Project Management x Overseas Team

I have been working in IT since ’92 and saw a lot. It was a lot easier back then. Sometimes I feel like a medieval bricklayer watching the innovation/disruption applied to many buildings in Dubai.

As time passed by, in order to keep rolling, I needed to adapt myself and while doing so I did take notes of the challenges that I am sharing here with you. Hopefully, it could be of some help.

When we talk about overseas teams, there are many published articles about behavior (please see the links at the end of this post), then I will talk about other elements that may impact the project planning with overseas teams that aren't usually mentioned: Timezone, Timeline, Holidays, Culture, Weather, Geography.

An overseas team is not an easy task to handle and it is more likely that you will face a scenario where you will need to manage teams housed in more than 2 continents. I did work on a project where I was based in London, handling the development team on the US West Coast and my UAT Team was in Mumbai. In another project, I have had team members in Sweden, India, the US, and several cells scattered in Brazil. I did handle more than 12 projects in a wide range of offshore team compositions then I would like to share some of the lessons learned here.

Project task distribution constraints on timeline and communications are well-known elements in this scenario. I will talk about something else that lurks in the shadows waiting, angry, for the project manager to land.

You may need to have in mind the project size. Shorter and smaller projects are easier to compensate for the traps that I am about to share. The recurrent meeting planned for 6 months and the cutover workshops planned way ahead may pose some challenges if the project manager does not pay attention to them.

Everything is about planning and I am here to share some thoughts on it.

TIME ZONES

Time zones seem to be an obvious choice but there are caveats

From time to time I do receive an invitation for a meeting at 03:00 AM or at my lunchtime. Time zone relates more to the context than pinpointing in a map. In a project, you may need to talk with many departments and sometimes you are not aware that some of the team members are from another country, valid for those awareness meetings where you are not aware of every stakeholder’s location.

Let’s go to the caveats.

I will share some of the oddities here that may have an impact:

There is the summertime. It used to be easier. There are countries that in one year they have it set and in the subsequent year, it does not apply. It is nightmarish handling it with all those uncertainties… as if the 2h variation (2 countries, 2 hemispheres) was not enough.

Pretty much like the GPS complaints, we may see issues on Google as well. Once Google Maps put the Sao Paulo time zone in an Island called Sao Paulo 4 hours earlier than the city of Sao Paulo. It was there for a few weeks (It is now fixed), but did have an impact on booked meetings.

Larger countries like the US with East and West Coasts will require more attention to the sliced time zone in use.?Multi-plant projects in the same country will demand this attention as well.

As said before. Longer projects may have more impact due to the summertime.

HOLIDAYS AND WORKING DAYS

Another straightforward subject… or not??

WEEKENDS. While the Western world has a standard, there are variances everywhere. If you are planning the timeline or sending your wingman overseas then you need to pay attention to the local constraints. The Muslim world observes the weekend on different days and it varies for different countries: While Yemen observes the weekend on Thursday and Friday, Afghanistan observes the weekend on Friday, meanwhile, Egypt observes the weekend on Friday and Saturday. There are also a few religions where their subjects are not allowed to work on Saturdays. In an all-inclusive world, these details matter more and more.

HOLIDAYS. In Great Britain, a holiday that falls on the weekend is moved to the next working way. The total of holidays is always the same. Elsewhere we may not see the same rule. The holidays in Brazil that fall on weekends do not have compensation. There are also labor laws that protect the employee OR perhaps would add a cost to the project. I am saying this because not all countries count double while working on Sundays.

Holiday concentration and the project. If I do recall well, late April is not a good period in the UK for a project due to the larger-than-average incidence of holidays. The larger part of the holidays in the UK falls in the first semester.?

Getting the picture. Yet it can get a bit more complicated.

Holidays in Brazil that fall on a Thursday may have what is locally called “bridge”, which means the company will not work on Friday as well. They are not formal and each company has its own rule. While all holidays in Great Britain are national ones, in Brazil there are holidays elected for each city. If you have a deployment plan in several cities, it may be worth paying attention to this subject.?It is worth also paying attention to the shifting holidays like a carnival that takes place 47 days before Easter.

There are also countries where they locally handle differently the holiday rules. Changes like non-mandatory are mandatory and overstayed bridges. Two different companies may have different rules. If you are working for a service provider implementing a software solution in the same city in Brazil, please double-check if both companies have the same Holiday Policy.

SUMMER VACATION. There are places like Sweden in which a few weeks of summer vacation are mandatory by law. Rules like Sweden mean that your project will need to have to consider it in order to avoid impact.

There are countries in which vacations are taken on a daily basis meanwhile there are others in which you may lose your resource for 2 to 4 weeks entirely – because it is mandatory to take longer breaks rather than split ones. This rule shifts a lot from country to country. There are places in which the holidays are negotiated with the employer (US) meanwhile there are others in which there is a law behind the scenes, therefore, a Project Manager cannot use the Steering committee to try to force a hand. Pay attention to the period of time AND especially the holiday backlog on your project team members.

Let’s say that you are at the end of the summer and during the requirement phase you lose your main key user because he did not take the Summer Holiday prior to the project.

