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Agile offshore development is a methodology that combines Agile principles with the strength of offshore outsourcing. Proponents of this approach hire dedicated offshore developers located in different countries. During collaboration, they follow such practices as iterative development, regular communication loops, and cross-functional connections. Thanks to this methodology, companies stay flexible, accelerate project timelines, and complete projects of outstanding quality without exceeding planned budgets.
The Agile approach, with the engagement of external digitalisation experts, has given many worldwide-known projects used by millions. The founders of Alibaba outsourced the development at early stages to the U.S. service providers to scale their e-commerce platform quickly.
The Skype development was outsourced to a European company and it led to swift user adoption and growth. Your business can also benefit from Agile digital product building. And we are going to tell you how to achieve great results.
In this article, we discuss in detail, which benefits attract the business owners most, which challenges you might face during collaboration with the remote Agile service provider, and how to overcome them. You will also learn about the best practices of this collaboration model. Compare our list with those implemented in your team and find ways to improve your engineers’ performance.
In development projects, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on many individual factors, businesses choose between in-house product building and reaching for external help in the form of outstaffing or outsourcing. While all pros and cons should be considered individually, some noticeable benefits influence the decisions of small businesses and enterprise owners in the same way. Agile methodologies can improve the software creation process in the following ways:
In some ways, agile development with offshore team makes digital product building easier and more profitable. On the other hand, it has peculiarities that make things difficult for an inexperienced user. Deciding to rely on the remote workforce, be prepared to pay extra attention to these challenges:
Discover tools and techniques to boost communication and efficiency in your offshore Agile team
When you hire dedicated remote developers using an agile software process, you enter a world of digitalisation that differs from the traditional one. Some approaches may seem unusual at first, but as you get used to them, you’ll come to appreciate their impact. You will find differences in these 4 spheres:
These differences may seem insignificant at first glance but they bring maximum effort into digital product creation. Adopting Agile processes in offshore software development you equip your business with next-level tools.
If you are going to launch your Agile project, these best practices will help to arrange the work and get outstanding results while avoiding troubles and pitfalls. All these methods were tested and approved by experienced development teams that work by outsourcing and outstaffing models of cooperation.
Real-time communication lies at the core of Agile methods. To keep it at the fingertips, teams usually utilize tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Slack. These applications are safe and handy, the perfect choice for keeping team members connected regardless of their location.
You can choose other means of internal communication. They should enable instant messaging, video calls, and safe file sharing.
To keep everyone on the same page and avoid misunderstandings, it is better to set clear expectations regarding communication tone and frequency at the beginning of the project. For specific parts of the project or streamlined discussions, it is better to create separate channels of communication for remote teams.
Fixed roles for all team members help to avoid confusion and excessive workloads, that might overwhelm and demotivate team members. Specific roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master, Tech Lead and particular engineering roles are usually assigned only based on individual experience.
The clarity in roles helps team members to focus only on their tasks and perform more efficiently. Companies that work with offshore engineers document the roles and their responsibilities before the project starts and share the document with the entire team to create a shared understanding.
Embracing Agile offshore applications building, don’t forget to incorporate appropriate project management tools. Services like Trello, Jira, Asana, and similar facilitate easy and efficient sprint planning and enable comfortable task tracking for developers and managers.
For comfortable project timelines and flow visualisations, features like Gantt charts are highly recommended. Visualising the project through these facilities, project managers and owners help teams of engineers and stakeholders stay on the same page regarding deadlines, priorities, and expected deliverables.
Using an Agile software process with offshore development, make sure that every participant in the process is on the same wavelength as you. If needed, facilitate training on Kanban and Scrum frameworks. After a short preparation, when every team member is familiar with things like sprints, user stories and backlog, you will see a boost in mutual understanding and smoother collaboration.
Continuous learning practices could be realised through Agile certification and peer monitoring by experienced mentors. Such a unified approach adds to the project’s consistency and overall team performance, even if its members are spread around the world.
Learn how to overcome common challenges and maximize productivity.
As Agile relies on constant live communication, being spread across numerous time zones may complicate collaboration inside the team. Seasoned project managers use proactive planning to overcome this challenge. Before the project starts, it is important to identify overlapping hours for different parts of a team.
They will be reserved for critical communication: stand-ups, sprint planning, result demos and similar activities. Tools like World Time Buddy will help to find corresponding hours easily without confusion.
When synchronous collaboration is not possible, teams utilise shared document platforms and recorded meetings to spread the information across the team.
Collaborative culture is a fertile soil for offshore software development services using Agile methodology. When team members are motivated to participate in common discussions, and share feedback or concerns, a huge space for improvement is opened.
To promote mutual respect, it is important to acknowledge team members about cultural differences and value different points of view. Remote collaboration also can include icebreakers, although different from those used in offline team-building activities. Activities like cross-functional discussions can help to find the best solutions for the project challenges and unite a team.
Sprint and performance reviews are important equally for the development team and stakeholders. It is also an important part of a continuous improvement strategy.
For stakeholders, sprint reviews help to track progress and control the project’s flow. They see that everything is going as planned, can ask questions or adjust the direction, and share their vision and desires. For the engineers, such activities give space to evaluate what is going well and what can be improved next sprint. This approach helps to spot and solve issues before they become troubles.
How to implement Agile in offshore software development? CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Development practices which also comprise continuous automated testing. They streamline the development process and ensure stable and functional code. All the possible mistakes, bugs, and vulnerabilities are detected and fixed before the release.
For this purpose engineers often use automated testing tools like CircleCI or Jenkins. They significantly increase the engineer’s productivity and reduce deployment risks. This approach implies shared code repository use and requires frequent repository updates.
Metrics and KPIs are important not only for measuring a team’s productivity and tracking progress. They also help to build trust and accountability for the stakeholders and clients of an offshore team. The most common metrics to track progress and quality of work are sprint burndown charts, velocity, and defect density.
It is important to share these metrics both with stakeholders and the team to keep the process transparent and ensure everyone is on the same page in terms of performance expectations. Regular metrics reviews will help to identify troubles and find ways for improvement.
Fostering strong interpersonal relationships is possible even in remote teams, spread across different countries. To bring the team closer, a project manager or a team lead can organise online games, collaborative challenges or other interesting trivia. Hybrid teams can try to gather on occasional meet-ups to strengthen bonds.
If you need some bonding experience at the beginning of the project, try icebreaker sessions before launching the first sprint. Such events will help every team member to feel included and heard, boost the morale and motivation of the team, and build trusted communication for effective collaboration.
If you are ready to delve into the benefits of Agile software building and hire an offshore development team, Ukraine might be your perfect destination. Cooperating with Talmatic, you gain access to perks that will bring your business’s digital presence to the next level:
The right Agile offshore software building partner is ready to change the traditional understanding of app development. Start your digitalisation journey today to benefit from functional and attractive business software.
02.01.2025
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