Large-scale offshore agile tailoring : exploring product and service organisations

This paper uses empirical data to compare large-scale agile method tailoring in two types of global software development programme: offshore outsourced services and offshore captive development centres. This research forms part of a larger study and uses data collected from face-to-face semi-structured open-ended interviews with over 50 practitioners in 9 international companies selected using a snowball sampling technique. Analysis has been conducted using 'Glaserian' grounded theory concepts, including open coding, memoing, constant comparison and theoretical saturation. The contribution of the paper is to present a novel classification model contrasting solution focused development, where offshore organisations deliver a complete solution, and execution focused development, where offshore organisations implement work packages defined by the client. The research has discovered evidence of solution and execution focused models used by outsourced service providers. In addition, evidence is presented of solution and execution focused models used by insourced offshore development centres. The classification model contrasts offshore project management with offshore management disintermediation, where staff from offshore organisations are directly managed by onshore client staff. Product ownership is commonly located onshore, but here too, counter examples of offshore product ownership have been found in outsourced service providers and insourced offshore development centres