Snow days, holidays and offshoring
Most of us have come to realize that Offshoring requires additional skills in planning and scheduling across time zones and geographies. What about Culture and Mother Nature?
Planners of an American client faced a unique challenge when they scheduled a field-trip to India last week, omitting to account for a regional holiday due to the ‘New Year’ in the Indian calendar. The American client managers were amused and decided to take the extra day off to visit the local sites and get over their jet-lag.
Well, if it is not the local culture and customs, trust Mother Nature to throw the occasional spanner in the works. A colleague, Ajay, and I were hoping to kick-start an engagement with a client in the North East (of US) this week and he had flown in from India over the weekend. On checking the weather over the weekend I realized that a snowstorm was scheduled to engulf the area and decided to hold-off on my hour-long travel; just as well.
Monday morning Ajay called me from his hotel room saying he had ventured to the client’s office that was just down the road from the hotel where he was staying and found that the doors were locked, with a notice stating ‘closed due to snow’
Though the two unrelated anecdotes are the different sides of the same coin, “risk mitigation and management” as our Project Manager friends call it, the unintended consequences are not always the same; unlike the American clients who were able to make hay while the sun was shining, Ajay is content to be stuck in a hotel-room, in Anytown USA
Comments
What a great topic. What other unique issues put schedules at risk? Let's add a few more: Hosur Road itself took out one key resource in a crash (he injured his leg, but thankfully fully recovered)and has hampered how many via world class traffic snarls? When we moved a small team from the City Center to Electronic City it was really only some 25 km difference. However, depending on where people lived, the change meant hours and hours per week spent commuting. How about Hotel availability in Bangalore and elsewhere for similar client visits (didn’t know you were competing for rooms with the Dalai Lama in town or some major convention? Too bad)? I’ve stayed in “3 Star” places which is fine by me if necessary, but while arguably decadent, we all know the standard business hotel and we all know there are nowhere near enough of them to meet demand. In 2004 we had a brass tacks entourage of 4 in Bangalore to accelerate a high pressure SOA project which was also an existing organizational sore spot and the first development engagement in 3 month old client/vendor offshore relationship (talk about risk!). All four of us had common stomach issues, but our senior architect in particular was really a mess. The trip had to be that week (professional and personal scheduling issues) and had to be India (Visa issues..a topic itself). So we just worked through it best we could. I'll spare you details of red tape (and the “creative” financial workarounds) for expense money and hotel bills for the onsite teams, mugging of an onsite resource, and lack of willingness to eat due to difficulty adjusting to local food options. Let’s just say it’s safe to say, something will always come up in the wonderful world off sharing goals with colleagues half way around the world. May we always make the best of it, even if that means ‘Ala Ajay’ by just lounging around in a place where you can relax and you don’t have to clean up after yourself ;-)
Posted by: michael | April 16, 2007 08:01 PM
I completely agree with the author and feel that risk identification and mititgation strategies is one of the key elements in offshoring. I have experienced a situation where while with a client in Mumbai, there were bomb explosions at Ghatkopar. Immediately there was an alert from the client organization to ensure safety of their employees. Instead of wasting time at the hotel, we decided to conduct the review meetings at the hotel conference room itself. The service providers provided secured vans to bring in their people and finally we achieved what we had planned - just the difference was the venue. At the same time, the service provider had a very good business continuity plan and this ensured that the client's business did not suffer.
I have authored a whitepaper - Risks, Rewards, Challenges and Opportunities in Offshore Outsourcing. If anyone is interested, you can download it from http://www.sourceparadigm.com/whitepapers.htm
Posted by: Akshay S Upadhye | April 24, 2007 05:40 PM