¿Cómo un proyecto offshore debe ser coordinado para aumentar su capacidad de éxito?

Table des matières

1. INTRODUCCION..................................................................................................................................3
1.1 PROBLEM DISCUSSION...........................................................................................................3
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION.............................................................................................................4
1.3 CASE COMPANY......................................................................................................................5
1.4 THESIS OUTLINE......................................................................................................................5
2. THEORY...........................................................................................................................................6
2.1. GLOBALISATION......................................................................................................................6
2.2. OFFSHORING CHARACTERISTICS AND CONFIGURATION........................................................7
2.2.1 DEFINITION OF OFFSHORING..................................................................................7
2.2.3 BENEFITS AND RISKS OF OFFSHORING................................................................8
2.2.3 GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED TEAMS..........................................................................9
2.3 OFFSHORING PROCESS.........................................................................................................10
2.3.1 LIFECYCLE MODEL PERSPECTIVE.......................................................................10
2.3.2 OFFSHORING PROCESSES IN A MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE........................13
2.4 CHALLENGES/BOUNDARIES/DIFFERENCES...........................................................................14
2.5 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS OF AN OFFSHORE PROJECT.....................................................17
2.6 MANAGING CHALLENGES AND CSF......................................................................................22
2.6.1 COORDINATION MEASURES.........................................................................................22
2.6.2 MANAGEMENT PRACTICES..........................................................................................23
2.7 FRAMEWORK OF RESEARCH.......................................................................................................26
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..............................................................................................................27
3.1 RESEARCH METHOD.............................................................................................................27
3.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY- CASE STUDY......................................................................................28
3.3 DATA COLLECTION................................................................................................................28
3.3.1 IN DEPTH INTERVIEW.............................................................................................29
3.4 DATA ANALISYS.....................................................................................................................31
3.5 RESEARCH QUALITY..............................................................................................................32
3.5.1 RESEARCH RELIABILITY........................................................................................32
3.5.2 RESEARCH VALIDITY..............................................................................................33
4. EMPIRICAL STUDY.............................................................................................................................34
4.1 PERFORMANCE OF THE OFFSHORE PROJECTS......................................................................34
4.1.1 PROJECT 1..................................................................................................................35
4.1.2 PROJECT 2..................................................................................................................36
4.1.3 PROJECT 3.................................................................................................................38
 4.1.4 PROJECT 4..................................................................................................................39
4.2 SUMMARY OF THE EMPIRICAL STUDY..................................................................................41
5. ANALYSIS..........................................................................................................................................43
5.1 OFFSHORING PROCESS...............................................................................................................43
5.2 BENEFITS AND RISKS OF THE OFFSHORE STRATEGY...................................................................44
5.3 CHALLENGES/ BOUNDARIES /DIFFERENCES...............................................................................45
5.4 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS.......................................................................................................48
5.5 SUMMARY OF THE REASONS OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE...........................................................51
5.6 IMPROVEMENTS WHEN MANAGING GDTS................................................................................52
6. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENATIONS.........................................................................................56
Bibliography:........................................................................................................................................57

Figure 1: The effective teamwork triangle for GDTs (Stawnicza, 2014).................................10

Figure 2: Life cycle model........................................................................................................11
Figure 3: Offshoring projects life cycle model.........................................................................12
1. INTRODUCCION

1.1 PROBLEM DISCUSSION

Nowadays, the motivation of some companies to reduce costs, enter new markets and get
access to skilled personnel, makes them take the decision to offshore. Advantages and new
challenges appear when developing an offshore project. However, not all companies succeed
in obtaining the expected results. While developing offshore projects, companies realize that
the cost savings are not as high as expected and problems in a globally distributed teams are
much more difficult to solve and to manage. Due to their disappointment and disillusionment,
companies abandon their collaborations.
All companies that adopt offshoring strategies have to deal with big challenges to avoid
failure. There are two levels of problems contributing to unsuccessful offshore: functional
level and individual level.

In the functional level, we can find problems related with offshoring decision making and
communication between both teams. When deciding to make offshore, it is important to
highlight that not all the projects are suitable for offshoring: either because team members are
not ready to work in an offshore team, or because of a low project maturity. Before taking the
decision to offshore, companies need to investigate the market and evaluate the offshoring
partners’ potential, to be able to choose the better partner and achieve the best quality.

In Moe, N. B. et al. study, one of the companies that was interviewed claimed they chose the
offshore country just because his wife came from that developing country. This was seen as
an opportunity to stablish good communication in the globally distributed team, but at the
end, they realized that the quality was so bad that they ended up the collaboration. (Hansen,
Z. N. L., & Ahmed-Kristensen, S. (2010)). In addition, companies need to know if their
processes can be documented or if most of the knowledge is personified. Business knowledge
in some cases might differ a lot not only due to the differences in organizational cultures, but
also because of the different views on how, when and why transfer of knowledge must be
done. These difficulties in knowledge transfer can cause a delay on the project owing to the
lack of clear goals.

In the individual level, several risks must be checked to avoid failure, such as their partners’
communication skills, their quality initiatives, business skills, foreign language proficiency,
human expertise and resources and cultural issues. Communication obstacles are one of the
main reasons of failure. Socio-cultural and temporal distances, team cohesion, differences in
language, different working habits as well as cultural differences are some of the elements
that can cause communication problems. These elements in combination with the lack of
commitment and the inability to control the employee turnover will cause offshore projects’
failure (Moe, N. B. et al). Another company mentioned in Nils Brede Moe study affirms that
each time they went to India, they saw new faces. This means that once people were trained
and had the necessary knowledge to develop the project, new workers replaced them showing
the lack of commitment and interest in the success of the project.

As a summary, several factors can lead an offshore project to fail. The purpose of this thesis is
to, first, analyze the offshoring situation such as the communication between onsite teams and
offshore teams and the way it’s managed; and secondly, bring forward the solutions to the
major problems discussed, as checking processes for the feasibility to offshoring
collaboration, communication related obstacles and distances. Successful factors for
offshoring teams in obtaining better collaboration during offshoring projects will be also
summarized.

1.2 RESEARCH QUESTION

In our day-to-day lives, everything that surround us is made by western companies in eastern
countries. In these countries, labour costs are much lower, and shifts are longer. Apart from
this, companies want to have enough skilled employees, lower their project costs, enter new
markets, reduce time and increase quality. All these aspects increase the chance on getting a
better competitive position and growing profits. However, what happens if one or several
factors mentioned before cannot be accomplished, or they are badly done.
Offshoring not only offers opportunities to gain extra profit, but also it offers threats that con
influence negatively your profit. The aim of this thesis is to identify the threats, and see how
they can be reduced in a managerial context in order to increase the chance to have high
profits. Rephrasing this last sentence provides and overview of the topic of research:
Main Research Question:
“How should an offshore project be managed to increase its ability to succeed?”

To be able to answer the above main research question, two sub questions have been put
forward. Sub question 1 investigates de threats/ barriers when developing an offshore project,
being one of the possible approaches to avoid offshoring failure. To conclude this first sub
question, the interaction distances between onsite and offshore GDTs will be presented.

Sub Question 1:
“What are the challenges/barriers between the onsite and offshore team?”

Sub question 2 investigates the critical success factors of an offshore project. This sub
question can be regarded as the strategies to be adopted in order to succeed.

Sub Question 2:
“What are the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of an offshore project?”

The purpose of splitting the main question in two sub questions is because the outcome of the
research must be applicable to the real world. Both questions, helps to answer the main
research questions, and they give more information in order to be more accurate. A lot of
research has been done in the area of offshoring focusing on answering the first sub question,
but what really companies care about is in the sub question B.
1.3 CASE COMPANY
Explicar expleo
1.4 THESIS OUTLINE

The structure of this thesis can be explained and understood trough Figure… shown below.
The theorical chapter is a base to fulfil the purpose of this thesis. This framework is based on
literature reviews, where offshore strategy, challenges and critical success factors will be
discussed, focussing on the way globally distributed teams should be managed.
In the methodology chapter, the different research methods will be studied depending on their
feasibility in order to fulfil the thesis purpose. This will be followed by the way of collecting
data and the chosen interview technique.
In the fourth chapter, the empirical findings will present the results from the in depth
interviews based on different projects, and the empirical data will be analysed as collected
evidence. For each project, at least one manager will be interviewed, and the data collected
will be compared with the theory of the subject, to be able to answer the research question.
In the conclusion of this thesis, an answer to the research question will be given.
IN the final discussion, the discussion of the thesis topic will be summarized, and suggestions
for further research will be put forward.
2. THEORY

2.1. GLOBALISATION

In this world of relationships, all the technological and human changes have extended the
range of action of the interaction going beyond the local community to which the human
being was accustomed. Humans search to extend more and more the geographical horizon, to
connect with different people all around the world. Nowadays, the degree of connection with
other individuals is much wider than in previous periods.
An example of this are the new models of virtual interaction thanks to the new technologies
and their intensive use that are making new patterns of behavior and relationship appear
among the themselves and between these and the groups or communities to which they
belong. This are the bases of the globalization principle. Globalization phenomenon, has been
persistent since the 20th century, it is creating the need of new ways of communicating,
managing and dealing with cultural differences. This influences people and organizations
nowadays, when communicating with people of other cultures via an electronic device or
face-to-face.
Moreover, this era of information and telecommunications has accelerated the globalization,
and there will be a push for a transformation towards increasingly open economies.
Furthermore, telecommunications and interconnection through the Internet and social
networks has greatly facilitated the globalization of markets, industries, societies and cultures,
thus enabling development and interconnection between societies. It has created new forms of
communication and interaction in society ( Intercultural Management – Trend of
Contemporary Globalized World)
Globalization implies intercultural communication, physical mobility of people across borders
and high levels of adaptability to new environments. It requires a constant and quickly change
in strategies, innovations and decision-making. Change are avoidable in organizations as new
people, processes and products are constantly appearing. Globalization brings with it
important challenges in terms of cultural differences, language and distances, which forces
managers to constantly implement daily changes. ( A Research Framework for the Impact of
Cultural Differences on IT Outsourcing). Due to all off this, virtual teams are increasing, in
the context of offshoring projects, and new challenges, as mentioned before have appeared.
2.2. OFFSHORING CHARACTERISTICS AND CONFIGURATION

2.2.1 DEFINITION OF OFFSHORING

The term offshore is gaining importance between companies. However, researchers have not
clearly defined what it is. In the table below, different interpretations of offshore are listed.

Authors Definition of offshoring

Majanoja, A. M., Linko, L., & Leppänen, V. “An offshore outsourced operation means that
(2017) a significant amount of work will be
implemented abroad.”

“Offshore outsourcing to vendors in foreign

countries causes unique challenges which
Winkler, J. K., Dibbern, J., & Heinzl, A. need to be understood and managed
(2008 effectively.”

“Offshore outsourced projects bring along

challenges of global virtual teamwork where
Beck, R., Gregory, R., & Prifling, M. (2008) cross-cultural differences hinder effective
team coordination and collaboration.”

“Offshore outsourcing presents many

Ellram, L. M., Tate, W. L., & Billington, C.
(2008)
opportunities that are not available
domestically. Offshore outsourcing creates
both new opportunities and often-
unrecognized hazards, which may limit a
firm’s prospects. The long-term costs of these
unanticipated consequences can greatly
overshadow the potential cost savings.”

