I have recently been set a target to achieve readiness to successfully manage and deliver results through the usage of offshore teams on our mainline development project within 12 months.

Our mainline is a multi-thousand user highly available web application, and various related SAAS components delivered through the above mentioned web application.

We work agile on the mainline with a rapid 1 week sprint using continuous integration. Our delivery platform is a bespoke php framework, although we have some .net services and components in the mix.

My view is: an offshore team could work if we either ship out an entire isolated project for offshore development, or we specify a component for our system in huge detail up front. But we don't currently work like that, and it will conflict with the in-house method, and unless the off-shore is working within our team, with our development/deployment chain it could be an integration nightmare.

So my question is, given we have a closed source bespoke framework (Private IP) which we train our developers to use, and we work agile minimising documentation, maximising communication and responding to rapidly changing requirements, and much of the quality control is via team skills building and peer review, how can I make off-shoring work on our main line development?