“Body Shopping”

Sandeep in conversation with Lakshmi Pratury

Let the touch-tweeting begin

5 Rules for Hiring Offshore Teams

School uses Monsoon software to help autistic children

Sandeep’s TED India Recap

Contractually obligated to get you laid

And, here are my 5 favorite posts from the past few years:

Time to Retire the Flat World Metaphor

Name Change: Monsoon Company

Outsourcing is Dead

Look for No

Know the True Cost of Labor

A few years ago, I coined the following statement to encapsulate one of the many things I love about virtual work:

You work. They sleep. Reverse. Repeat.

When global teams work efficiently, they can move with a speed that is impossible for a single-office team to match, no matter how much Blue Bottle coffee is involved.   After cost, it is the single biggest advantage of global work.

Yet, for the past decade, most literature on global collaboration has focused on the negative aspects of 24-hour work cycles.  The party line has been that time zones are a handicap we must overcome, and global teams will always struggle to manage communication, iterate quickly, handle disconnects, and clarify scope.

This is with good reason.  Few global firms have reached a level of efficiency where they reap the advantages of 24-hour work cycles.  Inevitably, the baton is  fumbled, dropped, and stabbed into the hearts of unwitting customers.

Passing the baton is a discipline and an art form.  It is what separates talented teams from stellar performers.  It is a ninja-level skill, and after 10 years, many teams are beginning to show us what is possible when the baton is passed smoothly, day ‘n’ nite.

Because of how important the baton-passing process is, my statement actually needs to be revised:

You work. They sleep.  Everyone talks.  Reverse. Repeat.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be demonstrating how Monsoon handles baton-passing for design and development.  

Until then, our India office is almost awake, which means it’s time for everyone to talk.

However, (offshore) software development has institutionalized non-iterative ways of doing things. You CAN come up with a definitive requirements document that CAN be turned into a definitive design document that CAN be turned into perfect code, which in turn makes users ecstatic! Couldn’t be further from the truth.

Definitely. But how do you organize a successful, iterative process with an offshore team? Time & geography are the obvious challenges. But, the problem goes much deeper than that. It is about mindset. And, although your business development guy won’t admit it, his offshore team doesn’t have it.

Most offshore developers have never really been included in a brainstorming session or a scoping process – their job is about one thing: take requirements and churn out code. Now, we need them to learn to iterate. They haven’t even spent time scoping!

Successful iteration isn’t about reworking your code 14 times a month. When most offshore firms talk about iteration, what they really mean is that their project managers are going to rewrite requirements over and over again, guiding their developers through a series of protracted, stressful waterfall processes until everyone loses their mind.

14 waterfalls don’t make a river. They just make a lot of noise.

When we first started embracing iterative development 4 years ago, it just meant that we didn’t sleep. We would work with the client during the day, stay up with our team to communicate scope at night, and then get up early to synch everyone up and ‘iterate’ in the morning. Think that’s scalable? Ask my wife.

No, true iteration requires a reworking of the entire offshoring process. More on this soon.

Depending on the context, she can find this funny (usually…ummm, nope).

Manish Vij posts an extensive list of these bastardized English phrases, which he calls Bombayisms. Here are a few of the ones I’m familiar with (okay, I’ve never heard anyone use “rape for a year”)

beat yourself (beat yourself up)
issues (children)
kindly (please)
land up (arrive)
passed out (graduated)
rape for a year (to date, promise to marry and dump)
bang behind (directly behind)
blow (blow up)
cent per cent (a hundred percent)
ironical (ironic)
do the needful (do what’s needed)
see the full list