According to the above definitions, offshoring can be defined with different dimensions, from
which we can highlight location, cultural differences, opportunities, challenges of globally
distributed teams, cost savings…

To completely understand the concept of offshoring, it is important to differentiate it from

outsourcing. As Westner, M., & Strahringer, S. (2010) stablishes: “Offshoring has specific
characteristics that distinguish it from the field of outsourcing: in offshoring, service occurs
at a distance from the consumer; physical distance, time zone and cultural differences play a
part; also complexity increases due to the geographical dispersion of team members.” In
other words, as offshoring occurs in a different country, much more collaboration between
onsite and offshore teams must be done to achieve common goals, whereas outsourcing
means giving certain tasks to a third part instead of doing it inside the company.
2.2.3 BENEFITS AND RISKS OF OFFSHORING

The principal reason why companies have started to use offshore strategies is the rapid cost
savings. However, this is not the only reason that explains this phenomenon since, according
to several authors, there is a strategic component that also allows the companies to focus on
those competencies considered as essential. These are identified as acquiring greater
flexibility and making better use of the capacities of specialized suppliers and achieving
higher quality. (Ellram, L. M., Tate, W. L., & Billington, C. (2008), Bertrand, O. (2011)).

In the following paragraph, different benefits that make companies consider offshore are
explained:

1- Lower cost of labor: The first reason to offshore is to lower the costs. The wage
differences between developed and developing countries are very large. Wages in
Asian countries such as India are less than 50% of their equivalent labor in European
countries. (Ellram, L. M., Tate, W. L., & Billington, C. (2008), Tate, W. L., Ellram, L.
M., Bals, L., & Hartmann, E. (2009)).

2- Increased quality of service: Working in globally distributed teams help to increase the
quality of the services and products delivered. This is because team members have
different points of views and they can bring new ideas to the project.

3- ‘Follow the sun’: offshoring project teams is composed of people from all over the
world, with different time zones. This means that projects can be carried out
continuously, with the possibility of working 24h per day. Certain tasks can be
forwarded from site to site taking benefit from the temporal distance. (Global
Software Development Challenges: A Case Study on Temporal, Geographical and
Socio-Cultural Distance )

4- Entering new markets: Since the economies of Eastern countries are evolving, new
offshore markets are added. Establishing new business units in these countries permits
companies to enter these new markets.

5- Access to new knowledge and resources: this competitive advantage helps both parts
to complement their resources and tap into new knowledge. Offshoring is an important
channel of technological and organizational knowledge diffusion.( Bertrand, O.
(2011)).

Apart from benefits, it is important to take into account the idea of failure. There are several
risk factors that reduce the benefits and can lead to failure. Apart from the typical risks such
as cultural and language differences, that will also be covered in this thesis, there are other
potential risks.

Even though, cost savings is one of the main reasons why companies engage in offshore
projects, in many cases, there are hidden elements that can increase costs during the offshore
project. (Ellram, L. M., Tate, W. L., & Billington, C. (2008) and Westner, M., & Strahringer,
S. (2010)). Companies, when doing offshoring, realize that the cost savings are not as high as
expected and problems are much more difficult to address. This leads to a decrease in the
productivity or even companies decide to abandon the collaboration. (Moe, N. B., Šmite, D.,
Hanssen, G. K., & Barney, H. (2014)).
Onshore-offshore communication and coordination issues can also cause a noticeable
decrease on the development of the project. As Herbsleb et al. says, “Frequency of
communication generally drops off sharply with physical separation among coworkers’
offices”. It was concluded that when workers were 30 meters or more apart, the frequency of
communication was as low as the communication of workers whose offices are miles
separated.

2.2.3 GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED TEAMS

Globalization has encouraged the creation of virtual working environments among offshoring
projects. Sakthivel (2005) defines virtual workgroups as geographically dispersed people
working independently with shared purpose across space, time and organizational boundaries
and using technology to communicate and collaborate. This has contributed to the existence
of new working habits and practices.
Globally distributed teams (GDTs) have become a common practice within today’s
organisations due to offshoring projects (Stawnicza, O). To be able to develop an offshore
project, virtual working needs to be implemented. In virtual workgroups, we can find a group
of individuals with the following characteristics. First of all, they come from different
countries and cultures, speaking different languages. Sakthivel agrees that cultural differences
affect negatively the effectiveness of virtual work. Beck, R et al. (2008) stablishes that cross-
cultural differences hinder effective team coordination and collaboration. Secondly, they are
separated by time and distance. Sakthivel (2005) affirms that project team members dispersed
geographically are unlikely to feel themselves as part of a team. Furthermore, they work
independently with a common goal and they must collaborate with the other members of the
team. Finally, they all need technology to communicate, and to keep in touch with the team to
assure the correct performance of the project. (Sakthivel (2005)). In conclusion, virtual teams
should have the same objectives and goals as the onsite teams, but working on a different
geograpgical location and across time, linked by communication technologies.

From the characteristics stablished before, we can define the three biggest challenges
encountered in globally distributed teams: communication, trust and teamsness. Face to face
interactions is the best way of communication because it gives immediate response offering
the opportunity to build trust, and the sense of unity or teamness. (Stawnicza, O. (2014)).
However, face to face interactions are not always possible, therefore, communication
technologies (ICTs) such as video conferencing, emails, discussion boards, shared documents,
web logs, etc. play a very important role, helping communication between geographically
dispersed teams .(Sakthivel, S. (2005)). Oshri et al. 2008 stablishes that to bridge geographical
distances and time-zone differences, globally distributed teams must mainly collaborate
through information and communication technologies, and if possible, occasionally meet face
to face to discuss project matters. Unfortunately, this type of communication can cause a slow
or delayed feedback, which is perceived as an obstacle in the progress of the project. This can
decrease trust and it can be an impediment in the progress of the project.
The study of Stawicza, 2014 generated some practical results shown in the figure below. This
study proves that communication plays a significant role when stablishing trust and bonds.
The three identified factors impact on the progress of the project, and show that virtual group
members should not only have skills, expertise and high productivity, but also communication
and virtual work training skills to be able to work in a global distributed team.

Figure 1: The effective teamwork triangle for GDTs (Stawnicza,

2014)

2.3 OFFSHORING PROCESS

The offshoring process can be interpreted and studied in different ways. In the following
chapter, two different perspectives, carried out by different researchers, about offshore project
will be explained: life cycle model and managerial perspective

2.3.1 LIFECYCLE MODEL PERSPECTIVE

Researchers have different theories about the models of offshoring processes. A study to find
a comprehensive model of the offshoring outsourcing processes and the cooperative
international relationships was made by “A Process View of Information Systems Outsourcing
Research: Conceptual Gaps and Future Research Directions”. This model is composed of
seven different phases, that provides a chronological perspective of the activities involved
when offshoring. The seven steps are : decision to offshore, vendor search and selection,
development of the offshoring contact and implementation of the contact, relationship
between both sites, evaluation of the offshore results, and finally, take the decision to renew
the offshoring contact. These seven steps are showed in the following figure.
 Decision to Decision to
Renew offshore

Evaluation Vendor
selection

Relationship Offshoring
Conact

Implementation

Figure 2: Life cycle model

“Business Process Offshoring: Making the Right Decision” stablishes that even if each
offshore process is different, there are some general guidelines: Decision to offshore, Pick the
processes, manage the migration, manage the relationship and anticipate the change.

Another study stablished by “A Practical Management and Engineering Approach to

Offshore Collaboration” analyzes the lifecycle of the project regarding the cooperation
procedures between onsite and offshore teams. They developed a model where they treated
the offshore team as an extension of the onsite team, transferring them work in a gradually
way. This model consists in five phases, which are the concept, the analysis, the design, the
construction and the quality assurance. Doing reference to the article, dividing task and
distributing them correctly between the onshore and offshore team to be able to achieve a
balance between their competences and the amount of work is one of the most crucial
determinant of success. In the following figure…, it is demonstrated the number of resources
and key deliverables across the lifecycle of the projects depending on the different phases.
 Figure 3: Offshoring projects life cycle model

On each phase, it is identified the location, the number of resources, the key deliverables and
the Actors. For the first two phases, concept and analysis, the onsite team leads all the tasks
taking all the risks and taking into consideration the clients requirements. When implementing
the design phase, offshoring resources start to get involved in the project. Around a 10% of
the work starts being done by the offshore team as it can be seen in the figure…..During the
construction phase, the involvement of the offshore teams increases up to 90% being offshore
team responsible of all this phase, only with some onsite managers solving problems. Finally,
during the quality assurance phase, there will be needed both, onsite and offshore teams to fix
defects and do the final testing.

Figure 4: Onsite and offshore working progress

Another study made by “Coordinating Expertise Across Knowledge Boundaries in Offshore-

Outsourcing Projects: The Role of Codification"
 2.3.2 OFFSHORING PROCESSES IN A MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE

Another different way of interpreting offshoring process is with the 4M approach, which is a
dynamic process were there is a dependency between the four phases. 4M stands for four
distinct phases of the offshoring process, which are Making, Mapping, Managing and
Measuring. “Redefining the paradigm of global competition: offshoring of service firm”.

Figure 5: 4M approach

According to Jagersma (2007), the first phase “making” focuses on making the offshoring
policy of the company, taking into account all their characteristics and capabilities to see if
they are prepare to offshore any business activities. The most important part of this phase is to
identify possible offshorable business activities, analyze the advantages and disadvantages
and design the score cards and processes in order to report, measure and monitor the potential
of the offshoring activities.

The second phase “mapping” implies the decision of an offshore profile, this means deciding
the type of offshoring activities, type of offshoring and offshore location. Organizations need
to choose which activities are suitable to be offshored, and which team should be taking part
on the offshore project. The key point of this phase is to gain internal support in the
managerial and financial area for the offshoring process.
The third phase “managing” focuses on the implementation of offshoring decision.
Identifying the consequences, barriers and key success factors of offshore activities in the
most important point at this phase. Not developing this phase can cause different issues such
as communication problems, insufficient planning and control as well as cultural differences
and language difficulties. All these issues are aspects that imped managing the offshoring
implementation.

The fourth and final phase “measuring” evaluate the results and analyzing the pros and cons
of the offshoring process. Companies should measure the performance and compare them
with the objectives settled at the beginning in order to see if offshoring results a benefit for the
company. Identification of goals not achieved and improvements needed to be done is an
important point when measuring the results.

