THE
OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING CHALLENGE
Even outsourcing
within the U.S. exacerbates the problems associated with
non-collocation of teams. All of the problems associated
with having the teams separated even by a few miles
become magnified. Just sending projects to different
areas of the U.S. creates communications problems due to
time differences between project team members.
Additionally, there can be problems created by work
styles and dialects spoken in different areas of the
U.S.
With world-wide
outsourcing, teams dispersed over many wide-spread areas
affect collocation even more. Two major factors affected
are:
- Significant
language and cultural differences
- Dramatic time
differences and lags, with teams dispersed over a
large number of time zones.
SIGNIFICANT
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
DIFFERENCES
PCommunication is
very critical to project execution. Language and cultural
interaction norms can seriously impact communication.
There are a number of classes and seminars, as well as
individual coaches, that can help someone to learn the
cultural norms of different cultures and help alleviate
some of these problems. It is especially important to
learn about cultural norms regarding the giving and
receiving of feedback. The PM needs to learn what works
and doesn't work.
A good way to
deal with cultural and language problems is to have a
trusted bilingual person on the team to keep the feedback
clear and flowing. Based on my personal experience, as
well as that of others, many people who normally speak a
different language are able to read and write more
proficiently than they understand spoken English. This
is, of course, fraught with all of the problems inherent
with written, as opposed to verbal, communications (i.e.
tone, quick feedback missing, etc).
One of the major
factors that keeps a team functioning is the cohesion
brought about in personal meetings. This means a
requirement for in-person meetings attended by at least
the PM and the remote teams. Ideally the entire team
should meet occasionally in one location. If in-person
team meetings aren't practical, at least some video
conference meetings should be held to improve this
cohesion. My personal experience is that video
conferencing isn't all that more helpful than phone
conferences for communicating status and project
concerns. But periodic video meetings can make the other
team members seem more "real".
DRAMATIC
AND MULTIPLE TIME DIFFERENCES
The next largest
problem with overseas outsourcing is the time differences
that make information flow slow down considerably.
Teleconference or video meetings must be timed to cover
the times available to all groups, but this can be a real
challenge if there are several teams spread out over
numerous time zones.
A twelve-hour
time difference can be very challenging. One suggestion
to help in this area is to alternate meeting times either
weekly or every few days so they can overlap conveniently
for the team. (ie change from morning to evening, then
evening to morning meetings). Another solution is to
select team locations in time zones that are more
convenient, such as an eight hour, or less, time
difference.
Time differences
generate a greater need for web based communications,
such as chat rooms and email. Some PMs even set up
special social chat rooms to handle human interactions in
a different way than normal project communications.
Normal communications are done via standard
email.
CAREFUL
TASK BREAKOUT
To minimize the
effects of communications requirements on schedule for
new product development projects, make sure that there is
very careful project task partitioning to reduce the
amount of communications required between remote team
members. The good practice of creating a number of
focused and hard deliverable checkpoints can be added to
this. These can act as reality checks and allow for quick
detection of communications problems among team
members.
LAST
THOUGHTS
IThere are a
number of reports indicating that the real cost of
outsoucing is yet to be calculated. The actual financial
cost and the time value of that cost due to product
introduction delays are hard to determine. Furthermore,
the human costs of the long days and nights required by
some project members are rarely taken into account. Due
to these costs, the jury still seems to be out as to the
effectiveness and best practises of offshore outsourcing,
but it seems here to stay in some form or another.
Offshoring will remain with us until the labor cost
differentials are narrowed in the future.
Even so, as with
all NPD projects, almost all of the standard project
management practices are required to keep fast-paced
projects moving towards completion. Offshoring creates a
need for greater emphasis on some of them.
THE
NEXT NEWSLETTER
In the next
issue, I will discuss some of the benefits and tradeoffs
in using Web based tools for project
management.
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