Outsourcing and remote team management - any success stories?

[SWade-Apicella]

Hello all,

For nearly two years (!) we at the UNISDR Information Management Unit have been trying to build capacity of a small editorial web production team in Bhutan to help us with content tracking, appropriate content selection and web formatting within our subject (disaster risk reduction). Unfortunately, it hasn't been working out so well.

Generally speaking, we tend either not to get a good enough content selection and a lot of repeated mistakes (one step forward, two back).

We have provided documented guidance (on DRR, search, selection, web style, formatting, CMS) and remote training plus one 2-week on-site training in Bhutan, weekly calls (with some gaps), and daily Skype support.

There are issues of connectivity (network availability and stability), but the back-end search tool used by the team is good.

Are our expectations just too high? Is our subject so difficult? Does the Bhutanese work style just not match ours? Or maybe, has our training and support just been too little or just plain terrible? I'd like to think not.. but I would like to either urgently improve our situation or find a new solution.

If you have had experience outsourcing and/or managing remote teams (especially for editorial work, not just tech dev or client support) and it's been great, or you found yourself asking similar questions and were able to improve your situation, could you please either share your story with the Web Group, or contact me?

We are really looking for a good long-term solution. Ideas and experience welcome. We will, of course, share more of our experience, too if anyone's interested in more info.

Thanks,
Sarah


Sarah Wade-Apicella
UNISDR, Managing Editor, PreventionWeb
swade...@gmail.com or wade-a...@un.org

[Des Bravington]

Hi Sarah,

Wow - very interesting situation and one that is not uncommon I am sure. I remember a situation when I was working with the internal comms team at Oxfam where the plan was to run a Q&A online using a blog - this worked great for the HQ but not so great elsewhere although there were lots of comms etc leading up to the "event", local training given in regional centres etc.

One thing that I learned was one of expectations - just because the plan/approach etc works in the place where it is initiated from does not mean it will automatically work elsewhere (obviously). Furthermore, does that planned approach suit the HQ (in the Oxfam example) or really suit that local team ... and linked to this ... what will the local team get from the initiative (if you were them, why would you be motivated to do things that way)?

I get the feeling that you have an unmet expectation, feel you have done all you can to set that out/train and support them? I wonder if the team in Bhutan are completely on board with the work/idea, and if you had a conversation about what you are getting v what you want you can make them part of finding a solution?

I hope that helps although I may not have answered your question directly. For info, I ran the Oxfam GB collaboration and information management systems between 2007 and 2010, and am a current member of the J Boye "Intranet Expert" Group. Happy to help you think this through or support in any way I can.

Best,

Des

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[Andrew Andrea]

Hi Sarah, 

What a fascinating scenario! 

My personal opinion is based on a perception about how heavily dependant we are on new technologies to achieve what we have evolved to do naturally as human beings.

Obviously not knowing the full story, the key part of your message seems to be the third paragraph. Most of what has been done has been remote. Perhaps too remote? I do not think this is the most effective way of building capacity or that the technical aspects are the obstacle. Sometimes you just cannot beat, face to face human interaction, continual training and coaching.  In this case it seems there has not been enough. 

It reminds me of the mistakes we all make with communications strategies - where we confuse products and outputs (publications, online courses etc) with practical impact (change in behavior).

Perhaps a commitment to a medium to long-term period in Bhutan from those who know what is needed and with the skills to communicate that, is what is actually needed.

I do believe there can be effective remote project management, and even remote consultancies, but only from a common starting point that requires a heavy investment in close interaction.

Just my two penny's worth. I would be very interested to hear what others think too. 

Andy

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[Timo Luege]

Hi Sarah,

I think ICRC has been doing this for a couple of years, but I'm not sure whether this only involved translations that were managed remotely and fed back into the CMS or whether the remote staff members also produced content from scratch. Gael Hurlimann would know more. Send me an email if you need his email address.

Best,

Timo

[Pierre Spring]

Hi,

> If you have had experience outsourcing and/or managing remote teams (especially for editorial work, not just tech dev or client support) and it's been great, or you found yourself asking similar questions and were able to improve your situation, could you please either share your story with the Web Group

We've had a lot of remote workers at Nelmio and unfortunately it
didn't really work out for us. I don't know much about editorial work,
as we are a tech company.