As a conclusion, when preparing the onsite team for offshoring project, managers and
technical managers should take into consideration the 4M approach in order to facilitate and
optimize the offshore process. As Jagersma (2007) stablished, “The offshoring process is
dynamic and inhibits a dependency between the four different phases of the offshoring
process. The individual steps as well as the links between them deserve and demand ongoing
input and monitoring from management. ’’

2.4 CHALLENGES/BOUNDARIES/DIFFERENCES

Offshore project success is difficult to achieve due to the fact that the there are multiple
boundaries to overcome simultaneously. Boundaries produce both, sharedness which is a
necessary condition to achieve an effective collaboration from both parts, and differences,
which can impede collaboration. When doing offshoring, it is important to have in mind that
each country is different, and therefore, it depends on its local history and geographical
context. The geographical dispersion introduces differences in language, laws, culture, local
holidays, customary practices…, which could damage both, interpersonal relationship and
coordination. (Egan, R. W., Tremaine, M., Fjermestad, J., Milewski, A., & O'Sullivan, P.
(2006, October). and therefore achieve the project success. (Levina, N., & Vaast, E. (2008)).
(Viewing engineering offshoring in a network perspective: Challenges and key patterns)
defined these boundaries as the challenges due to the interaction distances between the
onshore and offshore sites. Interaction distances consist on the distance between cultures,
languages and geographical distance. (Viewing engineering offshoring in a network
perspective: Challenges and key patterns)
 Figure 6: Invisible costs in offshoring services work (Anne Stringfellowa, Mary B.
Teagarden, Winter Nie)

Those three distances stablished by A. Stringfellowa can be addressed as:

Language distance: one of the most important boundaries because it can cause trouble when
communicating. This can be a barrier to effective interaction introduced by the fact that both,
onshore and offshore sites do not share a mother tongue. (A. Stringfellowa) Even though
English language is the second language spoken in every country, accent can cause
misunderstandings. (Iqbal, S. (2005)). Accents can interfere with the correct reception of the
message. As A. Stringfellowa says, “listeners tend to focus on correcting foreign
pronunciation and grammar, rather than on the content of the message. This may explain why
listeners take longer to process foreign-accented speech than that required for native
speakers». When talking of language it is important to add that language is not only le
language spoken between onshore and offshore teams, but also the language in which
documents are written. If this language is not English, translations and communication creates
additional efforts and increases the time to achieve goals. This lowers the productivity and the
delivered quality, and increases the risk of failure. (Westner, M., & Strahringer, S. U. S. A. N.
N. E. (2008)).

The geographical distance between the two parties doing offshore is important. The larger the
distance in eastern or western directions, the bigger the time difference. This can also
influence the success of the project due to the problem of communication. (Ergan R. W
stablishes that several studies agree with the idea that work across time-zone bands causes
communication problems). Espinosa, J. A. and al. (2003). stablishes that geographical
distance have a negative effect on communication, misunderstandings and conflicts,
difference in feedbacks cycles, significant delays….. When teams are far away from each
other, other dimensions can also affect collaboration negatively such as time, culture and
organization. (Gumm, D. C. (2006)). Geograhical difference also means time zone difference,
which forms a barrier to effective interaction affecting virtual teams. (A. Stringfellow). One
of the most important disadvantage of time distance is that the number of overlapping hours
during a workday is reduced, and project managers have to be flexible to achieve overlap. . It
was stipulated that “the higher up you are in the organization, the more flexible you are
required to be” meaning by this that due to the difference of time, answer calls at 10 at night
is normal. (Global Software Development Challenges: A Case Study on Temporal,
Geographical and Socio-Cultural Distance)
 Cultural and religious differences are two other challenges of offshore projects and
relationship management. (Winkler, J. K., Dibbern, J., & Heinzl, A. (2008).) And (Daim, T.
U., Ha, A., Reutiman, S., Hughes, B., Pathak, U., Bynum, W., & Bhatla, A. (2012)). A.
Stringfellow says citating Hofstede,1991 that culture has been defined as ‘”the collective
programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of
people from another’’ (Hofstede, 1991)
Members of different organizational cultures may often have different norms, values and
policies that may lead to misunderstandings, hidden agendas, uncertainty and conflict. (Iqbal,
S. (2005)) .
All this cultural differences can affect negatively the effectiveness of virtual work, and these
workgroups can experience more conflicts, less job satisfaction, more stress, higher turnover,
and more communication problems. (Sakthivel, S. (2005)).
Apart from this, culture can play an important role in affecting the way individuals interacts in
offshore projects. To understand the impact of the differences between cultures, it is
interesting to understand the different dimensions of culture stipulated by Hofstede. ( A.
Stringfellow)

Individualism-Collectivism -Collectivism refers to the degree in which members

of a GDT see themselves as part of a group, with
group goals.
-Individualism refers to the degree in which a
member of GDTs see themselves primarily as
individuals, with individual goals, with no
attachment to a core group. Individuals with
individualistic cultures prefer to solve problems
-People from individualistic cultures are used to face
problems openly, while collectivist culture people are
more used to avoid open conflict.
-This can aoppear when communicating with the
offshore team and can increase the distance between
GDTs
Power distance -According to Hofstede (1997, p. 28),( citated by A.
Stringfellow) power distance refers to
‘‘the extent to which the less powerful members of
institutions and organizations within a country expect
and accept that power is distributed unequally.’’
-High power distance countries, such as India, tend to
communicate less confidently causing
miscommunication.
Time orientation -Monochromic culture: schedule and manage time,
and do things one by one in order.
-Polychromic culture: schedules change and planned
activities can be subjected, they value relationships
more than deadlines.
-If countries with polychromic cultures don’t share
the same view of time with the Monochromic culture,
 causing distance problems
Communication style -Communication can vary from country to country.
-Low context cultures, messages are explicit, because
it is assumed that both teams do not share any
common information
-High context culture such as japan and china, there
is a pool of common knowledge, relying in the
interpretation of messages. It is suggested to have
face-to-face communication in high context cultures.

Universalism- Particularism -Universalism: ideas, and practices can be applied

everywhere. They focus on normal rules
-Particularism: circumstances decide how ideas and
practices should be applied. Particularism cultures
tend to see reality more subjective and value more
relationships.

Table…

These 5 dimensions mentioned by A. Stringfellow explain cultural variations that may affect
the success of a project. On Winkler, J. K study, It was concluded that the cultural dimension
that affected the most was the power distance, which cannot only lead to conflicts and
decrease trust but also can affect the cooperation between the offshore parts.

2.5 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS OF AN OFFSHORE PROJECT

When measuring the success of an offshoring project, many factors can be taken into
consideration such as the organization satisfaction with the offshoring outcomes, the degree of
expectation achievement, ratio cost/benefits etc…, Hutzschenreuter et al. (2011) stablishes
that there are two ways to evaluate success of offshoring projects. The first one is based on
the financial indicators of the project, and the second one is based on the non-financial
indicators such as the quality of the outcomes and the amount of time spent to achieve them.
However, overall satisfaction also can be evaluated as success.
In order to assist companies in successful offshore, the concept of critical success factors
(CSFs) is gaining importance. Boynton and Zmud (1984, p.23) define Critical success factors
as

“Those few things that must go well to ensure success for a manager or an organization, and,
therefore, they represent those managerial or enterprise areas that must be given special and
continual attention to bring about high performance..." (An Assessment of critical success
factors)

Rockart (1979) citated by (Critical Success Factors for Managing Offshore Software
Development Projects) defines CSFs as
“The limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful
competitive performance for the organization". (Critical Success Factors for Managing
Offshore Software Development Projects)

Remus, U., & Wiener, M. (2009) identified 29 critical success factors (CSFs) from previous
literature, and developed a study searching for the most relevant CSFs. The "definition of
clear project goals" represents the most relevant CSF, followed by "continuous controlling of
project results", "ensuring of a continuous communication flow", "high quality of offshore
employees", "good language abilities", "composition of an appropriate project team", and
"preparation of a detailed project specification".

A more general study was made by (A Review of Critical Success Factors for Offshore
Software Development Projects) Goparaju Purna Sudhakar proposing a multi-level model
stablishing that challenges such as culture, time zone, language, environmental and
organizational factors are connected to other CSFs factors such as knowledge and technology
transfer, projects and team factors via communication factors. According to Sudhkar, the
relation between all this CSFs leads to success.

Figure 7: Goparaju Purna Sudhakar

From an overall satisfaction point of view, Westner, M., & Strahringer, S. on their research
framework stablished that offshore expertise and trust on the provider has a positive direct
effect on both, the success of the project and on the degree of knowledge sharing. Offshore
expertise allows you to carry out and develop offshoring projects in an efficient and therefore
successful way, taking into consideration past experiences. This can help to deal with offshore
challenges. Rottman also found in his study that companies with offshoring expertise had
success on their offshoring projects.
Moreover, the trust concept plays an important role when developing long-term relationship.
It helps to cooperate with the service providers and leads to successful offshoring (J.-N. Lee,
M.Q. Huynh, R. Hirschheim). Rottman stipulated that it is important for both parties to have
enough trust on each other to be able to share knowledge, because this way, the desire to share
knowledge and collaborate increases. In addition, from a detailed perspective, there are
mediating factors that are directly related with the above two determinants, offshore expertise
and trust, and the success off offshoring projects. These mediating factors are project
suitability, knowledge transfers and quality liaison. The following figure explains the
relationship and impacts caused between them. (Westner, M., & Strahringer, S):

Figure 8: (Westner, M., & Strahringer, S)

Analyzing the figure above, offshore expertise and trust in offshore service provider can be
divided into three detailed CSFs, which have closer links to success. These three dimensions
are the key to success and are explained below:

Project suitability of an offshore project can be defined as the set of characteristics and
principal attributes of a project that makes it more likely to be executed in an intercultural
environment. Evaluate the suitability of the project is one of the first things to do when
deciding to engage in an offshoring arrangement. (Westner, M. (2009). There are different
criteria when evaluating the suitability of a project. Markus Westner affirms that the activities
that require proximity and those with a very high risk should be kept in-house and not
offshore them. However, low complexity activities which require less interaction between
offshore parties, activities that have low specificity and significant impact on cost savings, are
more likely to be successfully in an offshore environment.

Knowledge is a mixture between experience, values and contextual information that allows
the evaluation and incorporation of new experiences and information. Knowledge can be
gained through experience (tacit knowledge), which is harder to share, and through studies
(explicit knowledge), books and documents, which can be easily shared and employed.
(Davenport, T. H., & Prusak, L. (2000)). Knowledge transfer is part of a knowledge sharing
process between different people within a team. This process is more crucial for globally
distributed teams because there are much more difficulties for GDTs to discuss about relevant
issues due to the fact that there are geographical and time zones differences. Past studies
concluded that companies preferred locating multifunctional teams at a single site because
physical distance was detrimental for interpersonal collaboration. However, advances in
information technology allows virtual distributed teams to work effectively and transfer
knowledge correctly without meeting face to face. (Gupta, A., Mattarelli, E., Seshasai, S., &
Broschak, J. (2009)). To achieve a high performance between both teams, it is necessary to do
an effective knowledge sharing. This can be done in two different ways: through written
documents, available in paper or in electronic format, or through face to face interactions. For
GDTs, these face-to-face interactions are reduced to videoconferencing. Because of the time
differences between both parties of the team, the time to discuss task-relevant issues is
reduced. As Griffith et al., 2003, p. 271 said citated by Gupta, A., Mattarelli, E., Seshasai, S.,
& Broschak, J. (2009) GDTs teams “will be more likely to transfer knowledge in explicit
rather than tacit forms because the technology supports the declarative nature of explicit
knowledge”.

To transfer knowledge on GDTs, effective project management should be implemented.

Using a powerful set of tools and techniques, and implement activities to achieve specific
organizational objectives is not enough. Project managers must implement different systems
that controls the operating environment creating limits in order to achieve a good performance
in the virtual team. Some of the tools that must be implemented are project vision and goals,
project leader coaching and mentoring, project team development and competency, kick-off
meetings, organization culture, communications planning, decision-making, and creative
problem solving. (Raisinghani, M. et al. (2010), and Xu, P., & Yao, Y. (2006)). A study made
by Rottman of a company offshoring to India concluded that the main reason of failure of the
company in the study was the lack of knowledge transfer. The manager of the onshore team
underestimated the need of extensive domain knowledge transfer. The Indian team did not
understand what they had to do; caused their failure in producing the required deliverables.

