Offshore Xp

Reading XpAndTheCmm, I got to thinking about the degree to which offshore, outsourced development efforts could benefit from adopting XP practices. Obviously having the customer continually onsite would be a bit difficult, but many of the other practices are perfectly tuned to keeping a remote team on time, on target, and delivering rapid iterations for acceptance testing.

Can XP practices help overcome the difficulties introduced through offshore development? -- BillBarnett

I can easily imagine companies in India rushing to embrace SEI ratings. To soothe the fear of companies using a supplier from such a distance this label is very reassuring. Hence it makes good business sense, regardless of the technical merits, to go through the certification process.

The values of SEI/CMM also play well to the strengths of Indian society: hierarchies, documentation, roles, stability, rules.

These values do not play well to XP. I have worked with a few companies in India and many Indian developers. IMHO there are some good coders but very rarely good developers in India. This is because coding is taught but no one talks about development.

- BryanForst?

And here I thought this page would be about an infamous postscript to XpTwoThousand in which the leaders of the cabal, with the exception of the DarkLordOfPortland, had a StandUpMeeting knee-deep or lower in the briny mediterranean and planned the conquest of what was laughably known as SoftwareDevelopment.

From http://groups.yahoo.com/group/industrialxp/message/455 :

I think "offshore" is another such term. It implies for me a kind of political stratification. Here, on this/our/normal shore, we make important, big decisions. Then we send those big decisions to people with less power/salary to implement.

I prefer "multi-site". We make some kinds of decisions here, other kinds there. Or we make decisions here at certain times and there at other times. Or whatever.

I expect XP can be used very effectively for multi-site development. I assume that the key is, as Josh said, system-level tests (a la FIT). I expect XP would really suck for offshore development, since the basic political gestures of XP and offshore development are precisely opposite. --KentBeck

In other words, OffshoreXpIsAnOxymoron but MultiSiteXpDoesWork, IsGlobalismThreateningTechCareers

CategoryOffShore