Shield: Product Development in a Distributed Team

INS561

Shield: Product Development in a Distributed Team

Winner

“Human Resource Management/Organisational Behaviour” European Case Clearing House Award 2008

Introduction

Howard Chang sat in front of his computer, his nervous eyes darting between the screen and the buildings outside his Los Angeles office window. The next morning, this well-respected project manager at Infotech, a California-based manufacturer of office equipment, would have to face his new boss and explain why the software project he was managing—code-named Shield—was veering off course. The success of the software’s recent pilot was taking a back seat to problems with the development team, which comprised two groups, one in Los Angeles and another in Bangalore, India. The next day he was due to present potential solutions to these organizational problems, which, if left unresolved, could sink the entire project.
Howard’s desperate situation was in stark contrast to his initial days on the job just a few months earlier. This was the promotion he had been waiting for, and he was sure that being head of such a high-profile project within the firm would bode well for his advancing career. When he was promoted, Howard’s new boss, Mary Bell, had mentioned his experience with virtual teams as one of the main reasons he was offered the post. Shield, a soon-to-be commercialized suite of software components, was a major shift for Infotech, which was retooling itself from paper-based to paperless information systems.
On his first day in this new role, in late 1999, Howard had met with Mary, who outlined some of her expectations. She explained that Shield had been successfully piloted and that the next step was to begin working with early adopters who had shown interest in the software. She said it was a high-stakes project, and that the company was counting on him to oversee the smooth transition to commercialization. Shield, she explained, was also important for another, less obvious, reason: it was the first project within the company to be developed using outsourcing, in this case to a team of software developers in Bangalore.
“The board of directors is counting on outsourcing to be a major strategic advantage for us,” she explained, “and they are extremely committed to its success.”
Preparing for his new role, Howard asked one of Shield’s managers, Sun Ho, to write a brief report about Shield, a project that had begun in 1996. Sun Ho had recently stepped in as acting project manager after the sudden departure of Anil Singh, the former project manager, who had left to start his own business in India. The overview was quite complete but did not point to any specific problems.