Liaison quality can be defined as the degree of connection and communication quality
between onshore and offshore teams. In addition, the quality of communication in GDTs is
reflected in the efficiency of information transfer between onsite and offshore teams. As
mentioned previously, due to distance and language differences, communication frequency
and collaboration decreases, and individuals tend to feel like separated from the team they are
not part of the team. This demonstrated that the environment of offshoring delivery is
important to avoid negative impacts on liaison quality. Herbsleb, J. D., & Mockus, A. (2003)
study covers the work delayed because of lack of information and discussion from both:
people onsite and people offshore. In this article, it was concluded that there was no
significant difference between the number of delays reported of onshore and offshore teams.
However, the duration of the delays cases of the offshore team took almost a day and a half
longer than onsite delays cases.

Taking into consideration that each research and study have different points of view, and
therefore different CSFs, Goparaju Purna Sudhakar, based on the literature review, classified
and prioritized the main critical success factors affecting offshore projects. (A Review of
Critical Success Factors for Offshore Software Development Projects)
 Table ….Goparaju Purna Sudhakar

Apart from these 20 CSFs, a top 6 were selected, basing their arguments on the number of
citations in previous studies. (A Review of Critical Success Factors for Offshore Software
Development Projects). These 6 CFSs are in decreasing order or importance: “Trust”,
“Efficient communication”, “Cultural understanding”, “Relationship between onshore and
offshore”, “Contract type”, and “Efficient knowledge transfer”

These CSFs identified, are applicable to almost all types of offshore projects, and must be
taken into consideration by the project managers. As there is no single factor that leads to
success, project managers have to work on the combination of these CSFs, and try to increase
the probability of project success.
2.6 MANAGING CHALLENGES AND CSF

In a traditional project environment, where teams work together at the same location, effective
project management can be summarized as the capacity to use a powerful set of tools and
techniques improving the ability to implement, plan and manage activities to achieve
objectives. However, a successful management in GDTs is more challenging. As Project
Management within Virtual Software Teams says, “The management of GDTs is a difficult
and complex task”. Project managers of GDTs not only have to implement tools and
techniques to be able to plan and manage activities, but also, they have to employ
coordinating measures that control the operating environment, creating boundaries to achieve
performance in the GDTs. (Virtual Project Management Of Globally Outsourced IT Projects)

2.6.1 COORDINATION MEASURES

According to Aranda et al. (2006), distances introduces barriers and complexity into the
management of GDTs. Other factors such as coordination and cooperation between both
teams plays also an important role in an offshoring situation. It is essential to align knowledge
and efforts between GDTs. As when managing traditional projects, coordination includes
realistic project planning and risk
evaluation. (Casey and Richardson
2006)

Figure…..

Casey and Richardson study mentions six relevant coordination areas when managing:
“Organizational strategy”, “Risk Management”, “Infrastructure”, “Virtual team process”,
“Conflict management” and “Team structure”. There are many different points of view in the
literature about the coordination areas. Sabherwal (2003) categorize all off the coordination
measures in four areas, which are:

-Standards, including all different methodologies, procedures in order to deliver the

right product with the quality required.
 -Plans, including schedules, milestones and other plans to be able to deliver the
product on time and budget.
-Formal mutual adjustment, focused on coordinating the formal communication
such as planning formal meetings, stablishing the point of contact between both
teams… etcetera.
-Informal mutual adjustment, focusing on coordinating the informal communication
channels, such as sharing documents.

These four coordination categories are aimed to improve communication and knowledge
exchange. In order to reduce coordination and cooperation problems, both, time distance and
cultural distance must be reduced. This group of coordination measures can influence
positively the communication, the knowledge transfer and the overall success of the project.

When coordinating measures where implemented such as communication tools, in order to

reduce these distances, success was achieved.

2.6.2 MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Even though, there is a lack of understanding concerning effective management practices to

overcome the challenges of offshore relationships, (Global Software Development
Challenges: A Case Study on Temporal, Geographical and Socio-Cultural Distance)
developed a case study revealing how to manage these distances in a GDTs.

First of all, time distance was studied and to overcome it, many companies rely on the concept
of “follow the sun”, whereas others just try to adjust hours to get a good overlap. Moreover,
geographical distance was studied and it was concluded that a good cross-site relation it is
important to deal with the distance. To create a feeling of ‘tameness’ not only for the project
managers but also for the developers, it’s essential that teams travel to meet each other’s in
important phases of the project. The use of technology such as team websites which
encompassing all facets of individuals can also help to make team building. Finally, cultural
distance was studied, being one of the most problematic to manage. To try to reduce this
challenge, different actions were taken such making communication more formalized. By this,
emails and documents after each conversation must be written down and send to the other
team. This helps people with lower competency in English to take their time in reading
everything and make sure they understand. In relation with the five cultural dimensions
described in the above section, to guarantee the GDTs harmony, managers of offshore teams
should adjust their managerial approaches to decrease the barriers caused by cultural
variations on both sites. For example, in countries where the power distance is high such as
India, China or Russia, mangers from the onshore team should encourage the manager of the
offshore team to question freely and try to discuss as much as possible.

Winkler, J. K. found out three major management themes to successfully increase

performance. The first practice was define clear definition of roles and mechanisms. This
seems to help on the coordination the day-to-day cooperation. Having clear contact persons
on the offshore team helps to work together, offshore and onshore teams, as a unique team.
The second practice is strong leadership and coordination of the offshore team. Instead of
trying to manage the project in an independent way, lead and guide de offshore team can be
essential for success. The third and last practice is to manage culture. This is a successful way
of solving cultural differences. Setting clear rules for the cooperation can make the offshore
team understand the way you want them to work. It is important also to understand the way
they work, and adjust management. At the end, Winkler, J. K. suggests that intercultural
training is important for managers. To know and learn about cultural traits and work behavior
proves to be a good tactic to manage correctly GTDs.
(Cultural Intelligence and Project Management Interplay in IT Offshore Outsourcing
Projects) elaborated some useful management techniques to overcome challenges. Firstly, it
was stipulated that the project documentation and task descriptions should be developed
jointly by the onshore and the offshore team. This is known as “operational process
documents” (OPD), and using this method, documents will be clearly explained and detailed,
including instructions and templates. The use of OPD helps to mitigate the ricks, caused by
misunderstandings, cultural differences, set clear goals and responsibilities. The use of a
“matrix list” was also highlighted as effective tool to show the full set of deadlines and
deliverables. This is important to motivate project members and create transparency.
Moreover, in order to achieve the best quality, controlling the deliverables and stablishing
deadlines is fundamental. Beck calls this “cascading approach to meeting deadlines”,
consisting of setting multiples deadlines for the same deliverable to follow its progress. To
make sure that offshore team has understood the goals and the deadlines, “reply sessions”
were implemented, involving actively the offshore team in the definition of deadlines and
functional requirements and expectations. The last success factor mentioned is the face-to-
face contact between onshore and offshore team. Seeing how the offshore team works at the
offshore country helped tremendously in the understanding of the differences in culture, and
increased the motivation of both teams. It also helped managers adapt the use of project
management techniques to the offshore context.

Remus, U., & Wiener, M. (2009) analyzed how CSFs could be managed. 148 activities were
identified which significantly influenced the most relevant CSFs mentioned in the previous
chapter. In Figure.. the seven most relevant CSFs are identified, with their own management
techniques to success.
 1-Definition of project goals

7-Preparation of a detailed project specification

-Definition of the project baseline
-Definition of long-term goals 2-Continous controlling of project results
-Development of a sourcing strategy
-Establishment of a joint
-Deployment of offshore team specification templates understanding regarding the project
-Development of the project specification with support goals.
of offshore employees working temporary onsite. -Construction of regular tests
-Definition of a detailed
-Development of a sourcing strategy
-Establishment of a joint understanding regarding
the project goals.

6-Composition of an appropriate project team 3 -Ensuring of a continuous communication flow

Critical success factors to
success offshore projects.

-Assignment of a project manager with intercultural -Definition of a single point of contact on both sides.
experience on both sides. -Definition of communication rules.
-Determination of the project manager on the offshore -Definition of escalation procedures.
team as the overall project manager. -Deployment of a board communication mix.
-Early implementation of key users. -Introduction of an internal and external communication
hierarchy.

5-Good language abilities 4-High quality of offshore employees

-Assignment of an English -Request for information on reference

speaking point of contact.
projects of the offshore employees.
-Review of the individual offshore employees’
resume.
-Selection of an adequately sized offshore
provider.

(Critical Success Factors for Managing Offshore Software Development Projects)

Finally, A Practical Management and Engineering Approach to Offshore Collaboration

developed a set of recommendations or suggestions summarizing their most important
findings about improving the management of offshore projects. These recommendations are
listed in the following table, regrouped in6 different areas: Organizing for offshoring,
Communication and Management, Managing staff, Infrastructure issues, Managing
development and quality and data privacy.

Table…..

2.7 FRAMEWORK OF RESEARCH

TFM IMPORTANTE
 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter the procedures of a thesis on a scientific point of view will be stablished. The
research process will be explained, giving the reader a better understanding about the methods
applied in the research process. This will give the reader an overall view about how the study
has been conducted. Methodology part is of importance because it will be the connection
between the theoretical framework and the empirical study, explaining the logic between both
of them. This part will outline the research steps of this study: research method which will
explain the research approach, were the method chosen to develop the research will be
explained, research strategy explaining the different strategies and combinations, data
collection, data analysis and research quality issues.

Figure….

Research Research Data Data Research

Method Strategy
3.1 RESEARCH METHOD Collection Analysis quality
In order to answer the questions and sub-questions of this thesis, offshore projects have been
researched. From the beginning of this study, qualitative method has been chosen; this means
that semi-structured interviews was de main source of information. Since the questions to be
asked to the interviewees were open-ended, interviewees were able to answer and explain
their responses, and contribute with new information. Onsite project manager of each project
were interviewed, and in several cases, the onsite technical manager was interviewed too.
These interviews have delivered information about communication, distances, success of the
projects, management techniques… Information about team members that were involved in
the project were also given. The data gathered in the different interviews to different workers
engaged in the case projects will be analyzed taking into consideration the theoretical
framework developed at the beginning. (this means the reasons and feasibility of the chosen
methodology.)
Qualitative methods was chosen because questions like, what impact has offshoring had on
the organization cannot be asked in a quantitative method such as questionnaires, because we
would not give the interviewees the opportunity to express themselves.
3.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY- CASE STUDY

From a theoretical perspective, “a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a

contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context where the boundaries between
phenomenon and context are not clearly evident, and in which multiple sources of
evidence are used (Yin, 1984). As Richard Yin, 1984 said citated by Eric Patton and Steven,
“Empirical research advances only when it is accompanied by logical thinking, and not when
it is treated as a mechanistic endeavor”

It is essential when developing a case study methodology to use multiple sources of data to be
able to increase the reliability and validity of this thesis. Different case studies can combine
data collection sources such as interviews, questionnaires, documents and observations. ((The
Case for Case Studies in Management Research)

As mentioned before, the objective of this research thesis is to investigate what managerial
techniques should be changed or implemented when managing GDTs in order to achieve
success. To accomplish the objective, an empirical case study has been closed, developing a
main method of research, which are the interviews. In the following section, data collection
will be explained, and presented in more depth.

