Companies large and small are able to provide 24-hour service without putting the burden on one site and requiring employees to work late shifts or overtime. According to the FTS model concept, production and maintenance can be separated between locations in different time zones. 0000013630 00000 n
It is always noon somewhere, right? In fact, a study conducted by the CMO Council found that arranging technical assistance and 24/7 accessibility were the top two ways that companies could improve product experience for users.. It is used mainly for school presentations and businesses. -- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . 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. Modern day software development is spread more and more across national and international boundaries. The geographically dispersed nature requires the use of software applications which facilitate tele-conferencing, VoIP calling, instant messaging etc. Each production site works during the day as a subteam and it needs within-site coordination. Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application that empowers teams to clarify complexity, align their insights, and build the futurefaster. Agile seems to be the best and most suitable for FTS based approaches because the principles of Agile anf FTS complement each other. Most agile practices emphasize face-to-face communication. 0000007912 00000 n
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In the gaming and retail industries, for example, 24/7/365 support might be pretty standard. This infrastructure must always be available on demand and accessible. For example, you may need skilled bilingual managers and associates to help with international communications. Heavy overload still improves the efficiency by just 12% but it is not an effective long term strategy due to employee burnout. What is the Follow the Sun Customer Support Model? Agile methodologies fit well with follow the sun models because all work is completed within set iteration cycles. Research in Follow-the-Sun software development has been done since 1990. This theme is specifically for location selection and the impact of it. Calculation, effects, and prevention tips, Streamline call center BPO management with data-driven WFM, Why great CX is the doorway to success with open banking for financial services firms. IEEE, 2009. ppt.gc.ca. IEEE, 2010. PowToon is a free . Believe it or not, the Covid-19 pandemic certainly influenced the decision to bring this powerful idea to life with local client support branches and personnel on every continent. We have discussed how technology tools and infrastructure play an important role in the successful implementation of FTS. As support teams brace for an economic downturn, many are leaning on customer service outsourcing to cut costs. The impact of number of sites in a follow the sun setting on the actual and perceived working speed and accuracy: A controlled experiment. IEEE, 2009. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door., I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours. They meet their global support goals with these two teams working together, giving them 18 hours a day of coverage without having to staff up aggressively. 1 gives the relevant facts regarding various working schemes. Please select this checkbox if you do not wish to receive marketing communications from Zendesk. The main reasons to use this approach are that you'll have faster problem solving, consistent levels of customer service, reasonable work hours, and you'll be able to branch into new markets. Kroll et al. Follow the sun: distributed extreme programming development. Now that youve done all the groundwork of defining workload capability, visualizing infrastructure, and hammering out the handoff process, youre ready to get your new model signed off by stakeholders. Implementing follow the sun methods in your global organization can be challenging. Use Lucidscale to create a higher-level overview of your architecture diagram thats ready to present to stakeholders. When compared to traditional global software development, FTS workflow is more difficult to achieve. 0000069194 00000 n
The follow the sun customer support model is designed to address customer needs without regard to geographic location or current time. In any case, one thing is clear: To provide the highest level of customer service, your support team must decide when to be available. In other words, Follow the Sun is a 24/7 customer support approach for local and international clients. You may opt-out by. 0000065768 00000 n
The FTS model doesnt seem to be a suitable choice for complete projects, when compared to its applicability for particular phases like - testing where it works very well due to less dependency on hand-off work. Project collaboration becomes immensely easier when the status of each task (and the progress made on the task) is clearly documented. We operate a 24/7 global support team. 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. Deriving Mutual Benefits from Offshore Outsourcing: The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Scenario. (2007). 0000063228 00000 n
If the sun is shining over a region, be it San Francisco, Paris, Hong Kong, or Sydney, business is being conducted there. 0000068561 00000 n
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The follow the sun customer support model means that you have customer service representatives available whenever the sun is up -- so as it becomes daytime for different parts of the world as we orbit around the sun, you'll have various customer service sites beginning their day and handing off their issues to another site. The iteration period lasts for a short time period (between two to four weeks). These are reactive in nature. 2008. 5 are applied in practice. Document what has been accomplished so each site can avoid repeating work. Test the plan before implementation to ensure that hand-offs between sites will run smoothly and make tweaks to the processes as needed. Are you able to provide 24-hour service at this time? Figure 5: Successful implementation of FTS depends on reliable software tools and utilities. Let's talk about providing 24-hour support without overwhelming one location and forcing staff to work overtime. In One shortcoming of this article is that we have only investigated the effect of FTS on speed, not on the product quality because of lack of suitable documented references. [16] Josiane Kroll, Ita Richardson, Jorge LN Audy, and Jude Fernandez. Read world-renowned marketing content to help grow your audience, Read best practices and examples of how to sell smarter, Read expert tips on how to build a customer-first organization, Read tips and tutorials on how to build better websites, Get the latest business and tech news in five minutes or less, Learn everything you need to know about HubSpot and our products, Stay on top of the latest marketing trends and tips, Join us as we brainstorm new business ideas based on current market trends. 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. For example, another Zendesk customer, Prezi, has teams in two locationsone in San Francisco and one in Budapest. [9] Rini van Solingen and Menno Valkema. Stand-up meetings: Hold stand-up meetings right when shifts are switching from one site to another, so your employees can give the new reps an overview of what's happened, and any outstanding issues that need to be addressed. Many translated example sentences containing "follow the sun model" - French-English dictionary and search engine for French . For example, a baseline work week is 30 hours after taking into account non-task activities. 0000066494 00000 n
