Why do you use offshore?
We started our offshore development in 2014. At that time, agile product development was spreading not only in KDDI but also in many other companies in Japan. Therefore, we made an early decision to try agile offshore development to solve the problem of a shortage of IT engineers in Japan and to continuously develop products and provide value with a stable team
What kind of effect have you had by actually adopting offshore development?
We now have six teams in Vietnam, including those from other companies, doing agile offshore development. In terms of cost, productivity has been over 200% higher than in Japan.
Has your impression changed before and after employing offshore development?
At first, many people thought that it would be difficult to adopt offshore development because agile development requires closer communication than waterfall development. In fact, when we first started offshore development, there were a variety of issues such as quality, reading between the lines, culture, and communication. However, over time, through trial and error, we found that it was a good match for agile development, which involves repeated improvements in short cycles.
Are there any difficulties in agile offshore development?
Of course, there are times when communication takes time due to cultural and language differences. However, I feel that the quality of communication is improving day by day, not only through BrSE, but also through our ingenuity and efforts such as studying each other's language and increasing our common language, English. Also, although it was a difficult situation due to the Corona disaster, we have recently been meeting in person several times a year. We share each other's values through work such as "Moving Motivator," and through exchanges such as meals, we understand each other's culture and build a relationship of trust.
What are your impressions of Nam, Tien, and Jack?
Everyone has their own personality, but what they all have in common is a very strong sense of autonomy, in addition to high IT skills, diligence, and friendliness. In normal waterfall development, tasks are assigned and everyone is expected to fulfill their own role, but our goal in "agile offshore development" is to "build a relationship where we can focus on the value of the product as an equal partner”. They actively ask questions to deepen their understanding of the client's problems and output their own ideas on how to approach the problem and how it can be solved. I feel that this is the result of fully understanding the agile mindset and putting it into practice.
What is your impression of atWare Vietnam?
atWare has been an important partner of ours in Japan since we started agile development, and we have built a trusting relationship with them over a long time as we have worked together to refine our scrum. Normally, when starting an offshore development project, many companies start by establishing a relationship with an overseas partner, but in the case of atWare Vietnam, they have applied the know-how they have accumulated through their development in Japan directly to offshore development, and I feel that the entire company has been practicing "agile offshore development".
What are your expectations for atWare Vietnam and offshore development in the future?
In Scrum, everyone understands the customer's persona and is constantly creating ideas to solve problems. Therefore, in addition to the current IT skills, I think that if UI/UX thinking is further incorporated into offshore work, we will be able to get closer to our customers and have more fun.
I also feel that the relationship between Japanese engineers and offshore engineers is almost flat, but there are still some restrictions on how to handle customer information management at overseas locations and work in the production environment (e.g., no remote work) depending on the project. I look forward to working with atWare's Japanese engineers to realize an optimal system to suit each project.