PROJECT LIFE CYCLE

As expected, planning a project with an overseas team will require more attention. I can tell my own experience here. While leading a deployment in the UK, my development team was on the US West Coast and my testing team was in Mumbai. It meant that any bug would take in a best-case scenario a day for a retest. If the re-test has failed, then it was 2 days gap. In a 2 weeks delivery project, you may guess what was the impact.

In an SAP Rollout with three different continents, I did use to start at 04:00 AM and get out of the office by 21:00. It happened in a short period of time but it was required to sort out the communication issues. Those professionals who are the focal point concentrating the communications may need to plan their life to handle those exceptional periods.

By understanding the constraints and the rules, you will do just fine.

You may need to have in mind that some counties have not one-day holidays or bridged holidays, but whole weeks of impact. Carnival in Brazil in many regional areas is a lost week and so it is the Bathukamma in India.

Western standards like New Year and Xmas may not apply in a global project then half of your team will enjoy the new year and a couple of weeks after (Russia) another part of your team will take their own new year break. Planning accordingly considering the cultural constraints will help you to plan the Go Live and UAT avoiding the constraints or using them in your favor (like when a manufacturing plant needs to stop). The end of the year in a calendar or the End of the year as a Fiscal Year play the same rule. It changes and requires attention. Cross-country deliveries will require a lot of negotiation. Please have in mind that not always your internal customer is aware of overseas costumes nor culture.

CULTURE

I will talk briefly about behavior-related restrictions. Actually, I could write a book about the differences but this is a long article then I will mention only those that I believe could be a trap.

LOCATION. Concentrating support in one area of the world is the current trend. (after 27 years of IT, I did see many trends). In Rollout scenarios, the support team is stationed far from the operational heat. Sometimes it is worth bringing them on to see how critical the operation is. The same applies to the solutions architects. As a project manager, while planning your budget, it is not an indulgence but a must to plan those travels.

In a Belgium-based company, they brought their main solution architect to the site to learn local particularities and I must say that this company was one of the easiest to explain the mandatory legal changes from a guest country.

OPERATIONS. At another moment, a large company did have their manufacturing lines all split across many countries meanwhile I was in a plant that concentrated several operations into only one site. A glitch would face an immediate impact differently than the structure overseas. This particular issue did change entirely the IT deployment strategy.

WORKING HOURS. Some countries work 6 days in 7. Others often have 24/7 operations meanwhile another segment has a strict policy of halting operations at 17:00. I have had a French director that was stuck in a Building in Germany because he was working in a closed room and by 19:00 all the lights were switched off and he needed to find a security guard to let him out. Understanding the constraints of working hours and working days will help the project to happen as planned, especially if you have a DevOps deployment or a centralized overseas support team that uses to support only 5 days in 7 days of operations.

LOCAL CULTURE. There is another aspect of behavior that I will talk about in another article which is the impact of local culture on management. The local culture makes a total difference in a deployment. Those that did deploy projects in any combination of the US, Italy, Germany, China, India, Japan, or Brazil will know what I am talking about. Keep it short. Knowing your way through the local culture if you want to succeed. Do not underestimate the power of knowing the local language.

There are other countries that are yet to transition into a more open society. There are challenges regarding gender, the perception of alcohol usage, or even the impact of Ramadan on your team temporarily working overseas.

See the links below. They will explore a bit more about this subject.

GAIA, STANDARDS, AND INFRASTRUCTURE

MIND THE GAP.

Not everywhere is like the headquarters. I did have the opportunity to see golden-plated companies with branches set in a very different scenario of hardware, services, team, and/or infrastructure.

Each country has its own standards and IT culture. While you have a mobile signal anywhere in a country like the UK, you may not have it 15 km away from a big city in South America. The online culture may put traps on a solution that you may not find an easy workaround. A heavily structured project around video streaming would face trouble in having it available through a network with low latency.

STANDARDS. Nowadays there are constraints in handling Huawei equipment in some countries. A double-check on available material could avoid vendor issues. You may buy notebooks from France because they are cheaper to send to Bolivia but France does not use the QWERT standard keyboard.

INFRASTRUCTURE. Once I saw a whole industry deployment set the manufacturing plant around a rail-based logistic terminal but the country used to have an inverse proportion of 80% through road modal.

Networking, equipment, integrations, logistics, distances, and government policies. All these flavors pose a challenge to the team bored to death with standard rollouts.

GAIA Element. Weather conditions and natural disasters may have a very different scale in a project. Working on the US Tornado Alley or in a place that could have a hit during the Hurricane Season will require a better contingency plan.

CONCLUSION

You are likely to survive without considering it but would save a lot of discussions, presentations, and budget review if you have considered the caveats above.?

Links related to the subject

Project management working with on-site and offshore teams
https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/working-on-site-offshore-teams-7804


Compare Countries - Behavior
https://www.hofstede-insights.com/fi/product/compare-countries


Una espa?ola bloqueada y sin recursos en Dubái por el sistema de "kafala"
https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/mundo/una-espanola-bloqueada-y-sin-recursos-en-dubai-por-el-sistema-de-kafala/10001-4707775


gov.uk - Foreign travel advice
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice