Searching for a New Agile School to learn collaborating with Offshore Teams?

Cultural ignorance and mushrooming Agile schools are creating strange team dynamics

Offshore resources have been an important part of the software development industry and always will be. They have been part of the process since the traditional software development method was starting to blossom. However, in this era, when Agile methods have an edge over traditional ones, offshore development needs more attention and a smoother collaboration among teams.

A few questions to consider:

• Are you a self-proclaimed Agile coach on the verge of opening a new Agile school?
• Do you find it difficult managing or working with distributed teams?
• Do you fear that offshore development is going to result in failure, and you may not be able to control the outcome?
• Are you lucky enough to easily recruit cross-functional professionals with T-shaped skills for any development team that can co-locate?

This article is not for you if you can answer "Yes" to all of the above questions.

Does this sound like you?

• You have worked on Scrum projects for quite some time and found that Scrum fit well in the distributed environment, with good collaboration among Scrum teams.
• You have some knowledge of Scrum of Scrums.
• You do not completely agree with the three Don’ts for the development team (i.e., large, multi-site, and offshore). I overheard these don't in a webinar :-)

This piece is definitely for you if you answered "Yes" to any of the above statements.

The biggest challenge faced during offshore development is the cultural variance. To better understand the implications, let us look at Agile veteran Mike Cohn’s views on cultural variances. In his book Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, Cohn explains well how to work with offshore teams.

Excerpts from the book:
Hofstede identified five key dimensions along which cultures varied.

Power Distance index (PDI) - The extent to which less powerful members of a culture accept that power is unequally distributed.

Individualism (IDV) - The extent to which individuals prefer to function as individuals rather than as part of a group.

Achievement Orientation (ACH) - The extent to which the culture is oriented toward achievement, such as earnings, visible signs of success, and possessions.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) - The extent to which the culture is tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) - The extent to which the culture favors long-term considerations over immediate physical and financial benefits.

You can use the data in a table like this by finding the row for your country and seeing how your country compares to others on the project. For example, if I were about to start a project with team members in China, I would compare the United States and China rows. I find that China has a much higher PDI score (80 compared to 40 for the United States). This tells me that my Chinese colleagues will be less likely to challenge authority than I am used to. If I am in a role of real or perceived authority (e.g., ScrumMaster or senior developer), I will put extra effort into making sure that team members in China engage me in open discussion.

Looking next at the individualism scores (20 for China, 91 for the United States), I learn that my team members in China will be more interested in team unity than I am used to. They will be less likely to want to be singled out, even for praise.

The excerpt clearly shows different cultural variances and tells us that we need to adopt different approaches to bridge the cultural gap. Although the statistics in the table are outdated and might have changed a bit, globalization and working with Agile teams have already bridged part of the gap. However, more efforts are needed to completely eliminate it.

So the question is: As a product owner or ScrumMaster, why should I choose an offshore team? Below are a few of the reasons:

Reduced cost (for skilled development team or infrastructure)

Easy availability (availability of skilled developers is higher)

Impossibility of always getting cross-functional, T-shaped-skilled people for colocated development teams

To be Agile and collaborative, and to understand cultural variance, each product owner or ScrumMaster must come out of his or her comfort zone. After all, success depends on all three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

In addition, a positive attitude works wonders. Try it!

"Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you." -- Walt Whitman