It is part II in examples of original article outsourcing:

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Daily scrums in offshore software development

The concept of Agile software development has given another dimension to software engineering, and this has helped the process of development to promote irritations through-out the life-cycle of a project.

Editor’s note: You won’t catch me claiming to be the world’s greatest Agile coach, but I believe the word should be “iterations” not “irritations”

Most of the methods in Agile development looks for minimizing the time required for the software to be developed and implemented. To achieve the success in any software development process, daily scrum has become an essential part of the entire system, providing a simple rule in achieving success in the different aspects of project development, such as, planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation.

In an Agile software development, there are processes designed to add energy focus, clarity, and transparency to the development process of the project. This process is termed as scrum. It is a set of simple rules that organizes the software team to increase the speed of software development, organize the objectives of project development, create a performance driven culture, uphold the values of the stakeholders, maintain stable and consistent communication at all levels, and enhance the development process of each individual, there-by improving the quality of life.

Daily scrum governs the very characteristic of a software development process. It is a “skeleton process” that defines a set of rules which are practiced by the software team, in which each has a predefined role to play. Within the scrum, there is one scrum master, who plays a role similar to that of a project manager. The scrum master is responsible to maintain the processes. The product manager owns the project, and looks after stakeholder values and represents the software development team.

The product backlog consists of a set of highly prioritized set of requirements of work to be done. A sprint is a period, of may be of 20 to 30 days as decided by the scrum team, and during each sprint the team makes ready an increment of shippable software. It is from this product backlog that the set of features go into sprint, and the features to include are decided by the sprint team during the sprint planning meeting. The scrum leader at this meeting puts forward his suggestions regarding which features he wants to be included in the sprint, and the team determines how much of these features they can commit to be included in the next sprint.

During the sprint, meetings are held each day and this is known as the daily scrum. The daily scrum has specific guidelines to follow. These include -

• The meeting should start precisely at pre-determined time, and there are punishments for tardiness.
• Meetings are all limited to 15 minutes without any regard to the team size.
• All the members attending the meeting should stand.
• The meetings should be held at the same place and at the same time everyday.

During the meeting, there are three questions that each team member should answer, and these are:

• What have you done since yesterday?
• What are you planning to do by tomorrow?
• Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the ScrumMaster to remember these impediments.)

A brief sprint retrospective is held after each sprint meeting. In this meeting the team members are required to reflect on their activities about the last sprint. This ensures the very purpose of this retrospective meeting in keeping the continuous improvement process alive. This meeting is time-boxed for 4 hours.

Daily scrum enables a self-motivated team to be organized. This encourages the co-location of all team members, improves communication amongst the team members, and places a disciplined software development process into action. Principally the scrum understands that the customers can change their thoughts on what they want and need, and that the changes cannot be successfully implemented in a traditional predictive manner. In this matter the scrum takes an emperical [sic] approach to this problem. In accepting that the problem cannot be well understood and properly defined, the scrum team focuses on the ability to deliver quickly, and respond to the upcoming requirements.

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huh?

Related posts:

1. How to Implement Agile Offshore Development
2. Three Ideas to Consider When Implementing Agile with Distributed Development Teams
3. Agile Planning from Enterprise Vision to Team Stand-Up Part 1

‘The true potential of outsourcing is not being achieved and we are still seeing a focus on a narrow remit of labour arbitrage and cost reduction. Overall our survey shows that the emphasis on cost reduction and access to a vendor’s skilled workers reveals a procurement-oriented mind-set that takes a narrow view of the potential benefits of an outsourcing relationship. In short, companies are aiming too low.’

I echo these thoughts. In my experience, you’re asking for long term headaches when the outsourcing strategy is based solely on costing costs.

Related posts:

1. Offshore Software Outsourcing and reasons why offshore deals shatter
2. Factors Influencing the Outsourcing Decision
3. True Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development

In particular, I found the top countries breakout particularly interesting. Recently, I discovered my company has developers on 6 continents.

What do you think of oDesk statistics?

Related posts:

1. More Reasons than Cost When Outsourcing Software Development
2. Globalization Mashup for Tech Skills, Rates
3. Offshore Software Development – Country Comparison