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How Do You Maintain Long-Distance Projects?
overseer asks: "Recently, I've been working with an increasing number of overseas workers. Regardless of where they are located, or how well they are trained, the common problem that we have is communication across timezones. In a typical 9-6:30 day, none of my working hours overlaps with those of my coworkers in Europe and Asia. If I come in early, or stay late, I can call one or the other but the truth of the matter is that most of my communication is done through email, and results in (at best) a 15 hour turnaround time for even the smallest question. This is OK for large, slow moving projects, but when we are working on 'Now' problems, or doing detail work, it makes it very hard to communicate. It also makes casual communication or constructive feedback next to impossible. Several of my coworkers have adapted by working extended hours, or by taking their work home with them -- this is something that I'd like to avoid. What methods have Slashdot readers found/created to get around the problem of working in multiple timezones?"
I work (code, manage) on several distributed teams. Our saving grace is a shared standard of coding conduct. Everyone (EVERYONE) is held to the standards, regardless of whether they're in India, or whether they wrote the guidelines. Secondary lesson: Create complete guidelines, by which you're willing to live or die.
Don't outsource overseas when timing and collaboration are a primary concern. In the world of in house custom app development, any money saved on over seas outsourcing labor will be lost in delays, communication break downs, and lack of understanding. Not saying that developers overseas are worse, just that when you are rebuilding an invoicing system it is much easier if you can talk to the accounting/leasing departments directly and they can tell you immediately if something breaks.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Not to sound like Laurence Fishburne, but I have encountered the problem you are after and took a long step toward mitigating it by shifting my hours to 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This still gives me 6 hours working overlap with the 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. crowd and gives me two hours overlap in which I can have AIM chats, fast turn around e-mail and even phone calls with the our partners in the U.K. and then relate these to the rest of my team during the remainder of the day.
Of additional merit is that traffic from at 5:30 a.m. is a tiny fraction of 7:30. And that getting off at 3:00(ish) means the gym at my apartments is empty and all the daytime places (banks, Post Office, and specialty shops) are all open and uncrowded.
It's worth the effort to shift, and the quiet time in the morning at work is tremendously productive.
You flip a coin (or play online game to determine winner, whatever floats your boat), loser team goes on permanent third shift in their time zone, meaning same or overlapping time with the other team. Besides that, there is no good fix for this problem. You can't have it both ways unless there's an actual change in someone's working arrangement. I think this is basic relativity we are staring at. If you can beat relativity, you won't need to be working coding on podunk projects....
Then, figure out which moron thought it was a good idea to outsource half the work, and fire them, or get them fired. You would think by now smart people would have figured out this globalization scam is a congame.
Simply because you are working with others in different time zones doesn't mean you have to work longer. All you need to do is shift your start or end time. Instead of working 9-5 (don't we all wish) work 6-2 or 12-8. And have one or two persons in the other time zone similiarly shift a few hours. This will allow you to overlap with the other people.
A lot of industries do this. Take for example stock brokers on the west coast. They have to be in their office when the stock markets open on the east coast. So, they tend to be in by 5am and out by 1pm. They don't work longer hours because of it, but just modify their work day. Now, you shouldn't have to do this everyday you could do one or two days a week, while someone else does the other days. That way someone can pass off information and no one is working excessive hours.
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If you've got one of those tight budgets, you could even ship yourself off to India. It'd be cheaper to live there, so you could even take a voluntary pay cut!
Speaking as an American consultant who is in Bangalore trying to save an at-risk project, I think that's the way to go.
Email and phone lines are ridiculously low bandwidth compared with being in the same room eight hours a day. To make good software, you need the developers in the same place as the people who know what needs to get made. I don't care whether that's in New York, Bulgaria, Bangalore, or Alabama, but it has to happen.