3.3 DATA COLLECTION

In order to answer the research questions, both types of data, primary data and secondary data,
are used. Both are significant and essentials to understand the research questions and the
overall project.
First, secondary data has been gather to be able to develop the literature review. To be able to
do this different published documents or even previous researches in the offshoring domain
have been investigated.
Moreover, the primary data is the base of this study, and this data has been collected from
different in-depth interviews. Interviews are very powerful in order to obtain first-hand and
in-depth information about peoples experiences. This creates more solid foundation for
further analysis. According to the sample company, there are not a lot of projects being
offshored, so, I do not have access to a large group of samples, being this an impediment for
quantitative method research.

The different sources of this kind of information where principally from onsite locations.
Inside the onsite location 2 different profiles where interviewed. This allows gathering in a
direct and fast way more information related to the research questions, and having different
points of view about the subject. In order to have different points of view of different projects,
different projects were selected depending on its size, the duration, the organization
complexity…This is the reason why interviews were chosen as the main method for data
collection.
In addition, the available information on the company website, and the different materials
provided by them, where also taken into consideration when collecting data. This added with
the interviews and comparing it with the theoretical framework were the base of the research.

3.3.1 IN DEPTH INTERVIEW

As said before, the data of this study is largely based on interviews, being one of the most
essential sources for a case study information. Within this thesis study, semi-structured
interviews were conducted within the case company Expleo Group. At the beginning, thirteen
people were contacted directly. Seven people agreed to participate in the study, two declined,
and the rest did not reply to repeated inquires. Given the situation that the case company is
going though right now, where 90% of the employees are in partial unemployment, it was
really hard to find people to do the interviews. At the end, in total, seven interviews were
scheduled and implemented with different questions, resulting in over eight hours of interview
time and thirty-five pages of interview transcriptions.
In order to get a wide variety of answers, different type of the interviewers were selected. We
included managers from both countries involved in the offshoring relationship, and in order to
have a technical point of view, technical managers were included in the interview patterns
from the onsite team. The benefit from including all this different perspectives in our analysis
was to get a complete view of the different and common issues when managing GDTs.
Due to the actual situation that we have at the moment, it wasn’t possible to schedule face to
face interviews, and finally, all the 9 interviews where done by Skype. Due to internet
connection, there were problems at the beginning of each interview, but these were solved.
All interviews were conducted in English or in French and recorded with an IPad application.
These audio recordings have allowed me to complete my notes, and to be more accurate
because not everything can be written down during the interviews. The interviewees’ were
asked permission to record the interview before starting. During the interviews, only the
researcher and the interviewees’ were present, and no interruption was done. At the beginning
of the interviews, a presentation of both was necessary to know each other, and a brief
presentation of the research topic. By this, interviewees could get familiar with the topic,
knowing in which points to focus, in order to avoid digression. After each interview, a
Microsoft Word file was created to transcribe all the interview.
The seven conducted interviews to both, Onsite Manager and Onsite technical managers in
this study are shown in the following table ..,
 No. Job title Project

Interviewee 1 Manager Onsite Project 1

Interviewee 2 Technical Manager Onsite Project 1

Interviewee 3 Manager Onsite Project 2

Interviewee 4 Technical Engineer Onsite Project 2

Interviewee 5 Manager Onsite Project 3

Interviewee 6 Technical Manager onsite Project 3

Interviewee 7 Manager Onsite Project 4

Table……

In order to be able to take place these interviews, an interview guide with a semi-structured
format was prepared. The aim of doing these semi-structured methodology interviews was to
have a flexible structure, and to bring forward new questions based on what the interviewees
answered. The interview guide was divided in different sections to be able to create a logical
sequence as the interview got along. Both, my Masters tutor and my work tutor, checked the
interview guide before doing the interviews. The guides interviews included several questions
about each phase of the offshore outsourcing process (decision and implementation) and some
detailed questions to understand the offshore project. The interviewees were also requested to
describe issues and situations in which they had to handle communication problems, cultural
and geographical distances, and what did they do to decrease this problems. In addition, the
interviewees were asked to evaluate the offshore project depending on the success of the
project on a scale between 0 and 10. At the end, each interview had at the end open questions,
to be able to give more detail on their answers and to add more value to this study.
Before each interview, when verifying the schedule time, the interview guide was sent to the
interviewee through email so they could look to the questions before the interview.
The interviewers that belong to the same group (Manager Onsite, Manager offsite or technical
manager offsite) where required to answer questions following the same pattern. The
questions of the three different groups vary to some extent. The full interview guide can be
found in the Appendix… Firstly, basic information such as how experienced the interviewees
are when doing offshore projects, the duration of the offshore projects, in which country were
the offshored teams. The second section focuses on the decision making of doing offshore.
The next section asked questions about communication along GDTs such as how was
communication between both teams, who was the contact point, how did they share
knowledge, how often they had visual meetings…This can bring different point of view,
showing the different behavior between managers in the different projects. In the fourth
section, a question about what are the main barriers when managing GDTs was asked in order
to bring forward the different obstacles caused by time, geographical and cultural distances.
The last section was about different management techniques used to manage GDTs. Also the
interviewees were supposed to list 5 CSF and which management areas should be improved
for future projects. The aim of this section is to collect the necessary information about
management techniques between onshore and offshore teams, to bring forward improvements
in order to help other offshore projects. At the end, some open questions were asked about
their thoughts about how to improve offshore projects in general.
Finally, all conducted interviews covered roughly the research question, being this one of the
most important parts because it would influence a lot the following parts of the research.

3.4 DATA ANALISYS

After doing all the interviews, data is processed in order to be able to analyze and take
conclusions. Interviews were listened again and transcribed in full in English and French.
Interviews from the same project was collected, and separated in two groups: project manager
and technical manager. Each interview has to be treated separately, to be able to do a
comparative analysis. This helped to identify the distinct and common features of the different
projects and points of views inside the same project. After transcribing all the interviews in a
Microsoft Word file, a Microsoft Excel file was used to be able to analyze the results.
The first section of the interviews asking about general information, was used to give a
description about who was the interviewee and to have a general description about the project.
The other sections were analyzed separately, finding at the end similarities and differences
between the projects.
3.5 RESEARCH QUALITY

In the following, the quality of the research methodology will be evaluated, using two of the
most suitable measurements methods, research validity and research reliability. Quality
research should pay more attention to the reliability and validity. Reliability means that out
method, data collection and data analysis must be solid information. Validity means both, that
the results concluded are correct, and that the conclusions can be applied to other projects
different from the ones that have been researched. In the following section, an explanation
about how these two aspects are applied in this research.

3.5.1 RESEARCH RELIABILITY

This research thesis started with introductory interviews. Project managers were chosen to be
interviewed because they had a complete overview of the project. They had information about
the technical part of the project but also about the customer and status of the project. Also 4
different projects were selected where some of them were still going on. This could provide
the research different points of view depending on the state of the project. Technical managers
were also interviewed, giving us different opinions from the project managers. This can be
argued to be low reliability since only 4 projects have been researched. This is because of the
situation we are now going through. Some projects cancelled the offshore part and decided to
do it onshore, projects that were starting they stopped, so we decided they were not a good
example for the research because the fail reasons were mainly due to COVID-19.
Nevertheless, in order to increase the reliability some efforts have been done. Before
conducting the interviews, the questionnaire was reviewed several times by the case company
and by the university tutor. This helped to optimize the questions, and to develop the best
questions to obtain quality responses. It was stablished which questions required extra
attention, and the basic information section in order to understand the project which would
help to understand better their situation. The questions were semi-structured, in order to get
the more information possible and interviews were recorded to decrease the risk of missing
any important fact and as well of misinterpretations.
In order to get reliable answers, even though that face-to-face interview couldn’t be possible,
Skype interviews with webcams were required. Even though we knew some of the
interviewees, the use of webcams created a feeling of trust between the interviewer and the
interviewee. This increased the honesty in answers and the reliability of the research.
Finally, it is important to highlight that the empirical findings are done in a French company
perspective, whereas the theoretical ones are done in a globally way. Therefore, the
combination of these two kinds of data can strengthen the solidity and feasibility of this study
and the conclusions.
3.5.2 RESEARCH VALIDITY

In order to determine the validity of this thesis research, the conclusions about the offshore
projects studied should be applied to other projects. Situations that really happened were
selected increasing this way the validity of the project. As mentioned before, due to COVID-
19 and the impact it has had in the case company, it was difficult to find more projects.
We tried to introduce other countries than India, to have a wider idea about cultural and time
distance. Since most of the offshored projects are offshored in the eastern part of the world,
the results are applicable to most of the offshored projects. We also tried to find different sizes
of projects, with different amount of people working onshore and offshore and different costs.
With this we can learn from the different project settings.
The in depth-interviews help to strengthen the validity of the thesis research because of the
relevant information collected. With this, the interviewer can put more emphasis on the areas
they are more interested in.
During the course of this thesis, regular meetings took place with both tutors of the case
company and of the university to verify the correct progress of this thesis.
4. EMPIRICAL STUDY

This chapter presents the results from the interviews. Firstly, the interviews done for the 4
projects will be described, focusing on the measures that lead to successful offshore projects.
Moreover, a summary about all the difficulties found when managing those projects will be
analysed.
The interviews provided information about decision-making, communication, knowledge
transfer, barriers and management techniques, providing general data about the project and
information about the distances between both trams. Furthermore, interviewees where asked
about coordination measures that were applied to the project to succeed.

4.1 PERFORMANCE OF THE OFFSHORE PROJECTS

In the following table, general information about the four projects studied is given. The aim of
this, it has to have a clear view of the projects in order to try to learn as much as possible to
help future offshoring projects. All the data comes from the interviews. The projects
information will be related to the performance, since this is what determines if a project is
successful.
Project Interviewees Project Offshoring Experience Team
length location in offshoring configuration
Project 1 Project manager 9 months India 8 people Onsite
onsite 1 and 2 years and 4-5 people
Technical manager Offshore
onsite 1
Project 2 Project Manager 16 months India 2 years 8 People Onsite
Onsite 2, Project and 6 people
Manager Offsite 2 Offshore for the
and Technical study part. For
manager onsite 2 the
manufacturing,
part 20 people
on the offshore
team.

Project 3 Project manager Ongoing India 10 years 80 people onsite

Onsite 3 and 4 people
offshore
Project 4 Project manager Ongoing Canada 2 years 30 people onsite
offshore 4 and 100 people
offshore

General information of the offshoring projects

4.1.1 PROJECT 1

When this offshore project began, the project was divided in three parts. The first one, the
onsite team in France was in charge of it. This part had to be send to India so they could
develop the second part, and they had to send it back to France, so the onsite team could do
the third and final part. Due to this set-up, the offshore team had to have the enough level to
be able to develop their part. However, because of the low level of knowledge of Indian
workers, major problems appeared in aspects of quality requirements, customers and
misunderstandings.
“…Once the first part of the project was finished, we send it to India, and after 2 weeks, we
received low quality work, with lots of mistakes and with none of the specifications that we
asked them for… the whole process needed to be done again, slowing overall progress…”
(Technical Manager Onsite project 1)

Offshore was introduces in the project late, so no training sessions before starting the project
could take place. Due to this, onsite technical manager tried to keep contact with the offshore
technical manager in order to share knowledge. He implemented different lessons and
tutorials to the Indian team to achieve the quality required by the client. The communication
among them was based on daily emails, and skype meetings between both technical
managers. Language barriers showed up during this lessons, and when writing and traducing
the tutorials in English.

