Agile Nearshoring

Nearshoring - what do we mean by it?

Sourcing Criteria

Nearshoring is "the transfer of business or IT processes to companies in a nearby country, often sharing a border with your own country",[1] where both parties expect to benefit from one or more of the following dimensions of proximity: geographic, temporal (time zone), cultural, linguistic, economic, political, or historical linkages.[2] The service work that is being sourced may be a business process or software development. -- Wikipedia

- time-zone differences

- geographic proximity

- common language

- physical infrastructure

- government regulations

- political stability

- cultural compatibility

- number of providers

- availability of skilled staff

- process maturity

- cost-effectiveness

software development

same time zone

easy traveling, max. 4h travel time

english or german as working language

similar culture

long term relationship

Money?

Flexibility?

Scalability!

How?

Mindset

It's your product!

It's your responsibility!

It's your success!

• identification with IS24 product and company
• better code, better outcome
• contributions for the greater good
• less fluctuation

Product Owner

• Sets and communicates the product vision
• Product roadmap and backlog
• Writes the user stories with the team
• Accepts or rejects the work of the team
• Decides when to release the product
• Gives feedback as a customer

Outsourcing Manager

• Sourcing strategy
• Contracts
• Partner management
• IT project responsibility

An agile approach

• vendors that are willing to be partners
• staff and management with agile mindset
• continuous delivery of working software
• IT mindset and knowhow exchange
• frequent travelling and collaboration
• open communication including product&business
• emphasize change
• share the success

Agile organization

Scrum since 2008 & Kanban since 2011

>160 employees (IT)

>20 scrum teams (small, cross-functional)

> 200 stories per month

release cycles from 1 week to 20 minutes

90/98% defects closed in 7/21 days

Nearshore Team

• Build the software/product right
• Choose technology within product scope and IT guidelines
• Maintain and improve infrastructure and tools
• Help the product owner to improve the product
• Self organize to find the best way of working
• Knowhow exchange with IS24 organization
• Continuous Improvement

Nearshore Scrum Master

• Responsible for following and improving the agile process
• Facilitates meetings, travel
• Removes impediments
• Transparency on the process and status
• Contact person for management

Onsite Scrum Master

• First contact point for the nearshore team
• Organizes localy used resources
• Inductions for new team members
• Awareness for the team
• Makes sure they get relevant information
• Marketing to both sides

Agile Nearshoring

15 years of external development

Agile nearshoring since 2008

Dual vendor strategy

6 scrum teams

Lean & agile product development @

Continuous Delivery

Software that is built and improved over years

Lean

product

development

X-functional teams

Understand the culture

Culture influences patterns of thinking which are reflected in the meaning people attach to various aspects of life.

-> individuals are more important

-> keep in mind

-> helps to understand why

• share the vision
• do something together
• open access to information

communicate frequently: face2face > video > audio > email

Active marketing vice-versa

• Acceptance and standing of nearshore team
• You have to be seen to be kept in the loop
• Make IS24 a customer worth working for

Communication

Trust determines the bandwith of communication.

Tom de Marco

The classic engineering approach

• concise process documentation
• software development guidelines
• trusted manager at offshore location
• detailed reporting
• onsite training
• onsite it expert support
• quality gates