Shield: Product Development in a Distributed Team

Howard’s Investigation

Howard arranged to meet soon afterwards with the US team, which included nine engineers and four managers. He began the meeting by explaining that he understood that the team had requested that the project be brought completely in-house and was well on its way to doing so. He also explained upper management’s position on outsourcing, and asked that they be completely honest in answering his questions.
“So, this is your opportunity to explain what’s not working with the group in India,” he began. “My first question is, what is their skill level? Are they able to do the work?”
After a nervous silence, Juan, an engineer, spoke up, “Well, let’s just say they were not producing production-quality code. To be honest, I have no idea what they’re working on.”
Greg, another engineer, responded, “I’m going to have to disagree with Juan. I was amazed at how much the Indians knew about the code, and the entire project for that matter. They know this software inside out, and we’ve been remiss in ignoring them.”
Greg pointed out that, to his knowledge, he was the only US-based engineer from the current team to have been to India to work recently, and that his impressions of his Indian counterparts were extremely good. “They know the product better than we do,” he said.
Others in the room smirked and rolled their eyes. A colleague retorted, “Apparently they are working until 2 am and even 4 am. But on what?”
Other developers questioned the work practices in India. One developer voiced her hypothesis about why an Indian developer produced a flawed design document:

“Maybe Ravi’s not concentrating on one thing, or maybe he’s not focusing the way we do here. Maybe he doesn’t discuss it with others, maybe nobody played devil’s advocate when he was thinking about it or maybe he was just thinking and working by himself.”

The skepticism regarding the degree to which the remote site was engaged in the project ran deep. Bill, another developer, said,
“The Indian engineers want to make sure they have work to do, but they have less of a stake in the product, and are less concerned with the end product. How do they feel about things that fail?”
Mocking a perceived indifference on the part of the Indian team, he answered his own question:
“I don’t really care if this fails – I move on to another project.”
The very role of Indian engineers was questioned:
“Why should they give us their suggestions? They’re not paid to make suggestions; we are telling them what to execute, and that’s what they should do.”
“Let’s just say we can do this ourselves; the smaller the group the better, said another engineer.
“Exactly,” another chimed in. “That’s the problem. They’re 9,000 miles away, and there’s a 12-hour time difference. And frankly, I don’t know what’s on their mind. They may send me a 20-page document, and I’m so busy I can’t be bothered to read it.”
“So if you had a problem with the work done by your counterparts in India, how would you resolve it?” Howard asked. “What systems are in place for working together? Who would you go to?”
“We used to go to Randan,” said Juan, “but now that he’s gone, we don’t really hear much from the Indians.”
“So are you saying that distance and a lack of procedures are the main problems?” Howard asked. “And if we could fix that, you would be happy to work with the Indian developers?”
Again, the room filled with nervous silence.