We had a hard time finding talented developers in Zurich. So we
considered remote employees. Having attended many international
developer conferences, it was fairly simple to find talented people
from all over Europe, essentially lurking them with swiss salaries.

We were fully aware that it would be a log of work to pass the vision
and strategy to the remote workers. The entire company met for a week
every two month, staying in a hotel somewhere in Europe and working on
our projects in the same room. We had a Skype chat, did daily standup
meetings over Skype, a private G+ community for link sharing, weekly
retrospectives, etc...

Everyone identified with the company, we had a good vibe, good projects.

But after a year we had to stop the exercise.

We didn't manage to convey a company philosophy over Skype. We didn't
have a common understanding of good or bad software, we'd wait too
long to ask our coworkers for help, etc... After 8 month people
started being worn out, less enthusiastic about the bi-monthly
meet-ups, and there was an ever growing disconnect.

Out of the 4 people that worked remotely, only one has remained. The
others lost their motivation and became unproductive. They were too
far away from the core team. The software they produced fell trough in
QA.

We lived in a radius of 2500 km and pretty much share the same
culture, the same desire to grow our company, work on relevant
projects, produce decent code, etc... It had to work out. But it
didn't.

I have the feeling it is very difficult to be successfully remotely
and I am glad that we've come back to sharing the same office.

Pierre

[Damir Simunic]

The legend has it that Bill Gates insisted all Microsoft’s software developers should work in company’s Redmond offices, to be able to meet face to face and interact freely. Cusumano and Selby have a great account of this in their 1996 book "Microsoft Secret." Highly recommended reading.

Through painful trial and error (having remote offices for years, with and without a trusted manager, working remotely with people who work from their homes, working with freelancers, etc), I found that the only way to produce something of acceptable quality is to fly people to my office here in Nyon and work together. Engaging people remotely for any non-trivial intellectual work was a waste of time and money, even when working with those same people who repeatedly worked from my office before. 

For standardized tasks, like installing servers to specification, server and database administration, there were never problems working with people remotely. Even then, I make a point of meeting at least once a year if not more often, and even people that do the most trivial work for me on a continuing basis. 

Like others already said, un-mediated human contact seems to be the key in conveying one's ideas and desires (what I like to call "high bandwidth" communication).

Best,

Damir

[Genc Kastrati]

Agreeing with Damir. To add, you can get a better sense of how motivated/qualified a person is when they are close and within sight. Sometimes I see startups that immediately outsource design, development, even marketing. They risk a lot as they deal with people who just want the payoff, and are not in it because they believe in the product/mission/etc. These often have issues with their "contractors" and things are never done properly. I believe same applies to any organisation that outsources or contracts external "expertise" which often times is protected by a wall of marketing buzzwords.

One thing that does help is constant contact, which can be done with chat tools. Having everyone online and present (with the little green icon) gives a sense of presence that could mimic turning around and asking a question in the same room.

2013/8/21 Damir Simunic <damir....@gmail.com>

--
- G.K.

[Fernando Zarur]

Hi Sarah et al,

I had a very good experience working teams in the past at WWF and in a somewhat different set up at the world economic forum. We are repeating some of that experience where I work now, at the Internet Society. 

I had the experience of both, working with a team of contractors (that we considered part of our team) and with an outsourcing company. In both cases we were able to deliver great results at a very good return of investment.

However, I do agree that a virtual team works well under specific conditions and for specific types of tasks. Still, we worked with things like design, content production, training as well as typical website maintenance and CMS issues.

I also agree that remote work has to be complemented by face-to-face meetings, a very good bond between the team and the right set of tools. Finally, I would add organizational culture into the mix, as not every organization is ready to embrace this kind of work.

I think it's hard to capture this discussion on an email and I'll be happy to talk to you further if you're interested in to describe how I work to the past. Just send me an email: fernand...@gmail.com

Best,

FZ

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[Kian Rieben]

Hi Sarah, hi all,

Same here at Inovae. We have 4 years of remote team management experiences. Not all of them have been fully successful but we succeed build a stable and long term team. Honestly, I am not sure about every success factors. Commitment to the project, mutual trust and respect are, as always, the key human factors. For this face-to-face meetings at some points can help a lot for that. On the management side, good and well integrated online tools are a must as well. I will be happy to discuss about it further. If we are several GWG members interested, maybe this subject deserve an event? Even small and informal...

