Across the hall / Across the Globe Project Management: Challenges for globally distributed teams Vikas Sehgal Projistics San Jose, CA

2 Gartner says………  By % of professional and management tasks at Global 1000 companies will be by virtual teams.  By % of virtual teams will fail to meet strategic / operational objectives.

3  Why distributed teams?  Challenges  Risks  Possible approach  Case study – Lexware / Intuit Agenda

4 Vikas Sehgal  10 years experience working in distributed teams  Co-Founded Nagarro – an offshore software services company  Co-Founder and President of Projistics – a software suite of tools for managing project lifecycle.

5 Why distributed teams  Cost saving  Availability of talent  Mergers and acquisitions  Projects span across company boundaries (ex: Projects with remote partners or customers)

6 What you loose  Ad-hoc meetings  Water cooler discussions  Radio corridor  Whiteboard  Socializing

7 Challenges  Distance  Communication costs  Connectivity  Reduced face-to-face interaction  Different time zones  Cultural  Language

8 Project Risks  Inaccurate progress tracking  Team conflict – more personal than professional  Lack of trust  Technology and tools to choose  Security / IPR

9 More Project Risks  Creating a shared sense of purpose / goal / team spirit  Build vision through leadership  Sense of community / identity  Cannot get emotional tone in communications

10 Case Study – Lexware / Intuit  Project Objective: Help Lexware develop the German version of QuickBooks  Locations: – San Jose, CA – Edmonton, Canada – Freiburg, Germany – New Delhi, India

11 Lexware - challenges  Quickbooks source code – more than 2 GB  Language – German variables, comments  Time zone – working across 4 different time zones

12 Communication  Define your communication channels  Define frequency of communication  Maintain minutes of the meetings, action item lists, red flags

13 Intuit,CanadaLexware, Germany Nagarro, GermanyNagarro,India UK-Canada codebaseUK-Canada codebase + Ger/Aus codebase Domain knowledge transfer: Ger/Aus tax systems, Euro rules, VAT Requirements USD Code update / sync baselines Initial/basic functional queriesDay-to-day functional queries Requirements Development Bugs, QA Day-to-day technical queriesEscalated technical queriesDay-to-day technical queries Bug assignment Patches/bug fixes Weekly status updates Billing, Satisfaction Test plans Test plan review Test results Timesheets Issue resolution, escalation QuickBooks 2003 (released July, 2002)

14 Time zone  The nightmare of scheduling a conference call with people in four different time zones.  Overlapping workdays  Collaborative time is reduced by a union of holidays

15 Business Processes

16 Micromanage Locally  Don’t even try to micro-manage remotely  Distributed teams need distributed project management  Single, responsible point of contact at each location

17 Share Knowledge  Build knowledge repositories  Make them easily available  Make sure everyone contributes

18 IM  Instant communication – saves time  Faster than  Less intrusive than phone  IM and security – enterprise IM solutions

19 Intranet/Extranet/EverythingNet  Browser is king  All information available through Intranet / Extranet  Firewall issues / VPN / Security  Knowledge bases accessible through the Intranet

20 Project Methodology  Choose the methodology wisely  Waterfall – good for large projects with well-defined goals  Rapid prototyping (Evolutionary Lifecycle) – good for rapidly changing requirements  Spiral – good for risk minimization

21 Manage Change  Define policies / procedures to manage change  Document every change  Evaluate change and define impact of the change and configuration items affected  Approval and workflow process  Automatic task creation and linked back to change

22 Risk Management and Mitigation  What Risk ???  Identify risks early on in the project  Devise mitigation plans  Review risks during the project based on current state of project

23 Deliverable Management  Use a result oriented approach  Identify clearly definable and verifiable deliverables  Communicate deadline slippages well in advance  Document everything

24 Tools  Use integrated solutions – Workflow for business process automation – Task management and prioritization – Change Management – Risk Management – Issue tracking and automatic routing – Customizable – Delegated administration

25 Questions? Across the hall / Across the Globe Project Management: Challenges for globally distributed teams Vikas Sehgal Projistics San Jose, CA