Working Together, Sitting Apart

The article says successful offshoring depends mainly on people, while process remains crucial. It recommends meeting with onshore and offshore teams before work begins to agree on how the collaboration will function, then writing that process down and revisiting it regularly.

Reading notes

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• People are primary, and process matters because the wrong people with a good process still lead to poor results.
• Remote teams need an explicit agreement on how they will work together, because verbal understanding is often not shared in the same way.
• The article groups the discussion around process, responsibilities, and performance.
• Process questions include how work is done, how estimates are made, how requirements are defined, how planning happens, and who tests what.
• In waterfall-style work, estimation and requirements need clear rules, and offshore teams should be involved early enough to understand what is being built.
• In agile or scrum, the whole team should join planning and shape user stories together, rather than treating specifications as a one-way handoff.
• Testing practices vary widely, so the current testing process, acceptance criteria, and definition of done should be documented.
• Responsibilities should be defined before the team starts, especially around project ownership, deadlines, project management, and people management.
• The product owner is most effective onshore near the customer, while the scrum master can be onshore or offshore.
• A process manager or delivery manager helps maintain communication between onshore and offshore teams and reviews collaboration regularly.
• Performance should be assessed at company, team, and individual levels, with regular feedback loops and monthly or quarterly evaluations.
• The closing recommendation is to keep the written process alive, use it in the meeting rhythm, and update it instead of letting it sit unused.