Distributed Agile Development

Team Structures in Onshore-Offshore Distributed Agile Development Teams (OODT)

One of the biggest challenges of offshore development is finding a reliable partner. Unless the US company owns the operations overseas and regardless of the engagement model, special care should be taken to start with a competent and trustworthy partner. If the offshore partner or its employees have prior US work history and some Agile development experience, this will increase the chances of success for the OODT Agile initiative.
Flexibility is another important attribute and despite flashy marketing materials, not all of the offshore companies have developed habits of business savvy and flexibility.
Try to identify an offshore partner willing to work flexible hours to accommodate for the time zone differences. Activities such as testing and deployment can be seen as separate and therefore can be run on a separate schedule, but that does not scale well within the Agile team, especially if it practices the Whole Team. Therefore, effort should be taken to make the whole offshore team available to the onshore team for a portion of the day.

Now, let’s take a look at some possible variations of the offshoring model. There are probably as many models as thinking heads, however it is possible to classify them as partial and complete offshoring. Before looking into the details of each model, let’s take the composition of the typical colocated Agile team as a baseline and compare it to three possible models for offshoring.

Baseline: Colocated Onshore Agile Team

Let’s start with a typical colocated team where all team members are located in a US-based facility. The diagram below is presented as a baseline for comparison with the three possible offshoring models.

Model 1: Partial Offshoring

This is the first model of offshoring where parts of the functional team are shipped overseas. In this model the design team is located onshore and it sends the requirements overseas. The offshore team responds with back fully-tested and working code.The onshore team then performs the user acceptance tests and validates the requirements and the defects.

Model 2: Complete Offshoring

The second model tries to provide as much colocation as possible by shipping the entire production team overseas. The only person left onshore is the customer. The customer sends features and the offshore team responds with fully tested working code. This scenario is arguably the most cost-effective among all.

Model 3: Mirrored Offshore Team

The third and most effective model for companies transitioning to Agile is the mirrored-design model. This model can be less cost-effective in the beginning, than Model 2, however it the initial investment pays itself out with less defects and shorter development cycles. In addition, the mirrored teams lay the groundwork for a smooth transition by gradually shifting responsibilities to the offshore team.