Agile Attitudes- Too Scared to Do The Right Thing: Offshoring and Agile

[Ron Morsicato]

Agile Attitudes
Volume 1, Issue 8                                    Sept. 23, 2004
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      Too Scared to Do The Right Thing: Offshoring and Agile
                          Part 1 of 2
                  by Nancy Van Schooenderwoert

Earlier this year I had a conversation with 'Paul' the President of a
small high tech company in Cambridge, MA and his Vice President of
Product Development, 'Dan'. This is a true story. The names have been
changed to protect the innocent. (Cue the Dragnet theme.)

I had given them a description of the agile software development
and testing techniques that my team had used to consistently deliver
code with a 0.17% defect rate. That's fewer than 2 bugs per thousand
lines of code, and for embedded software.

Below is part of the conversation we had.

Paul: "You've picked a very difficult row to hoe [referring to the job
of coaching teams in agile techniques]. Managers all over Cambridge are
terrified their CEO's are going to announce that the work's moving to
India. They're looking for a way to stop that from happening, a way to
compete with that. Nobody here can work for $90 bucks a week. The
engineers are sweating it out, and their managers are going 'Oh God and
I can't even code anymore!!'. I suspect you'll get lots of meetings but
very few takers."

Don: "I was at Motorola when they brought in SEI's CMM practices. The
engineers were very skeptical until they had an integration go
smoothly."

Paul: "Development is just one of several things that can go wrong in
business. Your relationship to customers is critical - often technical
people don't get that."

Paul: "All kinds of managers right here in Cambridge are wondering how
to deal with engineers - they don't understand each other and don't
communicate well. And then a guy comes in wearing a suit, very
well-spoken, and says he's got a hundred programmers in India who can do
this work; all management has to do is sign on the line and the issues
will all go away. That's what they're wondering, and it's tempting to
just go with that - why not? If you can address that communication gap
between management and engineering, you have something."

Don: "The ability to add new features very quickly is really key. I
don't think you can do that with an offshore team. No matter how final
you think the product is, you'll have to add new features. I don't think
the companies are thinking that through when they send their work
offshore."

Don: "Once work goes to India it'll never come back here. Only they
will be able to maintain it. Moving it back to the US just won't be an
option."

Paul: "[Referring to my very common-sense test strategies] You're like
the doctor who says 'eat right and exercise' - only they'll always come
back with 'But isn't there a pill?' There has to be a compelling reason
for them to do it. Caribou only migrate because they have to. Nobody
wants to lay off 40 people and send their work to India but they're
afraid that they have to."

Paul: "I'm just naturally blunt. I don't say any of these things to
discourage you. You've got a valuable idea and need to work on selling
it to managers. I'm very interested in seeing how you develop your
message. I'd like to talk with you again in a few months."

Food for thought, this.

In part 2 I will take up the issues raised. This kind of heads-down
bunker type thinking is widespread, and it has to change if we're going
to have a healthy software industry in the USA. Stay tuned.



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