Agile and Offshore

Agile is everywhere these days – my quest was to find out implications of using agile development methodologies in offshore model.  Agile in offshore model has been a topic of debate primarily since offshore and distributed development does not foster face-to-face human communication during the project lifecycle.

My quest lead me to read some interesting viewpoints on this topic. I admired the lessons Martin Fowler has shared in his article. From what I read, one thing was clear – it is too early to conclude upon the benefits of agile in offshore model. Offshore and agile may or may not go together.

As Martin says:

“We may never really understand the pros and cons offshore development. Software development is an activity who’s output is impossible to measure. As such we’ll never have hard numbers to prove one approach better than another. What we will see is growing qualitative feedback on the benefits of agility and offshore development – these qualitative assessments will determine if either, or both, will survive.”

There is also an interesting debate going on over Vincent Massol’s interview on Agile Offshore. http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=23168#106090

Some good Agile Resources:
• Extreme Programming Intro
• Business Agile
• Agile Advice
• Agile in Action
• Manifesto for Agile Software Development
• Agile Alliance
• Agile Management Blog

P.S: A great article on Agile Software Development on Trizle titled How to Finish Big Projects  where the author emphasizes on creating crucial chunk first and then build outwards.