“… I communicate often with the Indian team to give them technical lessons and solve
questions, but this is not enough, they continue making the same errors. It is hard to try to
teach by skype and emails, since you do not have direct contact with them and questions can
appear after the meeting. Language stopped the visual meetings, and there were a lot of
misunderstandings.…” (Technical Manager Onsite project 1)
Apart from this, to share knowledge, the offshore team had access to the intranet, so this was
the way of sharing documents. They could log into the system and get information’s there.
“…The negative point is that we didn’t have access to the client network. We only had access
if we were at the client's offices. This limited our workplace and document exchange with
both the client and India…”
According to the Project Manager Onsite 1, communication and coordination between both
teams was really important not only because the offshore team had to get all the information
from the onsite team, but also to be able to manage the global project. Weekly meetings
occurred between both project managers to check potential problems.
“…The Indian technical manager and I are very skilled in English language, so
communication between us went well. It’s really good to have someone who takes care of the
general problems on the offshore team...” (Onsite Manager Project 1)

Regarding the collaboration barriers, there were cultural issues because Indian workers were
very optimistic, and they always though they were on time.
“…At the end they didn’t send any document on time and the same errors were made…”
(Onsite Manager Project 1)
Coordination is important to be able to develop correctly the chain of work of the project.

“…When several teams are involved and one teams is not ready to continue working at the
right time, delays occurs…” (Onsite Manager Project 1)

Language issues appeared because the technical manager of the onshore team did not speak
English. Documents were not well translated to English, and lots of misunderstanding
occurred when technical manager had to explain or answer some questions to the offshore
team. In addition, several issues occurred when translating specific documents with technical
language. Google translate dint translate correctly the technical language, so the solution was
to search a technical dictionary, which all the members of the GDTs had access to.
“…There were many misunderstandings. I could understand Indian workers when they spoke
English, but each time I had to explain something to them, I had to explain it in French to the
onsite project manager, and then he had to explain it to the Indians in English…” (Technical
Manager Project 1)
Although finally the project was finished the best way possible, the onsite manager project 1
affirms that the overall project was not successful.

4.1.2 PROJECT 2

This Project 2 is one of the most successful offshoring projects in the case company, and it’s
still ongoing. This project started 10 years ago, and from the beginning, there has been no
problem.
“… It was my first offshore project, but from the first moment, we had no problems even
though is a large project with more than 90 workers in France and 5 workers in India…”
(Onsite Manager Project 2)
In order to share the knowledge, the project manager 2 affirms that they have very good
communication tools. They use mainly emails, and the offshore team has access to both, case
company intranet, and the client intranet.
“…Thanks to the wide networks, from India they can connect themselves to the client
network and work directly with their documents…We also used data exchange areas such as
share docs…” (Onsite Manager Project 2)
At the beginning of the project, 10 years ago, the offshore team went to France for training
sessions. They stayed for several months until the necessary skills were acquired, and they
were ready to work from India. Face-to-face meetings are quite crucial and usually helps a lot.
“… 10 years ago, we planned for them to come to France for several months, to get involved
in the project and to meet the French colleagues. This was sufficient to stablish a good
relation with them in order to work together. After this, we haven’t stablished more face to
face meetings, but we work so good that is not necessary, they have already the skills needed
…” (Onsite Manager Project 2)
As for the barriers along collaboration, Onsite project manager 2 mainly mentioned the
following difficulties according to his work experience. As for GDT communication, the
onsite Project manager had monthly contact with the offshore project manager and the
technical managers have daily contact by emails.
“…We only use emails, because when we started working, we didn’t have practical tools to
do video conferences, skype didn’t exist. This is an important point to improve and update…”
(Onsite technical Manager Project 2)
Moreover, as at the beginning there was an initial training of the Indian team, this supposed
both, and advantage and a barrier. It is a barrier because this reduces the type of activity to
send to India. From the moment you show Indian, team how to do something, you can only
give them this type of activity to do.
“…the big concern is that when you have people close by, it's very easy to train them, when
you have people at a distance it's more complicated… It is hard to get the Indians to work on
another kind of activity… It takes a good will to reduce this barrier…” (Onsite technical
Manager Project 2)
Although at the beginning there where some cultural differences as in the way things were
approached, it got better very quickly. In addition, it took a while for the onsite team to get
used to the Indian English accent. Regarding time zone difference, it can sometimes be a
barrier, but Onsite Project Manager 2 sees it more as an opportunity.
“…it's more of an opportunity than a barrier. If we sent them things to do in the evening,
they could get it done early in the morning, and when we came to work it was already
done…” (Onsite technical Manager Project 2)
Apart from this, Onsite project manager 2 affirms that management of both teams is working
well. He knew the goals and how to conduct them in the right way. With this, he detects
which part fits best for the Indian team, he decides the deadline, how to receive work done
and how to manage it.
“… I manage the team as if we were sending the activity to someone at home, except that they
are in India…” (Onsite Manager Project 2)
Moreover, when France receives the work done in India, they check the quality, and if there
are any changes to be made, the manager sends the work back to India.
"…By doing this, they learn. At the beginning, it takes a lot of time to do this, because you
have to explain the errors, and what they have to do to correct them, but after several times
doing this, Indian work improved quickly, and what it does is that it takes less time now...”
(Onsite technical Manager Project 2)
Although there were some barriers along the offshoring collaboration, this offshore project is
one of the most profitable project within the case company.
4.1.3 PROJECT 3

This project started in 2019, being in charge of the study and the manufacturing part of the
project, which had the offshore team in India. In the study part of the project was mainly done
in France, offshoring some activities in tibia, whereas the manufacturing part was directly
done on India, so the size of the offshoring team was bigger.
From the beginning of the project, the project managers from both sites have been having
daily calls to try to solve problems directly. Also the technical managers where in constant
contact to be able to answer questions, and share knowledge.
“… Everybody could have contact with the offshore team, but usually it was the technical
managers who had direct contact…” (Onsite Manager Project 3)
For this project, the offshore team did not receive initial lessons, because they had experience
and the level required from a previous offshore project. When sharing knowledge, Skype
conversations are most often chosen. Onshore team has the knowledge and the experience so
sharing the screen to show them how to do things is the way they work. They also use a wide
network in order to exchange and have access to all the documents. The most efficient way of
knowledge sharing from the point of view of the Onsite Project Manager 3, were the face-to-
face meetings, scheduled throughout the project.
“…The first two months of the project, the technical manager from India came to France, to
meet the team and to get used to the way we worked and the client requirements…” (Onsite
Manager Project 3)
“…During the project, the offshore Project Manager also came to France during 2 weeks to
see everything we were doing and to try to better understand the project looking towards the
manufacturing part…”(Onsite Manager Project 3)
Apart from the Indians going to France, the onsite technical manager and the onsite project
manager stablished lots of physical travel especially during the manufacturing part.
“… If we needed to explain something specific about manufacturing to the Indian team, it
was complicated to do it by skype, so we went to India and gave some training…We went a
total of 5 times to India, staying at the manufacture place, to help them, answer any question
and issues they had during the first production…” (Onsite Technical Manager Project 3)
Language was not a challenge, nearly every body in management and technical designs spoke
English. The only people that didn’t speak English were the manufacturers, painters, welders,
but it wasn’t an issue because there was always someone to translate. Even though language
wasn’t a challenge, many barriers existed. There were cultural difficulties, due to planning
and budget. Onsite technical manager affirmed that Indian people are very optimistic, and it
was complicated to get accurate information from them.
“… They always think they will be on time and under budget…We were able to see this,
because every time we went to offshore site, everything was more accurate and faster…”
(Onsite Technical Manager Project 3)

Cultural distances occurred between both teams. Onsite technical manager affirms that the
offshore team did not know how to say “no”, so even if they could not do it, they always said
“yes”. Moreover, offshore team could not do anything without the onsite approval. This
caused a loss of time due to geographical distance.
Material or standard equipment equivalence was a barrier also. As India is outside Europe,
they do not have many specific materials that where needed for the manufacture part.
“…Finding similar materials, with worse properties or sending the good materials form
Europe was a really big problem for us…” (Onsite Technical Manager Project 3)
Moreover, their management strategy was to manage the project as if there was only one
team, putting a bigger focus on the Indian part, paying attention to what they delivered. Onsite
technical manager manages the workloads, what they have to do, for when, how many people
should be working on the specific task, but their day a day management was done by the
offshore technical manager.
“…We had a common planning for both teams, so we were all involved in delivering on time
the products to our client. Costs were also common…” (Onsite Manager Project 3)
Even though, at the beginning, the first production deliverables was not on time, little by little,
the offshore team learned about their errors, and started working faster, and achieving the
final deadline.

4.1.4 PROJECT 4

This ongoing project is one of the few offshoring projects, which has involved offshoring
teams in Canada instead of India. This is due to the fact the fact that the installation of the
project had to be done in Canada, so some activities were offshored there. Therefore, the
biggest reason of introducing offshore strategy in this project was to reduce shipping costs.
“…The activities that were done onshore where the engineering activities and the activities
that were done offshore where manufacturing and installation in order to reduce shipping
costs…”
During the project, the offshore team was 3 times bigger the onshore team, and the project
managers where the only point of contact between both teams.
“…The reason for that is that the project manager of the onshore team he knows the people
in France, the different teams, and it’s easier not just for the language but also for the
proximity he has with all the onshore team. The same happens with me. In addition, some
French workers do not speak English, so when I try to talk to them it is very difficult…”
The communication between both project managers, onshore and offshore, was conducted by
three meetings per week.
“…I have a close contact with the offshore project manager. The first thing that we put in
place is that every 2 days we had a meeting from 7-8 in the morning. We answers questions
that I needed to check with the engineers and the other way round. We were in constant
communication. That is the most important thing…”
To ensure knowledge sharing, no training sessions were done at the beginning of the project,
because when the project started, they decided that for the installation part, French workers
were going to go to Canada to help Canadian workers.
“…As the French engineers are the ones that have done the engineering part, some French
workers should go to Canada to do the installation part. Due to the situation we have now
with COVID-19, the installation is going to be done by local Canadian companies, because
its not very clear what are the government regulations, and we do not know how this
pandemic is going to change. In terms of risks, its better having local people working on the
project rather than having to go to Canada because borders can be close and visas and
flights can be canceled…”
For the day a day share of knowledge, Microsoft teams is used to discuss and share screen.
When both project managers communicated, One note was used which is a file where both
can write the questions orders from high urgency to low urgency. Both project managers had
access constantly to this file. In addition, they used also Temis, which is like a webpage, to
exchange documents.
“…This system is very good because you can select who can have access to which folder.
This is helped a lot to select the documents only the client could have access to and also the
suppliers…”
In addition, face to face meetings where scheduled at the beginning during the engineering
phase. The offshore project manager assures that these travelling meetings have helped to
know the team and to stablish a relationship.
“…from the beginning of the project, the French PM told me to contact one guy because he
was the one who could answer my questions. I contacted him, but he did not answer me, he
answered directly the French PM. In December he came to Canada, he did not speak many
English so sometimes it was a bit complicated, but he was nice. Since that moment, every time
I contacted him or I send an email to him, he answered directly. At the end he was really nice
with me…”
Regarding to the barriers among collaborations, the offshore manager mentioned that some
cultural barriers existed between both teams, and there were some issues when traducing
documents. Onshore team send documents in French and not in English. Moreover, the time
zone difference was a problem at the beginning of the project, but when the offshore project
manager arrived, everything changed.
“…The fact of having me a European person in Canada is a communication tool that wasn’t
implemented at the beginning of the project but that from the moment that is was implemented
communication increased. Canadian client could contact me at any time of the day because
there was no time distance, we could have meetings in the afternoon, while normally they
could only have meetings in the morning with the French people…”

4.2 SUMMARY OF THE EMPIRICAL STUDY

Based on the different working experiences of the 4 different selected projects, all the
interviewees gave information about how often they communicated with the other teams,
which communication tools they used, which were the collaboration barriers between GDTs,
how they shared knowledge… etc. All this information was collected during the interviews,
more specifically during the in the open questions because the interviewee could express
himself better, and enter in detail in the area he wanted.
In order to have in mind which difficulties and which coordination measures are most
common in offshoring projects, an analysis of all the reasons for success and failure that each
interviewer gave has been done. In the table… you can find a summary of the difficulties
when working with GDTs that were identified in each project.

