Take a Look at Follow-the-Sun IT

When I was visiting with a CIO at a major telecommunications company last year, he shared with me that if it hadn’t been for “follow-the-Sun” IT and the cadre of offshore developers in India who had helped with a large system conversion, his staff would never have been able to complete the project in time. 

“The follow-the-sun development approach worked great for us,” he said. “By the time we came to work in the morning, all of the fresh code from the outsource company was sitting on our desktops, ready to be reviewed and QA’d. This saved us man-hours of tedious work, and really uplifted staff morale.”

His is one of many similar stories. Indeed, follow-the-Sun IT can pay major dividends-if it is done right.

Where the Strategy Excels 
The best use cases for follow-the-sun IT are when the software specifications are unlikely to change much, and the work is relatively rote and repetitive. 
 
System conversions are great examples. If you are moving software from one platform to another and must make changes, you already know what the necessary changes are, and they can easily be described to and then executed by an outside firm. 
 
For more complex software development projects with complicated specifications, follow-the-sun IT can still be a great success. This is exemplified by the many large enterprises that have enclaves of their IT staff distributed from coast to coast in the US. In these cases, you don’t necessarily have to outsource your development to an outside firm that is halfway around the world. Instead, you can take advantage of time zone differences across the US and end up with 14-hour workdays if you spread project development among IT staffers who span from the east coast to Hawaii. 
 
In still other cases, follow-the-sun IT has nothing to do with software development, but everything to do with premium service delivery and business resilience. For example, you might have your IT stack placed at a data center in the US, but also fully functional in data centers in Europe and Asia. In this way, there are easy mechanisms for failover and work distribution should they become necessary. 

A Few Caveats to Keep in Mind 
While follow-the-sun IT can be a winning approach, there are also situations where it isn’t the best solution. 

Related:Key Steps for Launching Your IT Outsourcing Partnership

The first such situation involves intellectual property. If you have a proprietary company algorithm that your IT department has developed for a product or a sale analysis, it is best to retain work on this algorithm in-house, where you have better assurance that its trade secrets can be safeguarded. This includes maintaining the intellectual property in your own data center as a best practice. 

Related:5 Key Legal Issues for CIOs in 2024

Also, if there are language or communications complications between your in-house staff and an outsourcer, or if time zone differences make it difficult to resolve time-sensitive issues, it might be a better approach to use outside resources that are close to home, 

Another consideration is project management. You need strong collaboration between your home project manager and the project manager at the outsource firm. If a strong and collaborative relationship between these two individuals can’t be established, it doesn’t bode well for the success of the project. 

Putting it into Practice 
Even if a global company has IT departments in every world geographic zone, the differences in time zones and potential communication issues present challenges. Consequently, it pays to think carefully about not only the mechanics of a project and what needs to be done, but how the various individuals in different parts of the world will work together productively. 

A first step is using an online project management software that can be updated in real time and that everyone in every location can access. In this way, anyone on the project, regardless of where they are working from, has the access and information they need. 

A second step is establishing who “owns” the project. In most cases, the project owner is going to be an IT project manager at the home office. All other project leads in different areas of the world ultimately will report to this manager. It should be clear that if project or project changes need to be made, it will come from the home project manager. 

Related:Driving IT Projects: The Value of the Project Management Officer

Finally, for very long projects, it is still advantageous for the main project manager to personally visit and interact with project leads and staff members in other geographic zones. Airline flights might add a little cost and be time-consuming, but a video Zoom meeting can only do so much. Online can’t replace a face-to-face interchange of ideas and perspectives between individuals, or the working bonds that can be forged with in-person communications.