Are Global Software Teams Successful?

1
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Product delivery schedule
• Development cost
• Product innovation
• Bugs in product

2
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Product delivery schedule?
• Follow the sun
• Estimated 20-30 time-to-market reduction for
  follow the sun projects.
• 58 of FTS projects make no difference
• Follow the sun represents a substantial
  communication and coordination challenge
• Number of hand offs
• Every hand off includes preparing the object to
  be understood by a colleague complete with
  textual explanations
• Vice-versa, the receiver must understand where to
  pick up the tasks
• True follow the sun with daily hand offs is very
  difficult for design, particular concepts,
  innovative, or radical design.
• Difficulties in interpreting someone else program
  (like unfinished painting)
• Exceptions are global help desk and bug fixing

3
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Were development costs reduced?
• Yes
• The cost of developing one unit of software
  (function point) in India was 26 of the cost in
  the US
• Of the projects that had at least one site in an
  emerging economy 57 reported reduced development
  costs for that site or for the project overall.
• Western European software development costs are
  roughly about the same in the US

4
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Was the Product Innovative?
• How does one measure the relative innovativeness
  of global software teams
• Task enhancement the degree to which software
  companies are transferring more of their tasks to
  these remote global sites particularly high
  level, value-added tasks.
• 69 of the cases, the distant site or sites were
  either assuming high-level design responsibility
  or full product ownership.
• 47 of the cases, GST were working on companys
  flagship product or one of its primary products

5
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Was the product relatively free of bugs?
• Home countrys development staff controls the
  testing
• Headquarters' maintain standards
• E.g. Orchestral technologies
• standards will be higher in global teams
• first product in the company that did not
  require a subsequent bug release
• Attributed to rigorous development methodology

6
Are Global Software Teams Successful?

• Growth of sites outside the home country?
• Software companies will not grow or expand their
  remote sites (and global teams) unless they think
  that it is worthwhile.
• Product ownership will not be transferred to
  remote sites if they have not been unsuccessful
• More global software teams will not be formed if
  they are not successful
• It is possible for a GST, when well managed, to
  reduce development cycle time, lower costs,
  improve quality, and foster innovation.
• Can all the four be achieved at the same time?

7
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Global software teams are risky management
  propositions?
• Burden of distance
• Time zone
• Cross-cultural differences
• Lack of communication richness
• etc

8
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Dispersion

30
Probability of communication at least once a week
0
100
Separation distance (in meters)
9
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Dispersion
• Shorter project timeliness result from shorter
  communications lines and the ability to give
  feedback quickly
• Co-location team usually increases trust and
  reduces miscommunication
• Co-located teams demands less management support
• Physical barriers reduce the amount of
  communications

10
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Dispersion
• Advantages
• Informal oral communication may promote
  sloppiness in documentation and procedure.
• Co-location are tied to the age-old of continuum
  of centralization and decentralization of
  organizations.
• Local responsiveness to customer?
• Innovation of smaller, more independent groups

11
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Breakdown of traditional Control Coordination
  mechanisms
• Coordination is the act of integrating each task
  and organizational unit so that it contributes to
  the overall objective
• Control is the process of adhering to goals or
  policies or standards
• As the interdependency between teams increases,
  the need for coordination increases

12
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams
Pooled Coordination teams share their resources,
such as office space or computer
networks. Sequential Coordination the output
of one team is used as an input by another.
Reciprocal Coordination teams pass their work
back and forth as they add value to it, as in
follow-the-sun
A
B
A
B
A
B
Coordination costs increases as interdependency
increases
13
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• The loss of communication richness
• Any task requiring intensive cooperation requires
  more communication the richer the better
• GST always wants a richer medium
• A GST manager must regularly convey the team
  vision to all participating groups and cultures,
  in a way that will be understood.
• Less rich medium are sometimes very good to
  express emotions you probably will not like to
  show in a group.
• Writing skills and vocal skill are not same in
  many cultures.

14
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Loss of teamness
• Diversitys drawback
• Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous
• Loss of cohesion
• Successful teams are cohesive
• Cohesive leads to enhanced motivation, increased
  morale, greater productivity, harder work, etc.
• The team members help each other, complement each
  other, know each other strength and weakness.
• Cohesion is more difficult for cross-cultural
  teams
• Mistrust due to excessive stereotyping
• Lowered interpersonal attractiveness
• Languages problems etc.

15
The Five Centrifugal Forces of Global Software
Teams

• Loss of teamness
• Building trust takes time
• Distance is an impediment to building
  relationships of trust.
• - trust is the peculiar belief predicted not on
  evidence but on lack of contrary evidence
  (Gambetta)
• Disperse teams meet infrequently and they
  communicate primarily asynchronously
• Team size gets out of hand
• Global teams in multiple sites are generally
  larger per task than co-located teams.
• The fewer the team members, the fewer
  communication links needed, and the less the
  coordination needed.

16
Singapore vs. France

• Is the long-term strategy appropriate? Are the
  short-term tactical strategies the right sequence
  of activities to move the nation towards its
  long-term goals
• Have we identified the infrastructure required to
  support long term strategic initiatives?
• Is there a plan in place to ensure evolution of
  infrastructure as we implement tactical
  activities
• Can infrastructure development activities be
  combined with focus project that has direct
  value-added for the organizations?
• Given the pace of technology and knowledge change
  in the 1990s, are we recouping the cost of
  investments in infrastructure with in two-three
  years?
• Is transformational leadership required to enable
  successful change?

17

• Is project leadership at the right level in
  organization and if transformational leadership
  is required, is it present
• Who are the project champions? Do they have
  formal power/informal power, the personal
  characteristics and the leadership style required
  to ensure successful implementation?
• Are the major stakeholders involved
• Are project managers leaders able to effectively
  manage up, down, and across
• Are we focusing our attention on business
  benefits rather than IT implementation for the
  its own sake?
• Are we carefully identifying the information
  required to coordinate, control and continuously
  improve process over time?