Best Practices for Globally Dispersed Teams

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Best Practices for Globally Dispersed Teams

• Learnshare Sharing Conference
• Lionbridge TechnologiesOctober 13-14, 2005

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Agenda

• Objectives of Presentation
• Business Drivers for Offshoring
• How Offshoring looks in Learning Development
• Establishing What Work to Offshore
• Making the Work Work
• Building Relationships
• Effective Communication Methods
• Developing a Communication Context
• Ensuring Successful Completion of Work
• Impacts on Daily Lives of US Writers
• Two Scenarios
• Questions and Discussion

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Objectives of Presentation

• Recognize what tasks can be outsourced and how
  best to do it.
• Provide practical guidelines and tips for working
  successfully with off-shore colleagues.
• Discuss how the jobs of project team members will
  change.

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Business Drivers for Offshoring

• Offshoring is becoming a reality for our
  industry.
• What are the drivers?
• Lower costs
• Hourly rates
• Outsourcing non-critical internal functions
• Ability to scale for larger projects
• High volume of similar, repetitive, stable work
• Faster timeline requirements

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How Offshoring Works in E-Learning Development

• Offshoring at task level
• Has been successful - quickly
• Example Provide offshore vendor with completed
  storyboards, offshore vendor creates media assets
  and integrates into Flash final product.
• Offshoring entire projects is enabled by
• Access to content for discovery and research
• Access to client SME or lab proximity to product
  development team
• Engineering specifications
• Client contact depends on the project
• Can be US or India, depending on customer needs,
  preference, and experience with offshoring
• Many clients prefer to liaise with local project
  leads
• Project Manager
• Instructional designer

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Establishing What to Offshore

• Tasks
• Well defined,
• Stable
• Repeatable
• Significant in number
• Projects with
• Clear definition
• Process orientation
• Stable content
• Focused, decisive SMEs and stakeholders

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Sample Tasks That Can Be Offshored

• Storyboarding (assuming well-defined content and
  ID)
• Creating visual media assets (such as technical
  illustrations from photos)
• Source conversion (Example Frame to XML, print
  to electronic)
• Programming and production, including creating
  Flash, PDFs and .xml files
• Testing, troubleshooting of final files
• Authoring content

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Making the Work Work
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Know your offshore partner culture

• Communication styles
• Formal versus informal styles
• Process orientation
• Values and ethics

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India Overview

• Located in Southeast Asia and shares
  characteristics with Asian Culture
• Conflict avoidance
• Respect of family
• Strong belief in hierarchy
• Traditional gender roles
• Indians
• Are highly educated highly technical
• Speak British English
• Use titles when addressing colleagues
• Expect punctuality, though they may not practice
  it themselves
• Like to be polite No is impolite
• Overall are socially conservative

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Develop a Metalanguage for Communication

• Before engaging in cross-cultural exchange,
  create a meta-language for information
  communication
• Modes of communication vary in different cultures
  and different professions
• Create a construct to allow people to express
  decisions about communication and context of
  communication
• Discuss openly what works best

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Cultural Communication Context
Japanese
Chinese
Arab
Indian
Greek
Mexican
Spanish
HIGHCOMMUNICATIONCONTEXT
Italian
French
French Canadian
British
English Canadian
American
Scandinavian
German
German-Swiss
LOW COMMUNICATION CONTEXT
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Cultural Context Explained

• High Context Cultures - India
• Reliance upon friends, associates, family
• No communication is considered in isolation
• Reliance upon protocol and structure for meaning
• Low velocity decision-making
• Low Context Cultures U.S.
• Reliance upon facts, independent of source
• Context is the message
• Concise, almost cryptic phrasing
• High velocity messages with little interference

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Build Relationships

• Relationship development is the key to success
  (especially in high-context cultures).
• If possible, establish face-to-face meetings
• Video conferencing
• Exchange personal information
• Indians talk about families, religion, politics
  at work
• Exchange photographs (snaps)
• Find what you have in common and talk about it
  every time
• Make small talk before you start to talk about
  work
• Building the relationship establishes trust
• Sometimes considered more important than
  professional experience
• Opinionated and well-informed discussions build
  bridges faster

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Effective Communication Methods

• E-mail
• When everything is written comprehension improves
• Follow up to ensure the e-mail was received and
  understood
• Instant messaging
• Great for quick questions
• Use for 1-2 sentence answers or quick
  clarification
• Phone (cell phone)
• Use to talk through issues or discuss approaches
• Accents can be difficult to understand
• Land lines can drop the connection
• Video conferencing
• Faxes are considered unimportant

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Effective Collaboration Strategies

• Internal kickoff call
• Get to know each other
• Establish roles and responsibilities
• Set expectations for collaboration and project
• Regular meetings
• Discuss progress and issues
• Give the India team direct contact with the
  client if it makes sense
• People exchange
• Travel as schedule and project costs allow
• For critical projects
• Can be easier for US residents to get visas to
  travel to India than the reverse
• Others?

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Ensuring Successful Completion of Work

• Provide instructions to ensure success
• Be specific and detailed
• Use style guides, standards, and guidelines
• Format instructions clearly, using bullets,
  headings, etc.
• Format instructions like a checklist
• Send examples or screenshots
• Do not assume anything or leave anything unsaid
• Explain abbreviations and avoid jargon
• Overcommunicate
• Touch base often
• Avoid yes/no questions use probing questions
  instead
• Example Tell me what the obstacles were on the
  assignment to convert the files to XML rather
  than How did the job go for you?
• Provide written feedback

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Positive Impact on Daily Lives of US Teams

• Team members can
• Focus on other aspects of their work
• Product discovery, deliverable design, content
  architecture, strategic planning
• Develop skills such as project management, team
  management, remote team coordination, account
  management, etc
• Spend more time with client SMEs
• Accomplish more work in less time drive tighter
  schedules
• Ability to get work done overnight
• Learn a new culture
• Travel internationally to work with teammates
• Others?

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Other Impacts on Daily Lives of US Teams

• Initial investment in training Indian colleagues
  remote training can be challenging
• High turnover is a fact in India (all businesses)
• Communication difficulties all surmountable
• Roles need to change to accommodate incorporating
  an offshore contribution
• Can be challenging to arrange meetings
• Others?

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Scenario 1

• Project New software rollout training
• New accounting software is in development. Even
  though your ID and SMEs have time, you are
  considering offshoring the entire project. You
  have no media or systems resources available.
  You have a limited budget.
• Job pieces
• Content and instructional design
• Storyboarding
• Graphic illustration
• New content authoring
• SME interviews ongoing communication
• Editing/QA
• Attend and contribute to status meetings
• On-site client meetings
• Production of final deliverables
• What part of this job be outsourced?

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Scenario 2

• Issues with Software Training Authored in India
• The new course was technically accurate, but
  audio, although grammatically and technically
  correct, sounds overly formal and stilted.
• Sporadic response to e-mail communication.
• Feedback provided by SMEs not implemented as
  expected
• How would you correct the situation and improve
  the work coming out of India?

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Summary

• E-learning tasks can be successfully offshored
• Initial investment in process, training and
  relationships is critical
• All issues are resolvable

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Questions?
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Thank you!

• Wendy Golden Farrell
• Lionbridge Technologies
• Wendy_golden_at_lionbridge.com