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Many software companies today migrate their software development operations offshore to gain benefits such as cost savings, reduced time, and optimize their product development processes.
The effectiveness of the work of an offshore team depends largely on implementing the right offshore team management practices which will coordinate all work processes. An agile methodology is a particular approach to project management that emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, continuous improvement, and high-quality results. It provides an efficient and flexible approach to software development and to help teams produce better software.
Hiring an offshore development team allows startups to build a high-quality MVP while saving their funds and time. However, managing offshore teams involves a set of specific challenges such as culture, communication, multiple locations and time zones, task management, discipline, and control. Therefore, it requires an efficient agile methodology that would allow distributed teams to work effectively.
What about if you are considering an offshore web development project? Is Agile web development really the best option? What are the challenges associated with offshore web development?
The purpose of this article is to explore offshore web development using Agile – with a particular focus on India – as well as some keys to making your Agile web development project a complete success.
In contrast to Waterfall, Agile takes a much faster and more flexible approach to completing web development projects. To answer the question – yes – Agile web development is the best option for offshore web development.
Simply put, you may wish to consider offshore web development using Agile for any number of reasons, including:
Concepts such as iterative development, short work phases known as ‘sprints,’ and routine client feedback, make Agile web development the ideal choice for offshore development projects.
Numerous market changes in India have resulted in it becoming a preferred global destination for outsourcing of all types. The Indian market has matured significantly in recent years, allowing you – the client – to receive top quality web development at a very affordable price.
Read also: What Outsourcing to India Means for Your Business
For instance, the sheer size of the workforce is poised for growth with the rate of working women expected to increase to 40 percent within the next five years.
Additionally, the focus on education in India has shifted in recent years to accommodate a wide variety of talents and skillsets.
To be clear, Agile web development allows for frequent reprioritization of work items by a multidisciplinary team during each phase of development – requirements, analysis, design, code, test, and deployment.
Because of the need for daily collaboration between all distributed team members necessitated by the development model, there are often concerns about the efficacy of outsourcing work.
Read also: Agile Software Development Outsourcing For Startups : Things You Need to Know
That being said, there are numerous web-based platforms available to assist with communication, many of which present the ability to remove any ambiguity surrounding the fine details of your project.
Whether you choose to have your project completed onsite or offshore, the key to effective Agile web development is in the ability to quickly and easily communicate with all distributed team members.
Some companies turn their interest towards outsourcing to hire expert and experienced software developers scale their resources as needed. Of course, offshore development does come with challenges like.
Cultural differences, timezone concerns, and lack of face-to-face interaction may cause miscommunication. This can also lead to poor productivity.
Since distributed teams haven’t met one another, they may treat each other as separate entities. This setup doesn’t foster trust and partnership among team members.
Offshore developers tend to work on tasks independently. This reduces the need to clarify things about the project; They may blame others when things go wrong.
Check out some of the benefits of agile offshore web development:
Customers are more likely to be satisfied and happy when they get the products delivered faster in every release. It permits them to get involved in the software development through iterative planning, feedback sessions and regular software build containing the new features.
Agile development integrates daily testing throughout the software development lifecycle. By creating frequent builds, and administering testing and reviews for each sprints, they maintain excellent quality of their product.
An agile team is efficient at getting things done because they promote a collaborative environment and accountability. Team members understand their individual contributions are valuable to the completion of the project. When everyone knows what tasks they need to focus on, the team can move forward together from product development to its release.
It’s important for distributed agile teams to remain flexible when requirements, business needs, and technology change. This will delight both the team and stakeholders knowing that their skills are optimized for quality product delivery.
Time and cost are the top factors to consider when a company decides whether to take a new project or not. Using agile in project management can help companies gather their resources and delegate the right people to the right project based on priority.
Read also: Agile Product Development Tips from an outsourcing company
The modern agile methodology aims to facilitate offshore development teams to uncover better ways of developing software products by providing a clear framework that promotes recursive development, team collaboration, with a focus on quality and efficiency. If you have an offshore development team, how do you successfully implement a distributed Agile approach?
It is necessary for offshore teams to ensure that the tasks to be completed on-time. There should be a clear product vision before starting the development cycle. It helps to build a comprehensive work strategy or the Scope of Work (SOW). The Scope of Work should contain the milestones, reports, and timeline for all deliverables that are expected to be provided by the team.
This allows the product development to be more flexible and makes it easier to change the priority of tasks depending on the user feedback and other external factors.
Read also: What is best for your business-Outsourcing or Distributed Teams?
A product roadmap is a high-level view of the requirements needed to achieve the product vision. A product roadmap should be flexible enough, to adapt the rigid deadlines and functionalities that may vary on the speed of the development process, user requirements, and other external factors. Here, the main goal is to create a clear picture of the process of product development that would be available for all members of the offshore development team. The development process is divided into short iterations called sprints. For each sprint, a list of tasks is created with description and time estimates.
A demonstration of the immediate result is to be held at the end of each sprint. The main aim of the demonstration is to showcase what the team has achieve during the sprint and to understand whether the team performance meets the expected requirements. The product owner or the project manager should give the team constructive feedback and make sure that it is documented.
All the members of the software development team should be actively involved in the demo, there is a continuous level of collaboration between all parties, which is especially important for distributed teams.
Read also: Getting started with Distributed Agile development
Working with remote tools helps offshore development teams to be more effective. Remote tools as Trello, Slack, and JIRA help agile development team to make the collaboration workflow easy and seamless. These tools helps keep the entire team on the same page, despite the differences in locations and time zones, which makes them essential for offshore team management.
The goal of daily standups is to share the goals for the day and set agendas, as well as discuss any problems that have arisenduring software development. Such regular short meetings could be a simple yet effective way of ensuring the entire distributed agile team is in sync.
Distributed agile development teams can be as productive, or even more productive, than in-house teams. Agile with offshore teams can be a key component in achieving this high level of effectiveness. The key here is to provide an effective framework for communication and direction.
Despite different geographic locations, there are many possibilities to utilize the best agile practices to achieve high performance and build trustful partnerships with offshore development teams.
