Case study on risk management practice in large offshore-outsourced Agile software projects

Information systems, offshoring and outsourcing have resulted in significant changes to software engineering practices. In this study, the authors explore industry practices in risk management in a large offshore-outsourced Agile Scrum software development project. The project consisted of distributed teams from two different IT vendors. Agile method is suitable for small and collocated teams, where the team members have high level of knowledge and commitment. In this study, the authors explore the challenges to Agile culture and practices posed by offshore-outsourced business model (where project ownership is shared, and business knowledge of the development team is limited), distributed project teams and large team size characteristic of offshore projects. In this study, it was further examined how these challenges were managed; and how the best practices can be used to improved performance in the context of offshore-outsourced Agile projects in general.