Several factors make Orphosys Corp’s agile software outsourcing services unique.

We are located nearshore in Latin America (Colombia and Mexico). This means that our time-zones overlap 21 to 24 hours a day with those of US and Canada clients. Given that agile methodologies rely on constant communication, sharing a time-zone is a critical factor for the success of any agile software outsourcing endeavour.

We are fully committed to agile and only deploy agile projects. Our experience of 5+ years running agile initiatives has convinced us that this is the best approach for engineering applications large and small, as it prioritizes product market fit and speed of innovation.

We train our teams intensively in sophisticated agile approaches to software development. These involve Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration and DevOps. Thus, Orphosys Corp is able to “marry” the velocity of agile with the discipline of conscientious software engineering (i.e. CMMi5) to create quality code that is highly maintainable and secure, and do so rapidly.

We choose people that are culturally compatible with our agile approach. Orphosys Corp team members are highly communicative, transparent, open to learning from each other and open to teaching others, open to expressing their opinions, curious and flexible.

Orphosys Corp has worked with hundreds of clients in agile engagements over the last 15 years. Many of these clientes were savvy in SCRUM and Kanban methodologies. However, many other clients were just starting to get familiar with Agile. For those clients seeking to start a first agile project via a nearshore outsourcing engagement, Orphosys Corp has developed a program that pursues two objectives:

1. Creating software via iterative and incremental agile / SCRUM methodologies
2. Teaching the client how to run an effective agile software initiative. We believe in “teaching by doing”, which means that we will engage key members of the client team in all project management, QA, backlog-management, and technical tasks of a real agile initiative. As the client interacts with our team, the clients learns many of the ins and outs of leading an agile project within the context of the specific tools and techniques that support the methodology. This approach is highly successful, as it provides the client with a real proof of concept to showcase how agile does produce results faster and more effectively than traditional software development methodologies.

Agile is highly flexible and is quick in showing results that can be put to production or tested with markets. However, it has to be done right to make sure agile’s potential is not hampered by buggy code, team disorganization or by code that is sloppy and hard to maintain.

For this reason, Orphosys Corp is highly disciplined in the way it implements agile software development. For one, all our agile projects involve test driven development (unit tests, automatic component testing, UI test robots, among others).

Furthermore, we run agile utilizing a continuous integration approach, which greatly diminishes regression testing efforts, and guarantees that the code that we deploy in each sprint is stable and end-user testable.

Finally, our agile methodologies are structured to be DevOps compatible, so that the end client may have a software platform that can be quickly and constantly upgraded with transparency and relative ease (remember that an application that wants to be competitive in the market never stops evolving!) All in all, Orphosys Corp’s agile approach accelerates ROI and produces quick results with quality.

We have run many projects in which we work hand-in-hand with software engineering teams at the client’s site. In some initiatives, we divide the work so that Orphosys Corp and the client teams are relatively autonomous in developing specific functionality for an application. Under such projects, it may be common that each teams runs agile in its own way. In other projects, both the client and Orphosys Corp’s engineers work together on the same functionality and under the same methodologies.

Regardless of the scenario at hand, Orphosys Corp will always start a nearshore outsourcing relationship by coordinating with the client the best way to manage an agile initiative and defining the following components:

Activities and Monitoring (how to run and groom the project backlog, which project management tool we use, how will we determine project status at any point in time);

Communication (who will participate in daily standups, what is expected of sprint retrospectives, how and when will we run sprint planning meetings, what channels should be open should questions arise as the sprint unfolds, what are the escalation points should issues arise, etc.);

Gauge success on an ongoing basis (what metrics will we use to understand project progress and productivity, how will feedback from end-users or beta users be brought back to the team, how will we generate a positive spiral of continuous improvement in the project).

Of course, there are many ways to implement the fundamental tenets of a successful agile nearshoring initiative. Our preference is to work with the client to try to adjust to the client’s current agile methodology. However, we will be insistent if we see that there are any areas that could be improved in the way the client is running the project, such as establishing a TDD approach, improving continuous integration practices, or making sure the software is DevOps ready.

Orphosys Corp deploys all software development engagements under a Time and Materials business model. We believe this model is both flexible and fair to the client.

Orphosys Corp charges the client hourly rates for the roles it deploys (i.e. a Senior Java engineer, a DevOps Specialist, a Junior QA Engineer, etc.) At the end of each month, Orphosys Corp shares with the client a detailed spreadsheet of how each engineer used its time. Orphosys Corp does not charge the client for an engineer’s vacation-time, sick days or company training time.

A Time and Materials model allows the client to tailor an agile SCRUM cell to each project’s highly specific requirements, and also allows the client to ramp teams up or down according to the needs of the nearshore outsourcing initiative at any given point in time.