Are there any risks in offshoring? That’s the first questions that comes to my mind when people are afraid of moving work offshore. I think that many ‘risks’ are just perceived (how many things that you were afraid of in your life really happened?). I also believe that this perception can be altered and that certain steps can be taken to reduce the (perceived) risk.
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When people across cultures collaborate, there’s always an influence of culture on the communication. When they’re working distributed across the globe, there are other factors that can influence communication. What I always find striking is that people assume there are ‘more’ or ‘less’ cultural differences between one country or another. I always wonder whether it’s true and whether it matters.
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I just read a very interesting blog post on managing Indian teams, written by Dutch culture trainer Frank Garten. His article starts with a phrase that I indeed have heard many times:
“People from India always deliver late, and when a project is delayed, they will never tell you but rather say everything is fine”.
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We recently launched our new eBook about offshoring and nearshoring : How to Overcome Cultural differences when Managing Offshore or Nearshore teams
In the world of offshoring and global collaboration, there is no topic that is more widely discussed that cultural differences. Or maybe there is one: communication. People with experience in managing remote teams often cite communication as their biggest challenge. But what is communication? And if communication is the problem, where do we start the solution? In most cases, one of the best starting point is ‘culture’ (the others being people and process, which we describe in our other books).
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Many methods for product quality improvement start by investigating the problems, and then working their way back to the point where the problem started. For instance audits and Root Cause Analysis work this way. But what if you could prevent problems from happening, by building an understanding what drives quality, thus enabling to take action before problems actually occur?
The series on “What Drives Quality” describes both technical activities and supporting quality activities. Previous articles explored what Senior Management and Operational Management do to ensure that quality software products are delivered to customers. This article describes how Project Management drives quality.
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