PrestigeSoft PrestigeSoft is $7m US-based company Within the PrestigeSoft’s niche, time-to- market is very critical Entire programming unit in Sofia,

PrestigeSoft

PrestigeSoft is $7m US-based company Within the PrestigeSoft’s niche, time-to-

market is very critical Entire programming unit in Sofia,

Bulgaria Develops low-end, low-cost consumer

software packages Most projects are completed on time for

market

PrestigeSoft

Success factors Learn how to work with each other The products themselves are very small Ability to take advantage of the ten-hour

time difference between the US and Bulgaria for rapid iterations

Orchestral Technologies

A major US-based company that specializes in graphical software

Have joint venture in Moscow, Russia Moscow staff perform the traditional job

of offshore programming. Write codes from spec and develops small

components for larger products in California Expanded to St. Petersburg

Orchestral Technology

Business Developments The Russian site was tasked to developed a large

(one million lines of code) brand new product (release 1.0)

A global team was lunched into this large scale collaborative project with sites

St. Petersburg (Russia), California (headquarters), Denver (US, consultant), Regina (Canada).

Design was shared by California and Moscow Code was shipped back and forth (across 11 time

zone) everyday during the coding phase


Factors Software configuration team was set up at each site A policy was instituted whereby code would lock up

at 8pm at either California or Russian offices and nothing further could be added to it.

Transfer of the codes after an hour by satellite to the other team

Programmers coordinate code sharing via detailed, formalized notes to each other

Programmers don’t work on exactly same code


Result Completed on time At a lower cost No immediate follow-up bug release Acquired Software African development

site was added to the setup

IBM Global Development

Five-site, Five-country, development project with the round-the-clock aspirations

The project involved developing small components for the IBM VisualAge application development environment

The idea was to develop many small components called – beans, where each bean will be developed rapidly

Fatware vs. component-based beans

The IBM JavaBeans was envisioned to be plugged together and used to develop functional business applications


Organization Structure Multi-sites with four equal size units of 31

professionals Joint venture of Tsinghua University in Beijin, China IBM Tata joint venture in Bangalore, India, later

wholly owned IBM Global services – India. IBM joint venture firm with the institute of Computer

Science in Minsk, Balarus, and Privately owned SWH Group in Riga, Latvia.

Why 31 developers at each site?


Phalanx “Close formation of specimen carrying

overlapping shields” A close-knit or compact body of people,

especially, one unified by a common goal” Example, a bone of a finger.


IBM Phalanx (Team Structure) In each site there where five core specialist area of

five people each in such areas The vision was to create a reusable team structure The central group is in Settle, US with 24-person to:

Initiate, review, allocate, and provide specialized services

The Settle team played the dual role of both architect and users.

Project management and other services were also centralized in the US site including QA and user interface specialists.

Beijing:Beijing:Spin-off with Tsinghua Spin-off with Tsinghua

UniversityUniversity

Beijing:Beijing:Spin-off with Tsinghua Spin-off with Tsinghua

UniversityUniversity

HQHQRaleigh, North Carolina,Raleigh, North Carolina,

USAUSA

HQHQRaleigh, North Carolina,Raleigh, North Carolina,

USAUSA

Minsk:Minsk:Joint venture with Inst. of C.S.Joint venture with Inst. of C.S.

Minsk:Minsk:Joint venture with Inst. of C.S.Joint venture with Inst. of C.S.

Bangalore:Bangalore:Joint venture with Joint venture with TataTata

Bangalore:Bangalore:Joint venture with Joint venture with TataTata

Riga:Riga:SWH GroupSWH Group

Riga:Riga:SWH GroupSWH Group

Source: Erran Carmel

JavaBeans project


Development Method Follow-the-Sun

Product specification and development was to be iterative, until completion

US command unit would set up a work specification for each JavaBean and assigned it to an offshore site, to be turn into code by the end of the day and ship it back to the US for successive rounds of review and feedback

After reviewing and testing the code the US unit would specify new changes and send those back across the ocean for another iteration

This was to done on daily bases


Challenges and Outcome Daily turn around was too hard to achieve on daily

bases for both sides Changed to two code drops from each remote site

per week About half a dozen beans were assigned to each site So while Beijing is waiting for the review and

feedback on component #1, they worked on beans #2..#6.

