MANAGING A GLOBAL TEAMGREG JAMES AT SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC..

Emanuele Garzelli |Abdulmonam Buargoub |Xiaojing Tang(Myra)Vishal Sah | Michele Di Francesco | Ruchika Aggarwal

Case Overview• Brief Introduction of Sun Microsystems • Brief Contextualization of the problem

Root Cause Analysis

Next Action of James

Conclusion and lessons learned

Content

Overview

• Provides companies with complete IT solutions, such as hardware, software, storages and servicesSun Microsystems

• TIC acts as HS’s Holding’s agent to communicate directly with suppliers like Sun.

TIC• An American

company active in banking services.

HS Holding

Sun Microsystems Teams in charge for HS Holding covering different time zones

USA: 11 FTE: HQ, Technical Support Team, Product Technical Support Team

France: 7 FTE: Technical Support, Business Development. India: 16 FTE: Technical

Support, Coding, Engineering

UAE: 11 FTE: Engineering, Project Management

On Sunday night 23.30 US time (12.00 Mumbai time), HS holding banking system went down for 2 hours. Sun Microsystems was not able to promptly respond to the incident and the following business disruption was so intense that HS holding is threatening a lawsuit against Sun Microsystems.

Consequences to Sun Microsystems• Risk of being lawsuited and pay damages to HS Holding• Request to reimburse $300K paid annually by HS Holding as premium to reiceve 24/7

assistance.• Brand image deterioration• Breach of contract (potential in case problem happens again)

The Incident

Ticket was put in the wrong

queing system

India team failed to reach

on call manager

India team didn’t escalate the incident to

US supervisors

India team was not able to contact HS Holding

contact because wrong number was in the phone

number register

Error in the design of the ticketing system

Use of the wrong communication procedure

India team doesn’t want to call US supervisor because they heard him considering them not competent

Events

Root Causes

US team didn’t update phone number of customer contact

Incident

Timeline of the incident

Mon.12.00, IST

Sun.23,30, PST

Mon,14,00, IST

Mon.01,30, PST

Root Cause Analysis

Didn’t escalate to Nick as India team believes Nick insulted Indian Competence

Nick(App Support Engineer)

U.S.

Mumbai

Rahul(Support Engineer)

Nick didn’t update contact detail when HS Holding person in charge was replaced by a new colleague.

Person in chargeHS

Holding

India team tried to solve the incident by itself but without the ticket it was impossible to obtain HS Holding details so they contacted HS Holding person in charge but contact detail was not updatedU.S. Team

U.S.

Paged 3 Times using weekday procedure while still weekend in U.S

Jamal(Software Engineer)

Dubai

According to Praveen Queue Wrongly Programmed by Dubai

According to JamalMumbai is Responsible for Emergency

Power Distance

Individualism Masculiniy Uncertainity Avoidance

Long Term Orientation

Indulgence

40

91

6246

26

6868 71

43

86

6348

90

25

50

8077

4856

4051

26

Geert Hofstede ‘s Culture DimensionsUSA France UAE* India

USA team is not happy because French team gets many holidays. All teams do feel USA team gets many privileges and its the hardest and slowest to reach and respond.

Dubai manager doesn’t get along with India team because he is Pakistani, Dubai team is afraid about becoming a subgroup of India office.

French Team does’t like USA team because they earn 30% more even though they have same skills and duties of their US colleagues.

Indian team feels descriminated by USA team, they believe they only get boring and technical fires duties.

Role of cultural differencies

Source： https://geert-hofstede.com/united-states.html

Role of open work environment

Task Relationship

Cultures more relationship oriented

such as India and UAE do suffer open work

environment because of the lack of direct communicationUniversalis

m Particularism

Collaboration Galaxy

Core TeamGreg James

Global Manager

US

Robert ChanSales Account Manager US

Extended team

Nick ElliotApplication Support

Engineer US

Rahul AshokCustomer Service

Manager India Stakeholders

Stephen SpurlockGlobal Vice President

US

Ahmed NazarCustomer Service

Manager UAE

JamalSoftware Engineer

UAE

TICFrench team

HS Holding

Error in the design of the ticketing

system

Wrong use of the procedure for the emergency calls

No direct communication: cultural misconception. Open Work environment

adaptation is not the same for each culture

Customer emergency contact not updated

Write new procedures with clear rules and responsibilities involving all department heads.

Diversify communication style on the base of different cultural dimensions.

James`s Next Action

Increase communication with UAE and India teams doing biz trips on monthly base

Rotate tasks through teams

Change conference call agenda giving priority to India and UAE teams who could not stay up too late because of the time gap.

Always be clear when dividing jobs, Better to rotate teams and responsabilities, Teams very far in distance should be visited often, Diverisify communication style on the base of culture, On fixed period base there should be live management meeting in

rotating locations

Lessons learned

Q&A?