Best,
Kian  

Kian RIEBEN
4 Avenue de la Martinière
1225 Chêne-Bourg
CH-Suisse

+41 (0)76 586 29 27
+41 (0)22 348 94 24
kian....@gmail.com

[Antonella Quacchia]

Hi to all,

 

I have had now about a year's experience with outsourcing web site management and CMS operations to a team in India. It has not always been easy, but  overall it is a successful experience. The project manager of the team off-shore had already worked at the ILO for some time and could bring his knowledge of the ILO infrastructure and culture, back to his team. I guess this was a key factor to establish trust and confidence.

 

On the management side, what helps is to have a fairly rigid system of tracking activities and measuring results.

 

If anyone is interested in sharing experiences, I'd be happy to meet with the group

 

All best

Antonella

 

>>> Kian Rieben <kian....@gmail.com> 29.08.2013 09:08 >>>

Hi Sarah, hi all,

Same here at Inovae. We have 4 years of remote team management experiences. Not all of them have been fully successful but we succeed build a stable and long term team. Honestly, I am not sure about every success factors. Commitment to the project, mutual trust and respect are, as always, the key human factors. For this face-to-face meetings at some points can help a lot for that. On the management side, good and well integrated online tools are a must as well. I will be happy to discuss about it further. If we are several GWG members interested, maybe this subject deserve an event? Even small and informal...

Best,
Kian

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Fernando Zarur <fernand...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Sarah et al,

I had a very good experience working teams in the past at WWF and in a somewhat different set up at the world economic forum. We are repeating some of that experience where I work now, at the Internet Society.

I had the experience of both, working with a team of contractors (that we considered part of our team) and with an outsourcing company. In both cases we were able to deliver great results at a very good return of investment.

However, I do agree that a virtual team works well under specific conditions and for specific types of tasks. Still, we worked with things like design, content production, training as well as typical website maintenance and CMS issues.

I also agree that remote work has to be complemented by face-to-face meetings, a very good bond between the team and the right set of tools. Finally, I would add organizational culture into the mix, as not every organization is ready to embrace this kind of work.

I think it's hard to capture this discussion on an email and I'll be happy to talk to you further if you're interested in to describe how I work to the past. Just send me an email: fernand...@gmail.com

Best,

FZ

On Wednesday, August 21, 2013, Genc Kastrati wrote:

Agreeing with Damir. To add, you can get a better sense of how motivated/qualified a person is when they are close and within sight. Sometimes I see startups that immediately outsource design, development, even marketing. They risk a lot as they deal with people who just want the payoff, and are not in it because they believe in the product/mission/etc. These often have issues with their "contractors" and things are never done properly. I believe same applies to any organisation that outsources or contracts external "expertise" which often times is protected by a wall of marketing buzzwords.

One thing that does help is constant contact, which can be done with chat tools. Having everyone online and present (with the little green icon) gives a sense of presence that could mimic turning around and asking a question in the same room.

2013/8/21 Damir Simunic <damir....@gmail.com>

The legend has it that Bill Gates insisted all Microsoft’s software developers should work in company’s Redmond offices, to be able to meet face to face and interact freely. Cusumano and Selby have a great account of this in their 1996 book "Microsoft Secret." Highly recommended reading.

--
- G.K.

--
Kian RIEBEN
4 Avenue de la Martinière
1225 Chêne-Bourg

CH-Suisse

+41 (0)76 586 29 27
+41 (0)22 348 94 24
kian....@gmail.com

--

The Geneva Web Group is a Community of Practice for Internet professionals. Informal meetings are held in Geneva, Switzerland 3-4 times per year.
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[Ernst Décsey]

Had experience coordinating a team in India for a large intranet migration project that then translated into an ongoing offshore publication agreement. It worked because we had someone in India with excellent communication skills and whom we could trust and rely on blindly to manage the rest of the team offshore. That implied having this person onsite for a while (to build trust and mutual understanding), followed by regular (weekly) calls / skype.