IBM Software Group IBM Software Group Rational software Click to edit Track Number on Title Master Reducing Time to Market Using Follow-the-Sun Techniques Alex Cameron EDS Alex.Cameron@eds.com. One of the cornerstone principles of FTS is that certain assets are repeatedly shared between the offices at the end of the production circle or a working day so that the second team can continue the production/maintenance. working only during daylight hours. The term calendar efficiency helps in understanding the analysis further. What is the Follow the Sun Customer Support Model? One key benefit of a follow the sun model is high uptime. Within the FTS approach, one of the teams always plays a leading role, being responsible for strategic planning, quality assessment and much more. For some, it may make more sense to have people in the office rather than working from home to expand and grow without opening an office first. There is also research that studied the impact of the number of sites on working speed and accuracy in Follow-the-Sun software development [9]. The war in Ukraine also impacted us personally. Nurture and grow your business with customer relationship management software. Sign-up and get customer insights, trends, and more in your inbox. Teams must be able to define what work has been done and what work is expected next in the process. The various composition features of this PowerPoint image like the design, color, text, etc. 0000016106 00000 n Collaboration between teams is very important in Agile, a trait which is also a characteristic of FTS model. IBM in 1990s was probably one of the first companies to record the implementation of FTS in its software development teams globally [1]. Several workflows seem to be using the FTS model, but in reality this is not always the case. Managing international teams may be a challenge. User interface data decision support system model with arrows and icons. It may take more time than anticipated to ask questions and receive answers. 0000007912 00000 n Project collaboration becomes immensely easier when the status of each task (and the progress made on the task) is clearly documented. A follow the sun model keeps everyone on the same page, working towards the same project end goal., Lets walk through some best practices for setting up a follow the sun model., While a follow the sun model means teams in multiple locations could be involved, its important to define what the home base is for each project you take on, whether that is your site or another one. It is used mainly for school presentations and businesses. Hand-offs are the central idea of the FTS approach. This in turn increases productivity. At any given time only one team owns the product unlike other global configurations in which multiple locations can own different parts of the product. The geographically dispersed nature requires the use of software applications which facilitate tele-conferencing, VoIP calling, instant messaging etc. 0000067800 00000 n However, it may be one of the most potent benefits for your business. We're committed to your privacy. Many translated example sentences containing "follow the sun model" - French-English dictionary and search engine for French . Every time you learn you have a new customer base, you find someone to support them. The Follow-the-Sun (FTS) strategy is a type of global development with the purpose of reducing the duration of the project development and hence, increases productivity. Agile also provides an opportunity for every team to maintain a sustainable pace of development i.e. There are claims that FTS is being used at General Motors and at OfficeTiger [4] [5]. We operate a 24/7 global support team. When you use a follow the sun model, round-the-clock IT support is provided by following the sun from time zone to time zone. Their teams are based in Honduras, Romania and the Philippines. Another documented case of FTS application was by Infosys [20] in 2005 where FTS was applied to small subsets of the project cycle. Please reload the page and try again, or you can contact Zendesk for support. Several reasons such as misinterpretation of specifications, multiple rework cycles, lack of proper coordination and communication between teams, time zone issues and cultural differences were attributed to the projects failure. The FTS approach utilizes distributed team members spread across time-zones to achieve a single project outcome with the main objective of gaining speed and reducing the time-to-market of a project [13]. Powerpoint is an application developed by Microsoft which allows users to create slides of important information to present. The follow-the-sun model has proven to be successful for our business as team members were relocating and searching for safety while making sure none of the clients felt what they felt. 1 gives the relevant facts regarding various working schemes. 0000002089 00000 n It is a model in which work from one site is handed over to another, which is many time zones away (for example, U.S.A to India), in order for the work to be advanced while one team rests for the night. endstream endobj 134 0 obj <>stream 0000010855 00000 n The model you choose, develop, and refine should be the one that works best for you and your customers. One of the important concepts evolved in the past decade or so is the " Follow the sun " (FTS) software development. Because of its uncommon nature, FTS is also least practiced in the industry and has very few documented examples of success. 