Projects Offshoring Difficulties in GDTs

Location
Project 1 India -Language barriers during the first meetings.

-Low level of knowledge from the offshore team.

-Recurring errors after giving them tutorials and lessons

-The offshore team will never say they do not understand something

-Feeling that the team changed each week

-Bad translation of several documents

Project 2 India -Offshore team limited to one only task because they were only
trained on that

-Different holidays that interrupts the work

-Insufficient visual conferences

 Project 3 India -Offshore team very optimistic, always thinking that they will deliver
on time and under budget

-Bad communication between the offshore team. Information didn’t

arrive to all of the members of the team

-Lots of traveling to make sure they understand everything

Project 4 Canada -Complicated to stablish communication before the first face to face
meeting

-There were a lot of changes on the requirements made by the client/

changes of the budget.

-Traveling problems due to COVID-19. This can cause problems on

the installation part of the project

-Lack of quality when doing the engineering part

- Culture problems between the Client and the onshore team

Table….

According to the results after doing the interviews of the different projects, the tools more
used in order to share knowledge are Skype, Teams, Onenote, emails, Temis, wide
networks… Moving forward for the meetings, regular video meeting was used by all the team
members of each project whereas only some projects had physical meetings.
5. ANALYSIS

Once the instruments for collecting the information were applied, the corresponding treatment
was carried out for their analysis, since the information that it will yield will indicate the
conclusions reached by the investigation. An individual analysis has been used instead of
using a specialized software, because my personal experience developing an offshore project
can help me to focus on what is more important to analyse.
This chapter compares and analyses the results from the interviews and the existing theories
or previous studies, which will lead to observations. For this study, we will focus on four big
sections. These sections are the same ones used of the theoretical framework: offshoring
process, benefits, challenges and critical success factors. As stated in previous chapters, with
this study we can discuss about which management measures lead to success when
developing offshore projects. This research focuses on the benefits of offshore, on distance
and communication challenges and the critical success factors.
Throughout the following chapter, comparisons and discussions will be stablished, in order to
answer the research question, and to be able to draw conclusions.

5.1 OFFSHORING PROCESS

In order to achieve project suitability, deciding whether to offshore the project or not is a
crucial decision. Most firms decide to offshore in order to compete with other firms due to the
cost efficiency. This is way firms to have a clear idea of what they are doing when offshoring
and in order to succeed, they must study carefully all parts of the project.
According to the theoretical framework, taking the decision to offshore is one of the most
important determinants of success, and to do it correctly, the decision must be taken after
using the 4M approach. ( Figure….) Each of the four approaches must be taken into
consideration and accepted before starting the offshoring strategy in order to avoid failure.
When developing the empirical study, some questions have been asked regarding the
decision-making procedure. All the project managers answered: “It’s the client who implies
the fact that we have to do offshore…”. As the case company is a service company, normally
is the client who decides whether the project has to be done onshore or offshore. Even though
it is the client who implies this requirements, the case company has to study where to offshore
and when to do it in order to answer the request for proposal (RFP).
Therefore, the two main factors studied by the case company when answering the RFP and
analysing viability and costs is the location of the offshore team and the project
characteristics. The client may sometimes impose the offshoring location, mostly if the
installation of the product must be done in a certain country. However, if this is not the case,
as Onsite Manager Project 3 mentioned, the offshore team and location can be chosen because
they have already worked together and they have knowledge on towards some kinds of
projects. Onsite Manager Project 1 mentioned that the location of his project was chosen
because the case company had already worked with them before, but they did not really had
the necessary knowledge to develop the project. Building up long-term relationship is the
most important point for companies.
Internal factors within in project characteristics are important factors to check. This includes
if the project is urgent, or if it is a large/long project. Normally, long projects are more
suitable to introduce offshore team, because the slow knowledge transfer and the challenges
that can appear at the beginning will be worthwhile. Onsite Manager Project 1 affirms that his
project was not worthwhile to do offshore because it was a small project, but it was the client
who decided.
“If it’s a small project, and you have the choice to decide if offshore should take place or not,
you should take into consideration that the longer the project the more time you have to
transfer knowledge and to recover the decrease of production...”
As stated before, no specific process exists at the case company, but most of the project
managers take into consideration the two factors mentioned before. No further research could
be done about the offshore process.

5.2 BENEFITS AND RISKS OF THE OFFSHORE STRATEGY

According to the results of the empirical study, largely, all the interviewees knew the possible
benefits and positive aspects about the offshore strategy. Taking into consideration the theory,
the following benefits brought out by offshoring strategy were lower labour costs, increased
quality, follow the sun, entering new markets and access to new knowledge. The first three of
them were mentioned several times during the course of the interviews, whereas the case
company has not mentioned entering new markets, which could be a future fact to be
analysed.
When talking about cost savings, which is the advantage mostly mentioned by the
interviewees when offshoring, all managers affirmed that it was important and real, but not
necessary. Onsite Project manager 3 affirmed that with all the journeys they did to India, at
the end the money they saved on labour costs, they spend it on airplane tickets and hotels.
Onsite Manager Project 4 mentioned that thanks to offshoring, not only labour costs were
reduced, but also shipping costs because the installation of the project had to be done in the
offshore country. No transportation of the product was needed between the onsite and
offshore location, so time was also reduced.
As stated in the literature review, project suitability can be achieved due to the high quality of
the work done offshore. However, within this case firm, offshoring strategy was considered
even if the offshore team did not have the quality required to develop the work. This was due
to the fact that the case company focuses on longer term results, believing that even though at
the beginning it’s going to be difficult to show them how to work, the long term objectives
will be reached.
Focusing on the risks, the interviewees mentioned all the risks explained in the theoretical
framework being communication and coordination, both, the most mentioned. Interviewees
also highlighted that even if the production decreased when the offshore team was introduced
in the project because of geographical distance, once they knew what they had to do and they
understood everything, the offshore team arrived to catch up with the work they could not do
before.
Apart from these risks, the lack of engineering competence was mentioned several times
during the interviews. Normally, the offshore team does not have the level required to do the
work, so identify the knowledge gaps from the beginning and trying to fill them is an
alternative to try to success. Doing daily clarifications about the engineering needs does not
always work, because the same errors continue to appear, but as the research information
says, building trust and sharing information can help to identify the competence problems.
The Onsite Manager Project 1 mentioned that a lack of coordination between both teams was
evident when developing the project. This coordination problem slows the overall progress of
the project, causing delays when multiple things were done at the same time, or when there is
no communication between teams, and work is done twice.

5.3 CHALLENGES/ BOUNDARIES /DIFFERENCES

Once we know the key points of taking the decision to offshore, and what are the positive
areas of offshoring, challenges and collaboration efficiency between onsite and offsite teams
needs to be investigated. All projects analysed in this study had major challenges during
engineering phase. Engineering issues have a large impact on the overall project success
causing delays on the designs of the project, the construction and often they have to redo the
work because the quality want high enough.
As stablished in the theory, challenges can be classified in three different distances: language
distance, geographical distance and cultural and religious distance. These distances may vary
to some extend depending on the offshore country and the offshore project.
As mentioned before, a common remark among all the interviewees about the four projects
was that the communication and coordination of the GDTs was not easy to control. In every
project, different problems have arisen and project managers affirm that it would have been
easier if they have known the problems before starting the offshore project in order to be
prepared and know how to act.
The barriers mentioned by the interviewees can be categorized taking into consideration the
three distances mentioned before: language distance, geographical distance and cultural and
religious distance.

Dimensions Problems
Language distance - It took a while to get used to the Indian English accent
(Onsite Manager Project 2)
- Problems translating documents ( onsite manager 1 and
offshore project manager 4)
- Technical manager onsite didn’t speak English (onsite
manager 1)

Geographical distance - No face to face meetings (Onsite manager 1)

Cultural and religious
distance
- High costs when having face to face meetings ( Onsite
Manager 3)
- When having face to face meetings, hard to adapt to Indian
way of working (Onsite manager 3)
- Offshore team could not start working until they had the
approval of the onshore team, so they lost time.
- Traveling problems due to COVID-19 (offshore manager 4)
- Indians are very optimistic; they always think that they are
on time and under budget.
- Indians can’t say no
- The way a person explains things can cause problems
( offshore manager 4)

Table….

The results show that all types of distances influences the success and cause direct problems
on GDTs. The greater the distance between both GDTs teams the more time and money will
be needed in order to have face-to-face meetings, which leads to communication and
knowledge transfer problems.
Firstly, when offshore team and onsite team have different mother tongues, English is the
main language of communication. This can cause very important problems, because in both
western and eastern countries, English skills are not very developed, and accent can also be a
barrier. This can affects knowledge sharing, and translation of documents. Even though these
difficulties can affect the offshoring success, time and patience is required in order reduce this
challenge, and to get used to it. It is important to choose correctly every member of your
onsite team and make sure their English level is high enough. Also, unify terminologies, or
use specific dictionaries of the type of sector you are working on can decrease the language
barrier during the offshore project.
Furthermore, geographical challenges is bigger when you do not have the necessary tools to
communicate and share knowledge as onsite Manager 2. Sometimes meeting face to face it’s
impossible because it’s expensive, so communication tools such as skype must be added in
every meeting, in order to reduce the geographical distance and increase the communication
of the two sides of the GDTs.
Finally, cultural and religious distance causes less problems than the other two distances
mentioned above, but they are trickier. Different thinking and behaviour ways have been
mention during the interviews, and they are difficult to reduce. As the technical manager of
project 3 says, Indian people are very optimistic; they always think that they are under budget
and on time. This is something that, as a project manager, is impossible to avoid, but its
something to have in mind.
As mentioned in the theoretical part, it is important to understand five different cultural
dimensions explained in the table…. In order to manage the GDTs, the cultural difference
between both sides of the GDT must be understood, and studied before starting the offshoring
project. During the four different projects that are being studied, onsite team members have
fond lots of cultural differences between them and Indian or Canadian workers. In the
following table, the study of the differences between three countries, France, India and
Canada has been done. This table shows the cultural distances between the GDTs in the case
company, as a result of the interviews done to the Onsite Manager of the four projects.

