Existing research indicates a significant improvement in software development projects, in the quality, time and budget, when applying the methodology of Agile development. Is it possible to apply Agile methodology to offshore projects?           

Research conducted on teamwork communications compared different instruments to transfer information between two people, and measured the time the information was transferred and the level of accuracy in which the information was received. The same piece of information was transferred between two people by different communication methods, and each communication media was graded by its effectiveness.

The research showed that information transferred in the form of visual communications (face-to-face), received the highest score in effectiveness. Information that was transferred through only vocal communication (phone), showed 90% effectiveness in comparison to face to face communications. When using email to communicate, the research showed only 30% effectiveness in comparison to face-to-face communications, a significant decrease. The same information transmitted by an Instant Messaging software received a 16% (!) effectiveness in comparison to face-to-face communications.

Many researches had proven a significant improvement in software development projects, in the quality, time and budget, when applying the Agile development methodology. Is it possible to apply Agile methodology to offshore projects?

There is one principle in Agile development that seems completely contradictory to offshore development – face-to-face communications. In spite of that, there is a practical way to make the Agile development process suite decentralized teamwork.

Can one manage a development project without face-to-face communications? The answer is, typically ‘no’. As the project becomes more complex and requires more interaction between the development teams on the client’s site and the remote development team, face-to-face communications can determine whether the project will be a success or failure from a content, quality, budget and timeframe perspectives. Furthermore, Agile software development elevates the principal of face-to-face communications. Nonetheless, there is a practical method to align the Agile development method to distributed teamwork.

In the upcoming posts, I’ll elaborate on the foundations that our doctrine of Agile development is based on.