5 are applied in practice. Adding more man power to the project is not of much interest in software development, because of the wisdom gained long ago from the seminal Brooks law adding manpower to a late software project makes it later [3]. We have showed earlier that using the concept of calendar efficiency, FTS gives lot of room for decreasing the development time. Handoffs management in follow-the-sun software projects: a case study. IT architecture and the people who program and maintain the architecture can make or break a companys daily operations, particularly for companies with a global presence. The sun never sets for businesses that rely on remote support, and global support, for customer service. Finally, communication is a key component for successful follow the sun implementation. There was a 30 and 60 minutes overlap between locations to enable the daily handover of tasks. Rather than making the customer wait several hours until you can get back to working on a solution, follow the sun allows you to pass on the work to the next site. I understand I may unsubscribe at any time. [16] Josiane Kroll, Ita Richardson, Jorge LN Audy, and Jude Fernandez. Overall it was found that increasing the number of sites in a daily cycle increased the working speed. Are you ready to follow the sun?. Three categories of challenges were found, namely challenges in coordination (e.g. Many companies are looking for efficiency in software development in terms of quality and development time. The focus is on using automated tools which simplify the repetitive tasks. In traditional software development, global teams are less dependent on one another and usually do not pass on the work (hand-off). There exist several case and field studies over the years, which resulted in challenges and best practices of FTS. Slide 1 of 2. The traditional follow the sun model is a type of global workflow in which issues can be handled by and passed between offices in different time zones, increasing responsiveness and reducing delays. Software developmentusing the 24-hour knowledge factory paradigm. . A survey of major approaches for accelerating new product development. Background, main ideas and principles behind FTS were discussed followed by a brief review on Agile for FTS, advantages and limitations of FTS. Read on to learn what a follow the sun model is and how to implement it at your company. Prashanth G.L, Santosh Malagi, Laurens Van Den Bercken, Ade Setyawan Sajim and Bernd Kreynen are the authors of this blog. For more information, check out our. Global software development (GSD) is now the need of the hour more than ever. In addition, passing the work to a new group lets people see the problem from a new perspective. In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on, pages 165174. Results are generally from case or field studies, resulting in identified challenges and best practices to improve the methodology. Customers who aren't in your timezone won't have to wait for you to wake up to receive service. Free and premium plans. [20] ZONE, HOW INFOSYS MANAGES TIME. With many sites all working on the same project, the daily handoff can become a bottleneckespecially if the other team doesnt understand the problem or if their work introduces a new problem. Here are some major challenges that management should anticipate: FTS is much more complex than the shift method since the teams working on the project are normally disproportionate. I have a team that is 12 hours ahead so we're not online at the same time. Organize the data by cloud, region, compute instance, and more., Having this tool in your arsenal transforms project management and puts you in a better position to respond to security risks and downtime., Every piece of your infrastructure is laid out right in front of you, and you can easily filter diagrams based on the task at hand, removing unnecessary details, and even @mentioned specific users to direct them to the specific part of infrastructure that needs action to be taken. Advances in Software Engineering, 2009:3, 2009. These questions will help you determine if you have enough tickets coming in from each area in the world and if it's a standard practice to offer 24/7 support. Businesses can reduce the amount of time it takes to progress from ideation to planning and development when a team is working on the project on a 24-hour schedule. Beside this benefit, there are also other advantages as well which can be found on Fig. Figure 1: Follow the Sun approach follows a 24h task hand-off based approach to software development. We showed that there are three main research themes, namely challenges and best practices, location selection and hand-offs management. In this post, we'll learn what the follow the sun customer support model is, the benefits, best practices, and how you can decide if it's the right model for your business. Bugs and production problems are almost a certainty, this means companies need to organise resources and build capability to . [18] Josiane Kroll, Rafael Prikladnicki, Jorge LN Audy, Erran Carmel, and JudeFernandez. The follow the sun model gives your employees their lives back to spend more time with family and recreation. IEEE, 2007. Software development involving multiple global locations in different time zones is not always FTS if it does not satisfy all the criteria mentioned in the. The University of Dar es Salaam Computing Centre is going to offer you in-class facilitation of all of the openEd 2.0 course modules against a moderate fee.