Embracing The Best of Agile with Your Outsourced Software Partners
Today, software developers face the challenge of combining planned, regulated, and managed processes with dynamic methods which allow rapid development. For software developers, these issues are addressed by Agile Methodology. However, it isn’t easy to master Agile methodology. According to Juan Carlos Rodrigues, Client Services Manager at Simpat Tech, the Agile methodology fosters collaboration between the development team and stakeholders. He further claims that this helps the developers be involved in iteration and prioritization planning from the early stages. This translates into higher transparency, timeline management, better budgeting, and overall end-user satisfaction with the final product.
But how do these companies retain agility while also outsourcing software development? Read on to see how you can remain agile and flexible while outsourcing.
What’s Agile Development?
The agile development methodology is a more common developmental, customer service, and organizational model. This means that communication is critical in agile development. It revolves around four primary values that increase the efficiency and speed of software development while cutting unnecessary waste. Agile development is based on the four values below, as Kent Beck and sixteen other authors determined.
Interactions And Individuals Over Tools And Processes
This means that communication and interaction between the software developer team take priority. By maintaining an open line of communication, the development process will be more flexible whenever a need arises.
Working Software Takes Precedence Over Comprehensive Documentation
In most cases, non-agile development involves a lot of documentation, ultimately streamlining the documentation over working software. Agile development doesn’t end the documentation; it only prioritizes user stories and helps other developers build new stories.
Collaboration With Customers Over Contract Negotiation
Developers and customers negotiate contracts before working in the traditional waterfall development model. However, more open collaboration is placed on Agile methodology. Communication and teamwork allow for flexibility in the development process.
Response To Change Over Just Following A Plan
Even the best-laid plans can go awry. Agile development methodology aims at dropping the time wastage on rigid planning. Other times, the order of operations needs to change, while the customers may also want to change the steps of a plan.
Outsourcing Software Development
Although your in-house development is agile, you might notice that you’ve got many projects to handle. This is when outsourcing some development to another company comes in. Software development outsourcing can be categorized as onshore, offshore, and nearshore outsourcing. However, we’ll consider nearshore outsourcing because it has few communication problems.
Nearshore Software Development Outsourcing
This refers to outsourcing software development to a company in another country nearing/bordering your own. The proximity removes any communication problems in outsourced development, a key component of agile development.
As discussed below, there are several benefits that US software companies can get by outsourcing their software development operations.
Cost Saving
Developers in Mexico and India work at salaries much lower than their USA counterparts. By outsourcing software development, US software development companies can get some competitive edge. The same standard skills can be found cheaply offshore. US software development companies can save thousands of dollars considering conservative estimates like hardware depreciation, rent, employee training, and product support. Glassdoor estimates that an average US company would take 52 days and spend $4000 to recruit a new employee. This cost can be eliminated by outsourcing the tasks to already established firms.
Agility With Quality
Agile software development helps in achieving a product of excellent quality. It ensures a greater collaboration between cross-functional IT development teams, and businesses, resulting in unmatched efficiency, speed, scalability, productivity, and flexibility. Agile development teams focus on detecting bugs and fixing them in iterations to ensure that the final product addresses the client’s needs.
Fast Delivery
An entire product Development lifecycle might take a lot of time based on the scale and size of the project. Although cross-platform hybrid applications can be developed within a few months, complex platforms deploying machine learning and AI technologies might take several years. However, outsourcing commercial application development to a company specializing in such operations can accelerate time-to-market rapidly compared to using an in-house team.
Future-Ready Approach
Over the past years, traditional outsourcing has transformed into a disruptive force. Emerging technologies like IoT, 5G connectivity, AI/ML, and blockchain are used to accelerate changes within software development companies. As per the modern market scenario, businesses should transform into future-proof enterprises to remain in tandem with the rapid technological shifts. Since the outsourced companies are specialists, the subcontracting company will benefit from the expertise it can use to fuel future-ready inventions.
Conclusion
Agile methodology eliminates some bottlenecks in software development, but some issues can be better completed with nearshore software development. Nearshore outsourcing to countries like Mexico can have a lot of benefits to US software development companies, including expertise at low cost, the ability for the software development company to focus on its core functions, and fast delivery of the product. However, the outsourcing company should perfect the communication to ensure the end-user needs are adequately addressed.
