Reference no: EM133303422

Question: What are the benefits for sponsor organizations according to the case study?

The Global Software Team: Jugaad Needed1

The Global Networks Company (GNC), headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, made its global footprint in India in 1994 by establishing a presence in Bangalore. Although mainly a sales support office, GNC grew name recognition from its contracts with India's government to help build nationwide networks. Not quite 20 years later, GNC decided to further invest in India and tapped a manager from the Boston office, Jim Notrika, to establish and then manage GNC's first global software centre in Mumbai.

Notrika had been with the firm several years, having worked his way up from software engineer to software centre manager-a position he'd held for eight months when he assumed responsibility for the new Mumbai centre. His employees were now split between the Boston and Mumbai, and he looked forward to seeing productivity from both locations.

Notrika's first set of decisions was about how to structure the Mumbai software centre facility, as well as how to coordinate the workflow between Mumbai and Boston. He decided that the Boston team would interface with customers-including all aspects of client engagement from presales to sales to implementation-and the Mumbai team would design and then develop the software. His plan was for the team in Boston to meet with clients (all of whom were based in the United States) and then communicate the outcome of the client meetings to the team in Mumbai. Allowing for the time zone difference, the Mumbai team would work on the project, communicate its progress, and raise any issues by the start of the next business day back in the United States.

Two elements drove Notrika's decisions about this work process: client involvement and team member expertise. Clients often demanded solutions quickly and wanted to be heavily involved in the products that evolved out of early presales meetings. In fact, some clients got so involved in the daily development that GNC referred to them as partners. By keeping the Boston group on the client-relationship side and the Mumbai group in development, each team could share insights within and between locations and stay focused on the work it was responsible for. Notrika anticipated that this division of work would be more efficient and thought it invited constant communication between team members in both locations.

Notrika also wanted the Mumbai facility to be different-he did not like the idea of using global offices solely for support of the Boston headquarters. And while recruiting talent, Notrika discovered that there was an immense resource pool of engineering talent in India. Realizing that the software engineers he employed in India were far more qualified than those working in Boston, he decided to limit the Boston team to client engagement and allow the Mumbai team to focus on the technical aspects of the project.

All Lawyered Up

The global software centre started out by successfully completing some minor projects and, in the beginning of 2013, was assigned to work on the implementation of a project for a large, prestigious law firm in the United States. During the first part of the project, Notrika's team designed and implemented a digital infrastructure of client records that served the eight offices in the firm's

system. That infrastructure created massive efficiency gains in automating the scheduling of client appointments and scheduling orders, streamlining generations of litigation, and improving client

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The next phase of the project was to integrate the law firm's wireless handheld devices as a data input source. Lawyers typically moved between three locations with clients (office, court, or jail) and wanted to have access to a client's full file regardless of the location-something the partners believed was essential to the organization's mission: 'Delivering high-quality legal services in a timely manner and exceeding client expectations by solving problems and creating value in unexpected ways."

But just a few months into this phase, things weren't going so well. Notrika had overheard unflattering comments in Boston about team members in Mumbai-different assumptions about the work process seemed to be the cause of the complaints. Work in India was behind schedule and workers there were starting to quit. Rivalry started to undermine the relationship between the engineers in Mumbai and those back in Boston. Although no one said anything to Notrika, while walking the hallways in Boston, he recognized that the team was showing signs of strain-especially when he overheard one engineer complain:

'Look, working with these guys in India, you have to assume deadlines won't be met. That's just the way they work over there, and they won't ever tell you any bad news so you can deal with it up front-I found another problem today that's going to add to the delay. When I do specifically ask about a problem, they either just don't answer, take forever to answer, change the subject, ask the same dang question 20 times, or talk about what is going right.'

Things got worse, and two weeks into the project launch, the team in Mumbai was indeed behind schedule. In addition, one after another, three of Notrika's most skilled Mumbai engineers quit. When the third resignation occurred, Notrika hopped on a plane for an emergency trip to Mumbai to analyse the situation. What he learned from the India-based team was confusing.

Old Box, New Data

The first thing Notrika noticed when he walked into the Mumbai office was a suggestion box on a table across from the row of cubicles. After a quick round of hellos, Notrika took the box to his office, opened it, and found four slips of paper containing the following typed messages:

Mr. Notrika needs to take charge of this team.

We are constantly accused of missing deadlines that we do not agree to. The U.S. people tell us that when they assign an active request in the United States, it should get done and that what we need to do is simple! We shouldn't need any more time-no agreement on that.

When the client starts to get demanding, the U.S. group just tells us to "work harder." They make us feel like us the "bad guys in India." We might be "bad guys," but we did all the good work. We make all the changes that make the client happy and we work hard. The Americans

know we are behind, they acknowledge it outright-but then create new active requests. It is downright disrespectful. They don't care that we work longer so we can take real time requests from their time zone.

This may be difficult to get used to, but in most firms in India, employees address a senior business person as sir or madam, not by Bob or Susan. The Boston people don't seem able to do that. I've worked in the United States, where reporting relationships exist, but for whatever reason, in our meetings, they seem to speak to everyone in very familiar terms.

Notrika's management style included the belief that some failure was essential for success. But he was concerned about what was going on with his globally situated team. He was surprised at some of the things the team complained about and appeared to be quitting over. Notrika reminded himself that he was an engineer, not a sociologist.