Agile bug infects Indian software industry
Agile Software development methodology is certainly picking up big time in India. More and more software companies are trying out Agile. Most of them are moving to Agile because their customer or counterpart on the other side of the globe thinks that by using Agile they would be able to solve all the distributed/off shore development problems.
Irrespective of what is the motive behind moving to Agile, there are certainly some very good benefits that the software companies are seeing here. The most prominent of all is the “more control“ aspect. Most of the IT professionals would like to get involved early on in the project life cycle rather than just being a sweatshop or a dumping ground. Agile gives exactly that, because of its iterative and short release cycle. The more control aspect of Agile also helps to some extent to pluck out the racial discrimination that exists between the “WHITE“ and the “BROWN/BLACK“.
Improved communication is another great aspect of joy for the Indian industry. Agile forces people to communicate with each other more often than they would like to. Open honest communication is highlighting some of the core people issues which have been neglected for ages.
Time and material project budgeting seems to also be in favor of the Indians. Fixed bid projects have a huge risk for both the parties involved. With Agile, T&M looks possible.
Also with developers/QAs estimating for their tasks, they feel a lot more important than being told by some manager what to do and in how much time to do.
Offshore development centers always have the “cheap labor” tag associated with them. They are mostly looked upon as sweatshops. But with XP‘s sustainable pace practice, that perception is slowly going away. Though the sweatshop perception is going away, the cost effectiveness is becoming more and more visible.
Last but not the least, Indians known for their high regards for quality, really enjoy Agile. At the end of the day, it‘s doing the real thing that gives the kick in life, rather than building illusions of quality through CMM or ISO or other standards.