Three Solutions for Your Offshore Problem

Jesse Fewell is an author, coach, and trainer in the world of modern management. He founded the original PMI Agile Community of Practice, co-created the PMI-ACP® agile certification and co-authored the Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide®.

  PM Network  

The honeymoon is over. Looking to deliver more while spending less, just about every large company has engaged in distributed offshore projects over the last several years. But organizations are discovering that outsourcing carries more pain than was promised. More project managers are suffering from quality issues, language gaps and woefully unmet expectations. So what can we do? Here are some ways that Agile can help you overcome some of the side effects of running offshore projects:

1. Stop emailing and start collaborating.

Agile project management places a strong emphasis on collaborative colocated communication. Using written English can sometimes mitigate language issues, but email takes too long, and large documents can be stale the moment they’re sent. Instead, we need to augment project communications with modern online collaboration tools such as Google Docs, instant messaging, discussion boards and Skype. Some teams have always-on webcams so each side can see what’s happening on the other.

You can’t have successful projects without some kind of interaction. If time zones make that inconvenient, share the pain, with each worksite taking a turn after-hours. In short, work hard to communicate in real time. You’ll develop stronger collaboration, which will yield greater understanding and more innovative results.

2. Get bad news …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.