How not to build new Berlin walls

Following my talk on Offshore Outsourcing with Scrum and other talks on this subject at ALE2011 we've had an open space session to collect advices and patterns on Agile and Offshore.

Below is what we got - 13 advices. The topic is not any close to be fully discussed. This number of the advices - is what we've been able to come up with in 60 minutes that we had.

How not building walls in offshore development

1. See at your offshore teams as your own developers
2. Have the offshore teams working on projects and products and not only simple tasks
3. There have to be a change agent in the onshore organization on all level to facilitate the offshore setup
4. Have a Offshore coach to help the offshore team(s)
5. Have a very good Product Owner that understand working with agile and Scrum
6. Have small offshore teams
7. The Product owner must visit the offshore teams on a regular basis
8. Make sure everybody understands both the onshore and offshore culture
9. Hire a local agent to work offshore with same background as the offshore team
10. Involve the Offshore team before going agile
11. Do complete financial calculations before starting offshore
12. Build motivation and domain knowledge by showing the offshore teams how their software is used (the software they are developing)
13. Find a good offshore partner to have a long term relationship

Thanks to Mads Hansen Troels for putting this online.