Being somewhat involved in outsourced development projects (note, outsource doesn’t have to mean going to somewhere very distant on the globe) I started to asked myself about the feasibility of Agile Development methodologies in outsource projects (when the outsource is made outside the client installations, sometimes – but not always – in a different country).
I would say that outsourcing tends to lend itself very well to waterfall development methodologies: Analysis in Sweden then design in Portugal then implementation in Chile, then testing and acceptance in the UK. Its easier to outsource a project (especially in different pieces to different contractors) if there is a clear distinction of phases.
If you are more agile, and have more parallel methodologies (which is clearly my personal preference), then its difficult, at best, to be able to split a task this way.
As I see it, agile methodologies don’t adapt well to this type of approach (very common these days).
Please prove I am wrong, as I would like to be!
Please share your thoughts
Filed in: software engineering