At steady state, the project was juggling about two dozen beans between the hub and the remote sites


Changes in Team Structure The original project champion (US-based) left in mid 1997. The new project manager saw the entire project in a

different way. That: A true global development should not be strongly centralized

but more more of a network organization structure In which global partners coordinate more activities among

themselves rather than through a central unit A large control unit in the US defeats the purpose of a low-

cost development project

Changes The US command unit was moved from Settle to

IBM development center in Raleigh, North Carolina Reduced from 24 people to only 3 (Global

manager, budget officer and a chief technical architect)

US site is now a project management unit responsible for oversight and some review function

With the new structure the non-US sites began to initiate the projects


Results and Challenges The US hub’s overall workload was reduced

significantly The Minsk site became responsible for the

acceptance testing and integration for all beans (in addition to some of its own development)

Hub delegate tasks to other sites, and follow-the-sun-was de-emphasized and no longer practical. Occasionally time zone advantages still took

place.


Result and challenges Simultaneous development in five nations with

inexperienced partners. Project objective was to build leading –edge

technology (i.e. software components) while experimenting with a new management model

JavaBeans are small components that are easier to define and for which the development time is short.

Once finished it is able to communicate with other beans.

If too many beans are been developed at the same time integration and coordination could become a problem


Global Development Justifications Compelling reason was to take advantage of low cost

development centers $8,000-$15,000/programmer/year 10% of the cost in US Plus travel costs, etc.

To reduce time to Market using follow-the-sun Estimated 35% cycle time reduction before the project

structure changed Nevertheless, beans development allows for very rapid

development

Is the global development project a fruitful project?

IBM Global Development Hidden Goal

Cost and time-to-market for this project were not the only strategic drivers of the IBM JavaBeans project

IBM was seeking a strong presences in all of these emerging markets in order to develop a strong base of developers who have experience working with IBM on important projects.

This would allow IBM to continue to expand in these markets

China, in particular, was an important market for IBM.

All five sites were connected via local internet provider to IBM global network.

Tools used include Lotus Notes and other collaborative technologies.

Largest American IT Professional Services Firms:

Massive offshore centers

Mexico, India, Argentina, Brazil, Latvia, Hungary, others

Calcutta, Korea

India, Canada, Brazil, Ireland, others

Manila

Are Global Software Teams Successful

Success is measure by four key parameters Was the product delivered on time? Was cost reduced? Was the product Innovative? Was the product relatively free of bugs and

according to specifications?


Was the product delivered on time Follow-the-sun development may not reduce

the cycle time for some projects True follow-the-sun requires a great amount

of communications and understanding True follow-the-sun with daily hand offs is

very difficult for programming, particularly programs involving any complexity

Works with customer support issues and bug fixing


Were development costs reduced? Travel and hotel Communication set up


Was the product innovative? Higher level design

Full ownership of key products

New initiatives from global site that later turn into a product


Was the product relatively free of bugs and according to specifications Home country often take responsibility for

testing Development standards are often higher

with global teams


Largest American Firms: Massive offshore centers

India About $400 million per year; 1800 people in 99

Mexico

Chennai India 700-1000 staff, launched in 2001, handling CAD/CAM, e-mail processing, and application development

GE

India

Exporting $6 billion in software services and products.

Producing about 50,000 new, well-trained software engineers per year



Israel

Exporting $15 billion in high-tech.

2000+ high-tech firms (larger than any nation except for USA).

More off-shore American R&D centers than any other nation.

40,000 IT professionals


Russia

Much smaller IT sector than the 3 I’s ranks 3rd in the world in scientists and engineers MNCs: Intel, Motorola , Sun, others Concentrated in, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk about 100-160 firms– none are large Wages 20%> India

Weaknesses: Lack of experience in managing the complexity of high level quality

processes, especially over distance. Poor English skills Access to Russia -- The need for visas. Expensive bandwidth Lack of quality certification firms Legal issues: software piracy, export and import, taxation, labor law,

company registration, currency control.


Ireland

Isle of localization and call centers

25000 software professionals with 3000 now coming out per year

Source: McCaffrey 99, Cochran 01

Are Global Software Teams Successful?

What is your predictions for Global

Software Teams?

Documents

PrestigeSoft PrestigeSoft is $7m US-based company Within the PrestigeSoft’s niche, time-to- market is very critical Entire programming unit in Sofia,