It’s no longer debatable whether Agile brings benefits when implemented right. As it makes inroads beyond software development and into other businesses, the matur adoption brings about change in the way how overall business functions. The adoption of Agile principles is supported by DevOps which essentially makes “Continuous Delivery” possible. As Amazon pushes new code approximately every 11.7 Seconds, While this may not be possible for everyone, others, especially those with direct consumer offering would need to follow the speed. Continuous delivery is no longer a differentating factor, it is a must for survival.
Typical outsourcing so far has remained still bureaucratic in the sense that there needs to be additional efforts to ensure the perfect alignment between the business and delivery. To achieve the speed of delivery where it starts making difference specially in direct consumer scenario, only technical skills will not be enough. It will be very important for the development team to be aware of the big picture, to get themselves immersed into the customer business & domain and become an integral part of it, rather than just being partners.
Agile tries to do this in terms of suggesting onsite presence of customer represetatives. However, it still is a bit bureaucratice in terms of a prodct owner being the conveyor of business vision. While the place of PO will still be there as every process needs a decision-making point, but the teams will need to transcend beyond that to understand the business aspirations, strategy & challanges while also understanding the customer lanscape & mindset.
This will translate into few concrete things to do from both the business & development side;
Business will need to ensure that the business aspirations & strategy percolates down to every individual involved in that process, no matter internal or external.
Partners will need to become part of decision making process to the extent possible, primarily on prioritization front.
For the partners, it will mean focus on domain expertise. In that sense, a specialized vertical focus will become a differentating factor.
Partners and business both will need to focus on long-term value rather than short-term consideration. More than cost-cutting, outsourcing will become a way to deal with administrative challanges, allowing the business people to focus more on value while cutting down on merely administrative tasks.
Outsourcing & external resource augmentation are going to remain (and will probably increase in importance) and integral part of execution strategy. The key will lie into creating systems which will make outsourcing more end customer-centric & outcome oriented.
