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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?"
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.
Phone sex and cybering. Oh wait, long distance projects...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I have the fortune to have have a cool job where I have to coordinate efforts with people in both Asia and Europe. Europeans are going home when I come to work, and the Asians are just getting there when I'm leaving work. And they're just starting when I go to bed.
Most of my work with them can be handled via e-mail. So, before I go to ged, I check my work email and respond to issues in Asia so they don't have to wait a day to get a response. I'm not an early bird, but I try to do the same in the morning before leaving for work.
My boss knows I deal with things this way and realizes that I may be stuck at home dealing with a Europe-issue and will be late into the office, or that I might have been up late for the same reason. So everyone's fairly flexible about these things.
Of course, I don't mind taking my work home. I find that even if I'm going to bed, the people in foreign offices are more relaxed when they get an immediate response to a problem e-mail, even if I'm just saying, "got your message and I'll take care of it first thing in my morning".
Also, I got xearth for windows and put it on my computer in the Mercatur view, with labels set on our foreign offices. It helps me "feel" for when people are in their days.
but if you have projects where you intermittently (say for a month) have to get more instantaneous feedback, shouldn't each team adjust its working hours? Say you get the afternoon off, but you work in the evening with a dinner break. To make this easier on everybody, swap it around so they have to do the same.
Don't know if you have that kind of power to change the working hours in the day, but for a short period of time, I think it would work pretty well.
Well, I personally relocated all my coworkers workspaces to within 20 meters of my office. That way, we're all in the same timezone. The drawback, of course, is that I can no longer blame 15-hour turnarounds for the smallest questions on time-differences or language barriers. I have managed to downplay that drawback by using nerf-guns to instigate pseudo-warlike hostilities in nearby carbon-based lifeforms.
Seriously, a 15-hour latency seems like it would cost more than paying someone a first-world wage to be in the same timezone as you. The option I propose is 'consolidate locations'. 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!
Outsource YOUR position to the same Indian company you outsourced everyone else's position to.
I drink to make other people interesting!
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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