Today's Top SOA Links
From the Blogosphere
What Is the Relationship Between Them?
By: Udayan Banerjee
Jan. 23, 2013 10:00 AM
And, I am sure you would have guessed that I think the answer to all these questions are NO.
Is off-shore agile a special case of distributed agile?
If you take the literary meaning of the words off-shore and distributed then it would appear that off-shore is indeed a special case of distributed. But, if go by the de facto understanding then off-shoring is definitely not a special case of distributed software development.
Off-shoring implies setting up a (software development) facility in a different country (India?) to take advantage of the cost arbitrage (practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets).
Distributed development implies spreading a complex piece of (software development) work across multiple location to take advantage of available expertise.
Remember Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule which states that the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing for around 10,000 hours. That translates to about 5 years of regular full day work!
So, over a period of time off-shore facility gains expertise and cost arbitrage ceases to be the main reason for off-shoring. And then …
Is off-shoring same as outsourcing?
This is easy to answer!
Outsourcing implies giving the work to another party.
Off-shoring need not involve another party, it can be your own facility.
Similarly, outsourcing need not involve off-shoring. It can be done from:
This is when you can visit the 6th principle behind the agile manifesto!
The four types of outsourcing primarily differs by how much time / cost is involved to setup a face-to-face meeting. In other words a trade-off is involved. On one side it is the 6th principle … and on the other side … you should be clear what it is.
That brings us to the 5th principle behind the agile manifesto.
This leads us to the key difference between in-sourced off-shoring and out-sourced off-shoring. When separate organizations are involved how do you build a trusting relationship? How long does take to build such a relationship?. How do you build a contract which both parties think as fare?
Therefore … what are the distinct characteristics of …
… Distributed Agile Development?
These challenges remain for off-shoring but there are others which go beyond.
… Off-shore Agile Development?
Both for in-sourced and outsourced off-shoring these challenges apply. But for outsourcing there are additional challenges.
… Outsourced Agile Development?
Points to Ponder
Web 2.0 Latest News
Subscribe to the World's Most Powerful Newsletters
Subscribe to Our Rss Feeds & Get Your SYS-CON News Live!
SYS-CON Featured Whitepapers
Most Read This Week