearshore development company, we believe that there are several ways in which Agile helps development teams better manage their outsourcing projects.

In this article, we’ll talk about agile methodology and outsourcing as important components of today’s software development process.

Agile Practices

Agile is not just a new approach for software development, it indicates a significant cultural shift from the discipline and planning, that focuses on process improvement.

This development methodology focuses on customer satisfaction and employee empowerment.

This is clearly stated in the agile manifesto, which includes strong statements on maintaining customer satisfaction such as:

• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

The agile principles are direct, clear, and quite appealing. The best way to implement Agile across your whole organization is to start with one small project and assess the feedback. Then you can begin applying it to other projects.

With agile processes, detailed planning is required for one upcoming iteration. This short-term planning perspective, allows outsourcing vendors to prepare a plan for an iteration of 2-6 weeks, delivering a part of a solution’s functionality and then plan a new iteration.

Outsourcing Software Projects

Although outsourcing is not necessarily equivalent to nearshoring a software development project, the availability of skilled labor and economic advantages have made the two equivalents for all practical purposes.

Nearshore and offshore outsourcing have similarities but also, key differences, which we explored in detail before. Offshore software development has an economic clear advantage since hourly rates tend to be lower, but large time zone differences make communication very difficult.

Several studies have shown that outsourcing improves productivity and does not lead to loss of jobs, and more importantly, that it creates value**. The primary motive of outsourcing is to keep costs down, but of course, there are several other noteworthy benefits such as the ability to undertake larger projects or expand markets.

Most companies are outsourcing because of the quality of the developer pool that can be found.

Cultural distance

Agile development denotes a significant shift in your company’s work culture. In agile development, there are no prescribed processes or tools; instead, the values and principles govern the software development life cycle.

Culture is very important because team members may be surprised by cultural differences and how they impact the daily work of long-distance teams. These differences matter.

In a distributed environment, the cultural values need to be shared by the outsourcing company, say based in the US, with the outsourced company, say based in Latam.

The cultural similarities between Uruguay and US companies extend to identical business approaches and work styles, so it’s easy for developers from both countries to collaborate.

Latin American software engineers seem to be more creative and assertive, viewing the business relationships more as partnerships instead of hierarchical worker/client relationships. Thus, it is beneficial for businesses to consider Latin America as the place to outsource their development projects for achieving better results and developing meaningful relationships.

Today, many top US-based companies are looking for nearshore software development companies in Latam as potential centers for their future development projects.

Temporal and geographical distance

In contrast to the popular image of software developers as relatively introverted and isolated, they, in fact, spend a large part of their time communicating. The temporal distance is likely to mitigate communication, which is a critical ingredient of agile practice.

When the time is 9 am in New York, it is 10 am in Montevideo, so the time zone difference is negligible.

A reduced time difference assures fast response times between the teams and highly synchronous communication, enabling the resolution of issues quickly. Communication is one factor that tends to suffer due to large differences in time zones and outsourcing to Latin American countries removes this issue completely.

As for language, Latin American countries exceed Asian countries when it comes to English proficiency, and this is one of the main reasons US companies choose to outsource to Latin America.

Agile Values and Outsourced Development

The agile manifesto lists four fundamental values that should govern software development.

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Agile practices improve organizational communication by facilitating informal interactions. In distributed agile development, the face to face communication can be substituted by virtual communication and still produce the same team feeling.

This became evident during the last year. While some businesses hesitated to allow remote working — until their hands were forced by the coronavirus, it’s clear that when done properly, working remotely provides real advantages to businesses. The same can be stated for nearshoring.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

The basic premise of outsourcing is that a project can be done faster and cheaper. Thus, the goal of working software is likely to be achieved faster. Temporal factors may reduce communication when offshoring, but it’s not a problem with software development teams working in similar time zones.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

The client and vendor are likely to be involved in a contract. It’s important when choosing your development partner that the company is large enough to support projects on a routine basis

4. Responding to change over following a plan

Response to proposed changes will depend on different factors such as the relationship with the outsourcing client and to what extent is the agile culture common.

Why Agile is great for outsourced software development

When working according to Agile, the results of each iteration can be easily analyzed, to regularly assess project progress. Once it’s clear that changes to the project are needed, they can be suggested and implemented on the go.

With this methodology, project management is easier and more effective, and flexibility to implement changes, even in cross-functional teams makes it a great choice over other methodologies.

The flexible nature of Agile development allows vendors to enrich the outsourcing project management and implement continuous improvements to the development teams’ performance. After an iteration, the project manager can analyze the team’s performance, identify the team’s weaknesses and make an attempt to overcome them in the next iteration.

Also, based on individual performance within iterations, team leads can identify the team members that don’t keep up with the required pace of work and, as an option, substitute them with better-suited personnel to ensure that the goals of the outsourcing cooperation will be achieved timely and within budget.

Agile software development is highly effective as it can help teams achieve greater focus and productivity.

At sophilabs, we adhere to the methodology in our **development process an**d apply Scrum, Kanban, and XP practices.