video calls) and process documentation. 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]. A systematic literature review of best practices and challenges in follow-the-sun software development. Managing international teams may be a challenge. 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. WDSGlobal case study: In 2004 a study conducted within the company of WDSGlobal reported the following list of what worked in FTS software development (when doing Extreme Programming) [7]: The study reported the following lessons that were learned: The study involved teams from the USA, UK and Singapore. The various agile methodologies such as Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), DSDM etc., share much of the same characteristics and practices and are widely practiced in Globally Distributed Software Development. As illustrated in Fig. In this section we give a number of research themes within Follow-the-Sun software development research. This is very important especially for industries whose products become outdated in a very short time (e.g. The various composition features of this PowerPoint image like the design, color, text, etc. 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. [4] AGupta, Amar. In addition, team members in the Beijing office start at 7am, 9am, 1pm, and 2pm CST (China Standard Time). Two case studies reported on the application of FTS in software development is elaborated below. The ability of project management tools to integrate with development tools can help reduce the duration of project cycles in FTS. culture and language). Every time you learn you have a new customer base, you find someone to support them. Do we get enough tickets from each timezone to support a customer service agent. Essentially, it's 24/7 support, no matter where the sun is up, without needing any customer service department to work late shifts. Or, consider the approach at Solium, which provides an equity management platform that performs real-time trades 21 hours per day. The follow the sun methodology can be a game changer., Teams working towards the same goals and maintaining the same cloud infrastructure can become extremely fragmented when located in different time zones. Another culture would not offer their help unless they were asked while the third considered that presenting the problem was a sufficient invitation for willing team members to jump in and help. Computer, 42(1):66-73, 2009. What about the companies your business aspires to emulate? In Global Software Engineering Workshops (ICGSEW), 2013 IEEE 8th International Conference on, pages 1823. Free and premium plans. 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. 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. Combine all of this with an efficient follow the sun framework, and youll be delivering best-in-class service to all of your users. If your teams are separated by 12 hours, no time is perfect to schedule regular meetingsno matter when the meetings are scheduled, one of the sites will be outside of regular business hours. The three teams consist of 2 micro-teams (composite persona [17]), with at least one person from each location. VX8pt@I:4QLBfbjT,m}66
This model ensures that none of your service locations are neglected or receive preferential treatment, especially if you work at a global company. Federal Republic of Germany, 2017. Nataliya Andreychuk is the CEO of Viseven. Slide 1 of 2. Though the teams faced initial setbacks due to cultural differences and technical glitches, by re-orienting their thinking they could successfully implement agile practices across all locations on a single working codebase. Christian Doerr, Mechanisms for transferring work in progress to the next site is the core idea of FTS. Modes of communication in FTS approach may be asynchronous or synchronous. Fourth IEEE International Conference Depending on the answer, you might just need a globally-accessible FAQ page or Help Center rather than a team of people always on call. This in turn increases productivity. 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. Are the majority simple, transactional issues like password changes and processing returns, or are they more complex technical issues requiring more resources? Handing off work from site to site balances the workload and makes it easier for you to offer consistent levels of service at all times. By following the sun, the issue is worked on until it is resolved. ](Ohg2jFy0tz
H`?d/r_@IEPCZGr H IEEE, 2013. In Global Software Engineering, 2009. Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates. For some companies, it means providing anytime, anywhere, 24/7/365 supportthe original definition of the follow-the-sun model. Essentially, it's 24/7 support, no matter where the sun is up, without needing any customer service department to work late shifts. This process could take weeks if only one team in one time zone is working on the project. And customers in one location do not get preferential or more support than any other location. 0000065007 00000 n
Granted, once the pandemic restrictions started to lift, we followed suit with offices. The war in Ukraine also impacted us personally. The number of sites had only a small impact on the accuracy. According to Carmel [1], FTS has challenges such as coordination barriers, cultural differences, and communication difficulties depicted in Fig. There are numerous advantages if the FTS implementation is successful which are reduced time-to-market, reduced software costs, increased international relationships leading to better diversity among companies, etc. Technology Tools and Infrastructure to Support FTS. Any issues can be resolved in near real time since theres always a team member ready to take action.. For this model to work, all sites must be using the same tools and development methodologies (planning, bug tracking, version control, reporting, and so on). [20] ZONE, HOW INFOSYS MANAGES TIME. To help decide whats best for you, your team, and your customers, ask the following questions: When youre small, youre actively jumping to meet the needs of customers. We have underlined some of the essential concepts of FTS such as use of Agile for FTS, tools required and learnings from past experiences for the efficient implementation of FTS. HWY1S%lI^t#ByFwOC+aPvrsjL These difficulties prove that a systematic approach is needed in achieving a quick time-to-market strategy, which in turn leads to the Follow the Sun software development scheme. I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery store.