<br /> 28. If youre a small company looking to provide global support, consider what steps you can take now to achieve your longer-term support goals. IEEE, 2013. In an Agile based methodology, all major development activities (design, code, test and integrate) are carried out in every iteration cycle. FTS is a global software development strategy. Most of the current code repositories are cloud based and accessible across geographies. Are you using a tool that makes it easy to scale, and to quickly hand off support tickets? Your team needs to deploy a brand-new, process-defining software to all the computers and devices on your companys networks. Although there were very less successful cases, some companies still showed positive intent in applying FTS model. The tools you use should emphasize team collaboration and the automation of reporting, scheduling, planning, and progress tracking. In Global Software Engineering Workshops (ICGSEW), 2013 IEEE 8th International Conference on, pages 1823. "Follow the sun" is a service and support model designed to address customer's needs regardless of geographic location or time-zone. But as you grow, you begin to standardize, build out streamlined processes, and build teams. The second case study involved three distinct projects with development sites in the United States and India, and met with drastic failure. A clear path will help your troubleshooting teams and engineers coordinate and get to the bottom of the issue faster., Mastering the handoff process (moving project tasks from one team to the next) is probably the hardest, but most crucial, element of successfully implementing a follow the sun model. Follow-the-Sun in Action One of our partners, a large mobile advertising and app monetization company that gets 20,000+ tickets each week, leverages the follow-the-sun model with a total team of 85 associates to support their customers around the world. 0000063228 00000 n The efficiency of the number of hours per day spent on actual development is much higher in the FTS model when compared with traditional software development [1]. Why 2023 Gold House A100 List Has Starbucks CEO But No Michelle Yeoh, Parent PowerED: Parents Powering Solutions In Education, Conversations Across Generations: Shawn Dove And Peter Storey, Empowering Young Adults Through Tech With Sandee Kastrul Of i.c. Follow the Sun is a support model which works best for service desks that work around the clock, i.e 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. By staggering their support personnel start times across these key time zones, they are able to meet the service level-agreements theyve set for their customers. Typical challenges such as coordination, communication and culture differences presents a bigger challenge to FTS than GSD, as FTS involves daily hand-offs. And that's where the follow the sun customer support model comes in. mobile handsets, firmware, e-commerce systems, and innovative supply chain management). The success cases in the Industry using FTS are rare, in part due to the lack of well-founded knowledge on applying FTS [9]. Your plan needs to include specific roles, processes, and training necessary to meet customer expectations. For example, in the United States, some of your employees could start the day at 6:00 a.m. to support the Eastern and Central Time Zones. Follow-the-sun schedule - The follow-the-sun schedule is used by teams that may work internationally in different time zones, and ensures full 24/7 coverage. This is a BETA experience. on, pages 185194. Agile seems to be the best and most suitable for FTS based approaches because the principles of Agile anf FTS complement each other. Granted, once the pandemic restrictions started to lift, we followed suit with offices. Treinen and Miller Frost [19] published a case documenting two cases of FTS implementation at IBM. [19] Treinen, James J., and Susan L. Miller-Frost. To make collaboration and handoff even easier, engineers and process owners can @mention each other to focus attention on specific shapes of the diagram. After considering your demographics and volume, could you make up some of the support volume by using a mobile app? 0000002691 00000 n Quarterly Executive. (2006). As described by Carmel [1], the agile methodology is best suited for FTS. Carmel [6] argues that only the nature of some phases of the development cycle such as testing are well suited for FTS. F @_|Ln VY*ay Te2`nf hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(53, '12501f7c-8e26-4e3c-9642-7afbe078156a', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); The follow the sun customer support model is designed to address customer needs without regard to geographic location or current time. System Sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on, pages 331339. For me, staying connected with clients in every corner of the globe was always important. To say that life during the global pandemic has recentred our focus on health is an understatement. Essentially, it's 24/7 support, no matter where the sun is up, without needing any customer service department to work late shifts. Do you want to provide complete 24-hour service? 2. The most popular online Visio alternative, Lucidchart is utilized in over 180 countries by millions of users, from sales managers mapping out target organizations to IT directors visualizing their network infrastructure. As illustrated in Fig. The table in Fig. 0000068561 00000 n [12] Miguel Jimnez, Mario Piattini, and Aurora Vizcano. This will help avoid any confusion on who ultimately owns the process., Take stock of all the team members available to maintain your IT architecture. FTS could provide significant benefit in dealing with these aspects. This is a highly collaborative, communicative approach to customer service, and it's a delicate line to balance.

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