Fully Distributed Scrum: Replicating Local Productivity and Quality with Offshore Teams

Abstract

Scrum was designed for hyperproductive teams where productivity increases by 5-10 times over industry averages and many collocated teams have achieved this effect. The question for this paper is whether distributed, offshored teams can consistently achieve the same level of performance. In particular, can a team establish a localized velocity and quality and then maintain or increase that velocity and quality when distributing teams across continents. Since 2006, Xebia (Netherlands) started localized projects with half Dutch and half Indian team members. After establishing localized hyperproductivity, they move the Indian members of the team to India and show the same velocity with fully distributed teams. After running XP engineering practices inside many distributed Scrum projects, Xebia has systematically productized a model for high performance, distributed, offshore teams with one of the lowest defect rates in the industry.