Inclusion: build effective communication on a foundation of trust, by Arjan Franzen

Sometime later (working for a software product company), I was able to take the things I had learned from previous experiences a step further. This time, there were differences in how the contract was set up. The country in which the outsourced teams were located was different (Ukraine) and so were the organizational arrangements. The remote teams were part of a different company—an actual supplier. We had made sure that we did not need an intermediary team in the Netherlands and decided to make the remote teams an integral part of the software development organization. The goal was to maximize the flexibility of the resourcing. When planning software releases, we must ensure that we are constrained as little as possible with regard to what team develops what release. These types of routing constraints can make a release plan an unsolvable puzzle.

Once we were onsite, we found motivated team members with many questions on their minds. We started immediately. We approached each team member as if he or she were a new
hire in our NL office. This helped us tremendously because trust is often lacking in new teams. We set up an introductory training program that detailed the technical environment and the market for which we were producing software. We specifically went for both technical knowledge and environment because this would help establish a sense of purpose for the remote teams. We spent about 70% of the time explaining the work processes, tools, and architecture. The remaining 30% of our time was spent discussing the business: who are the customers? What are their domains? At one point, I had made the mistake of including a slide twice in my presentation. It happened about an hour after I had shown the first slide to the team, explaining the architecture that was on it. I saw the mistake immediately but thought I would see how it played out. Would they detect the double slide, or would they quietly sit and politely nod ‘yes’ the entire time. I continued to present the slide for the second time. After 10 seconds, I was interrupted by the lead developer in the team: “I’m sorry Arjan; I believe you already went over this topic. Is that correct?” My trick worked! I was happy to discover that they were paying attention, understood what I had to say—and most importantly—they did not feel as if they had to suppress feedback regarding the quality of information provided (double).

After the first day of the course, we had dinner together and visited a local pub. This combination of training and discussions helped the Ukrainian team understand our situation. On our side, we began to trust the members of the team because we saw firsthand how they approached the difficulties involved with becoming familiar with a completely new environment. Discovering shared values between team members and customers helps greatly to establish basic trust between teams. This trust is the basis of a good working relationship.
Please note, “Your mileage may vary” regarding this procedure, depending on where you outsource your work. Even after enjoying a night of dinner, discussions, and getting to know team members better, the next morning, you may still find that cultural differences cause communications to remain unchanged—stifled.