14 February 2012

Agile Outsourcing

About Ben Linders

Ben Linders is an Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality and Continuous Improvement, based in The Netherlands. Author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives & What Drives Quality. As an adviser, coach and trainer he helps organizations by deploying effective software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers. Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean and Quality, and a frequent speaker and writer. He shares his experience in a bilingual blog (Dutch and English), as an editor for Agile at InfoQ and as an expert on TechTarget. Follow him on twitter: @BenLinders

4 thoughts on “Agile Outsourcing
  1. Ben, very constructive article. I believe that this is a challenge that many IT companies face today: how can we combine the advantages of Scrum/Agile development, while working with remote teams. I believe that one challenge is to find the right way of ‘outsourcing’. The traditional term implies that you hire an external company that does work for you. You place the responsibility for the work in somebody else’s hands. This results in a power-relationship that doesn’t always benefit Agile working methods. In an Globally distributed agile team, people need to cooperate. They need to feel part of the same team, of the same culture, with the same values driving their behavior. My vision on this is that in the long term (because for a small one off project anything may work), the best way to make global software development successful is by engaging team members on a longer term. You need to set up your own team, select the people in your team and build the culture within that team.

  2. @Adriana Inderdaad, cultuur en met name de cultuurverschillen tussen de opdrachtgevende organisaties en de leverancier worden vaak onderschat. Een van de voordelen van Agile is dat dat snel (en soms pijnlijk) zichtbaar wordt, al in een vroeg stadium. Maar gelukkig zijn er practices in Agile, zoals de Retrospectives om dit op te pakken en te verbeteren. Mits de opdrachtgever en leverancier er samen voor gaan!