Outsourcing without a detailed specification?

03/07/13 00:03:00    

By Michael Mealling

I am in a position to work with a development team in Asia. There is a huge difference in the kinds of projects a startup does and what a Fortune 1000 enterprise would do. Startups are about “science projects”. That's why Agile and Lean methods work so well. If a startup knew the answer well enough to write a detailed specification the team would just go ahead and build the solution.

For those who have done the traditional “offshore development” thing, how do you get the remote team to get on board with helping figure out the detailed specification iteratively? I spent years working with people in the IETF that I still haven't met face to face and we did it almost without thinking about it. What makes off shore software development different?