Project Management

Integrating Offshore Centers and the Head Office

Vimal is the CEO of mCalibre Technologies in New Delhi, India.

This article is excerpted from the author’s book Leading and Motivating Global Teams: Integrating Offshore Centers and the Head Office published by CRC Press – USA (Taylor and Francis Group).

A large number of global companies are running offshore centers in distant countries. These companies have augmented project teams in their global head office (HO) with offshore center (OC) teams. The projects are distributed across both locations, with the offshore center managers and HO managers leading the project teams to deliver on objectives.

(Note: I have used the “manager” as a generic term that can imply managers at various levels of the management hierarchy, like project manager, senior project manager, engineering director, senior engineering director, etc.)

In the absence of an offshore center, the HO managers lead large projects with large direct-reporting teams. As time progresses, more projects with larger team sizes are offshored because of lower costs. Initially, managers in the HO control the offshore center project teams working on their globally distributed projects. As the project size and team increase, the offshore center components are managed by local managers. Over a period of time, the OC teams and managers gain experience in executing projects. The company then decides that some of its projects will be executed totally within the…


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