[ct4ul4u]

I've been involved in very successful and not-so successful efforts to outsource offshore. It takes a kind of discipline that's rare in startups. It's also not particularly compatible with lean or agile processes.

Do you have work for which iteration is not a major consideration? Do you have work which you understand well and for which you can clearly and completely communicate the requirements in written form? Do you have work for which it is straightforward to objectively test that milestones are being met and quality is being maintained?

[mseebach]

I'm doing pretty agile stuff with my offshore team. I find that it's when I give out the two-three weeks tasks I get the most problems - two-three day tasks work perfect.

> Do you have work which you understand well

This is critical either way -- if you didn't, how would you be able to do the work with a local team?

> and for which you can clearly and completely communicate the requirements in written form?

Be agile: train the developers like you'd train them locally. Put them in the chair of the user (mentally). Write usecases and userstories. Explain the goal of the application.

Again: how would you do this with a local team?

> Do you have work for which it is straightforward to objectively test that milestones are being met and quality is being maintained?

Yup, the same as I'd use with a local team the only one that matters: whether the client's satisfied. Pay your team by the month, just like you'd pay your local developers.

[joe_the_user]

Hmm,

When work has all those characteristics, how long would it take anyone?

As far as I can tell, the hardness of programming is the old "you don't know what you don't know". If you could completely specify what you needed, you would have ... written the program that does it.

An example would help. I could still believe this is possible...