We have been discussing a lot regarding Agile transformations and how such transformations can help organizations. The key is to base such a transformation on the concepts of agility such as self-organization, intrinsic motivation, collaboration, etc. But still the puzzle of how those can be used in practice is less discussed. This is where the emerging concept of "Learning Organization" from Peter Senge can help a lot.

The five disciplines of a Learning Organization lies in the heart of an agile organization. Therefore, exploring the learning organization within agile organization aids us find the "truly" agile organization.

This is an experience report of a journey where a mid-size offshore software development organization moving towards to become a learning organization.  

Software development estimates are considered to be evil. If you have attended Agile India 2013 you know what I’m talking about! Both we use user stories and points or Gantt chat and hours, we have never discovered that magical formula for the right estimation.

But is it something you dare to tell your project board?

The bad news is that the software industry may not be able to forgone Estimate for a foreseeable future. The good news is that agile estimation techniques provides some kind of balance between need for estimates and inability to predict future.

Still, our Agile Estimates can be really challenging when the receiving partly has no clue about Agile Software Development, specially the customers, members of project control boards and senior management.

In this case study, I would like to draw the experience on how we used certain techniques and invented some tools to convince a non-Agile, traditional project board to use Agile Estimates.

In the challenging context of offshore Agile Software Development, not everything in the book would work. In this experience report, I would like to discuss how the teams can tailor the current so called standard Agile methodologies/practices (within the guidelines of the Agile Manifesto), yet become successful in deliveries.

In the session, I would like to discuss some of the agile practices the audience is using and then discuss the challenges they face when it comes to Agile Offshore Development. Then I would like to draw my experience on offshore software development projects where we successfully used Agile concepts and demonstrate how to customize those standard methodologies/practices within the Agile Manifesto Framework.