French Indian Canadian

Individualism- Individual Group-orientated Individual
Collectivism
Power distance Low. Everyone has High. Respect to Lower than in
the right to express managers France
his or her selves.
Time orientation Monochromic culture Polychromic culture Monochromic
culture
Communication Explicit messages They say yes to Explicit
everything messages
Universalism- Particularism culture
Particularism

Table…

In conclusion, all type of challenges pay an important role when managing offshore projects.
Therefore, the onsite project managers should analyse and consider all these challenges at the
beginning of each project before choosing the strategy and the offshore partner.
 5.4 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

Critical success factors are one of the most important points of this research. In order to
improve and to help further offshore project, it is really useful to have in mind the successful
factors of other projects to be able to implement them in other offshore projects to achieve
success.
When developing the interviews, several questions were asked about the success of the
project with regard to the scope, the quality, time and costs. The following table shows the
successfulness for the four projects within a range of 0 to 10, being zero unsuccessful and 10
successful. Projects with an overall success lower or equal than five are marked as
unsuccessful with colour red. The successful projects with a score higher than five are marked
in white.

Project Scope Quality Time Costs Overall success

S Q T C (S+Q+T+C)/4

Project 1 6 4 5 5 5
Project 2 7.5 8 8.5 8 8
Project 3 8.5 8.5 8 8 8.25
Project 4 8.5 6 10 8.5 8.25

Legend
Red Cell colour Unsuccessful Project
White cell colour Successful project

The different projects mentioned different characteristics and followed different ways to
achieve success. For project 1, even though the project was finished, onsite manager project 1
mentioned that things could have been managed better, and for him, the overall project was
not successful. As for the other three projects, the managers mentioned overall successfulness,
highlighting the good preparation as an avoidance to failure. Preparation of the performance,
the distances between both teams, preparation of the amount of activity that is going to be
done onshore and offshore.
As mentioned before, even though one of the main risks of introducing an offshore team is the
decrease of the production, when asking an overall view of the scope of the project, project
managers give a positive score. This is because, as project managers mentioned several times
during the interviewees, at the beginning the production decreases because they do not have
the knowledge, but once they have it, the offshore teams catch up the work that hasn’t been
done before.

Apart from this, each interviewee mentioned different critical success factor for their projects.
These CSF are showed in the following table describing which aspects are important to pay
attention to in a project in order to success.
Projects Offshoring Critical success factors
Location
Project 1 India -Team selection

-Meetings every day (Efficient communication)

-Tutorial for training sessions

-
Project 2 India -The initial training.

-The management of the onshore team.

-Wide network

-The language skills of both teams

-The effort of the offshore site

Project 3 India -Treat the offshoring team as part of the onsite team.(Trust)

-Have experience in offshoring project, and having experienced

people

-Face-to-face meetings in India and in France

-Flexibility of the client

-The team didn’t change during the project

Project 4 Canada -Using teams in order to communicate. Without this it would have
been impossible to stablish communication

-Local workshops more productive than phone workshops

-European manager in the offshore team

-Global network

Table….
The more relevant aspect of the previous table is that all the CSF mentioned by the onsite
managers and the technical managers are applicable to future offshore projects with GDTs.
As described in the theoretical framework, the six more important CSF selected were:
“Trust”, “Efficient communication”, “Cultural understanding”, “Relationship onsite and
offshore”, “Contact type” and “Efficient knowledge transfer”.
In order to see which successful factors are more common in the project, we analysed all the
critical success factors of each project that were given by the project managers during the
interviews. The reasons for success of project 1 were probably not good enough, because the
project manager mentioned that the overall successfulness was only five. Mostly the other
three projects have been taken into consideration when selecting the more successful factors
when managing an offshore project. The success factors are the following:
- Efficient communication
-Share knowledge from the beginning (Initial training, face-to-face meetings, teams,
skype, share screen, wide network…).
-Trust between both teams.
-Introducing a European manager on the offshore team.

The unique inspiring opinion to add to the previous successful factors is the fact that when
developing the project 4, the project manager was send to the offshore country to manage the
project in Canada. This idea is quite interesting, to try to see the offshore part from another
point of view, to reduce cultural distances and to try to manage the offshore team as a
European team, as a whole.
 5.5 SUMMARY OF THE REASONS OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE

All the reason of success and failure given by the interviewees have been analyzed, and
classified into the different coordination categories mentioned in the previous chapter:
Standards, planning, formal communication adjustment and informal communication
adjustment. With this procedure, it is possible to analyze which of the categories is more
effective. In the following table, all the different reasons for success or failure mentioned
during interviews can be seen:

Coordination category Reasons for success Reasons for failure

Standards: -The flow of the documents was
easy.
-The tools used to share
documents where easy to used and
accessible to every member of the
team.
Planning: -Good planning between both
teams.
-The project was split into
different parts.
-The first part of the project was
done by the onsite team and once
the project was following the
good path, the offshore team
started working.
-There were clear deadlines
stablished by the onshore team.
-Difficult to share the quality
requirements with the offshore
team.
-Different ideas about different
concepts.
-Offshore team did not have very
clear what they had to do.
-At the end, lots of changes
requested by the client, which cost
money and time.
-The offshore team was involved in
the project very late.
-Projects offshore overlapping,
team rotation.
-Quick start of the project, no time
to do a proper planning.

Formal communication -Communication in English.
adjustment: -The requirements of the project
were studied with the offshore
team.
-Several journeys to meet the
other team.
-The offshore team did not involve
a lot in the project.
-The requirements were unclear for
the offshore team. Information not
well explained to the offshore team.
-Not enough work was sent
offshore
Offshore team was not involved in
non-technical tasks.
-The documents send by the client
 were in French.

Informal communication -European worker was introduced -High cultural differences.

adjustment: in the offshore team. -Offshore team very optimistic.
-All the information about the -Offshore team could not say “no”.
project was available in a wide -Different communication points
network. between both teams.
-One communication point -Onshore team did not provide as
between both teams. much communication as needed to
the offshore team.

Table

Most of the arguments for failure are the opposite of a success argument.

Firstly, the reasons of failure and success for the coordination standards were not important
reasons that could determine success or failure of the four offshore projects. Moreover,
project managers mentioned that a cause of failure as introducing too late the offshore team
on the project. Changes and unclear deadlines were mentioned as failure, while success
projects affirms to have clear planning’s. To achieve success, functionalities and
responsibilities must be explained from the beginning so everyone knows what they have to
do, whereas of failure, information was not well transferred to the offshore team, so they
didn’t have clear what they had to do. A lot of communication and share knowledge must be
present to success with wide network or having a contact point. For failure, high cultural
differences was mentioned, and not a lot transfer of information from the offshore team to the
onsite team.

The coordination measure that is more effective to achieve success. Almost all the reasons
given for success consists on planning, formal and informal communication adjustment. AN
improper planning is one of the major reasons for failure, but it was not mentioned as a major
cause of success. On the other hand, both, formal and informal communication were
mentioned as a major cause of success.

5.6 IMPROVEMENTS WHEN MANAGING GDTS

After analyzing both, the theories and the empirical findings, several improvements could be
mentioned. By this, this thesis would not only study what are the main issues when managing
an offshore project, but also, improvements will be mentioned in order to help other
managers to improve their ways of managing in order to succeed. These improvements have
been mentioned by the interviewees during the different interviews and have been analyzed
and compared with the theoretical findings, being the empirical findings persuasive answers
since they are based on real life experiences from previous offshore projects.
 From the theoretical point of view, coordination, including trust and quality liaisons, and
communication are the two measures more mentioned by other researchers in order to achieve
a better collaboration. Researchers highlighted that a good coordination and communication
structure must be implemented in order to achieve a satisfactory collaboration between GDTs.
This structure must ensure the correct fluidity of information, making sure that the correct
people receives the correct information.

Through the interviews, a question related to the improvements was done to the interviewees.
The detailed opinions brought forward by onshore managers about potential improvements
are listed in the table below. These improvements were viewed by the interviewees as
effective for achieving success.
Improvements
Onsite Manager  Face to face meetings with the offshore team.
Project 1  Share knowledge and training sessions before starting the project.
 Avoid changing the offshore engineers.
 Stablish smaller phases and limit duration to keep control.

Onsite Technical  Implement everyday short meetings (15-30 minutes) with the
Manager Project 1 offshore technical manager in order to answer technical questions.
 Increase knowledge and quality of the work done offshore.
 Engage offshoring team in the project.
 When discussing technical issues, all technical members of the team
should be listening.
 Provide the offshore team the documents translated.
Onsite Manager  Introduce visual meetings.
Project 2  Manage the offshore team as if it was and onsite team.

Onsite Manager  Place from the beginning an onsite manager offshore.

Project 3  Group meetings to clarify each person responsibility and the right
person to ask.
 Use the same teams as in previous offshore projects
 Write emails summarizing the important information said during the
meeting putting every member of the team in copy, to make sure
information arrives to everyone.

Onsite Technical  Stablish less formal meetings to create a good atmosphere.

Manager Project 3  Share with the offshore team enough knowledge so the time
distance is not an issue.
 Clarify what the offshore team should do and what they should not
do.
 Check work that comes from the offshore team.
Onsite Manager  Stablish good knowledge sharing tools.
Project 4  Develop open channels of formal communication.
 Write all the details of each conversation so information does not
get lost.
 List of all the documents that have to be done
  Involve every team member on the workshops

Table….

Summarizing the recommendations given above, it is obvious that the vast majority of the
improvements recommendations are communication based. Communication must be
improved within a GDT with all the members of the team, but specially for the project
managers. Project managers are in charge of the first contact with the offshore team, they
have to set up the team, clarify the tasks that each team has to develop, manage both teams
during the overall project, stablish regular meetings and make sure efficient knowledge
sharing between technical managers is taking place.

Furthermore, GDTs members must also take into consideration communication suggestions.
They need to make sure that collaboration, education and sharing knowledge are taking place
during the project. It is also important that the information arrives to every member of the
team and that everybody knows who the right person to ask. Necessary training sessions must
also be developed from the beginning and during all the project, as well as short daily
meetings.

Considering the results found by A Practical Management and Engineering Approach to

Offshore Collaboration a vast majority of the recommendations stipulated fit with the answers
given during the interviews. Moving away from the most common answers, the Onsite
Manager Project 3 said that it is necessary to send an onsite worker to the offshore site to
work there during the project. This will help communication between both teams, and the
onsite team could believe more on the results of the offshore team. More work and higher
quality work could be send and asked to the offshore team, because there will be one person
giving them continuous training sessions. This measure was already stablished by the onsite
manager project 4 and it was highlighted as a critical success factor for his project.

According to the Onsite Manager Project 3 the onsite and offshore teams should be the same
along different offshore projects. This will help GDTs to improve all together, and not to start
from zero on each offshore project. This improvement is a measure to take into consideration
in order to develop the offshore project with the best quality and eliminating barriers as time
passes over.

Onsite Manager 2 mentioned that managing the offshore team as it if was a prolongation of
your team can eliminate barriers and could help the understanding of the way of working of
the offshore team. It is an important recommendation, that for sure, not all project managers
takes it into consideration.

As for the other recommendations mentioned by the other onsite managers, onsite manager
project 4 stablished that there were some managerial tools that were missing, that they were
not using at all and that could be very useful for both teams and the client. This could be a list
of all the documents that must be done and to follow up the state of these documents. Also
onshore manager project 4 highlighted that there was a lack of interest of the offshore team,
and some team members didn’t went to de workshops. The management of the priorities in
the project was not done, they were not able to fix a deadline date to say to the client because
they didn’t know exactly which documents they had to do.

6. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENATIONS

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