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It is quite possible that hundreds of software developers and testers can be working on a project in cycles. Tools to support data security and encryption such as VPNs are also important. 0000013868 00000 n
Service and development sites are spread out across many time zones, allowing work to be passed from location to location. Note that it will only suit some business models. Based on these observations and the results presented in literature, it can be said that FTS approach is not widely used in practice because of its limitations and challenges. As someone who has been working with the top 100 pharma companies, I know that preparation and planning are key. The FTS model has proven its potential for decreasing time to market, accelerating product development and ensuring consistent client communication. 0000063342 00000 n
In creating a support structure based on this schedule, they examined the business units they needed to support and each region. A follow the sun model can help your organization provide 24/7/365 support to customers across the globe, regardless of time or location. 1. Hand-offs are the central idea of the FTS approach. In theory, FTS can increase time to market by approximately 60%, which seems attractive. However, it may be one of the most potent benefits for your business. It was developed so companies can provide round-the-clock customer service, literally following the sun around the globe. The term calendar efficiency helps in understanding the analysis further. Another important benefit of the FTS model is the opportunity to learn more about new markets and lay the foundation for the further development of the definite regional market. You most likely wont need to open multiple offices, especially at first, but perhaps a small remote office or a representative located remotely in a key area or time zone may satisfy your customers needs. y&[vx_TsrbV_[tQoMPDv2[%Xq?>R
,&$[f5_vv=EW\p6{`A7ejw@aAs]9#~;.#%hw AVC$+p( This schedule is determined by global stock exchange hours. This workflow model is specifically designed to help address customers' needs without regard to geolocation or time zone. Results are generally from case or field studies, resulting in identified challenges and best practices to improve the methodology. Which begs another question your team should consider when evaluating options: How would you categorize your customer base, and does your customer service teams approach require variance between all of them? [14] Josiane Kroll, Sajid Ibrahim Hashmi, Ita Richardson, and Jorge LN Audy. Multiple teams may be working on the product over a certain amount of time, but one defined team is responsible for overseeing the process from start to finish. 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. The Follow the Sun model allows brands to spread customer support over multiple time zones, which provides the necessary support that customers might need at odd hours of the night, or if they themselves are living in a different time zone. Ultimately, the processes kept running, the staff were not forced to work overtime, and none of the offices were overwhelmed, and that is key when it comes to a successful business model. But these steps will add to the increase in cost due to burnout and fatigue [2]. Nurture and grow your business with customer relationship management software. The method literally follows the sun so work is performed during normal work hours anywhere in the world. 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. At the same time, I can attest that it takes considerable investment, time and human resources. To do this from a single office theyd have to aggressively staff up. There was a 30 and 60 minutes overlap between locations to enable the daily handover of tasks. Learn how to use a follow the sun model for your IT and cloud teams. 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. 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. When youve got teams working round the clock, your troubleshooting efforts become more efficient. [17] Amar Gupta, Rajdeep Bondade, and Nathan Denny. Although the advantages presented above could take your business to the next level, adopting a follow the sun model comes with its own set of challenges and disadvantages. As a result, the benefits of FTS tend to be concentrated around isolated phases rather than having an overall impact on the development cycle. IEEE, 2007. That being said, we have a few tips for you if you decide to implement this model: Now, before you jump into a follow the sun customer support model, let's determine if it's necessary for your company. Cloud support model with customer responsibility. In California, teams start in waves at 7am, 8am, and 9am (PST). 2013. Are you ready to follow the sun?. You can turn light-speed production and service delivery into one of the signature advantages of your brand. 0000015792 00000 n
And due to these restraints, teams may have a tough time truly collaborating. 0000002842 00000 n
Understand and optimize your cloud infrastructure today with Lucidscale. The 24-hour knowledge factory: can it replace the graveyard shift? Agile has several characteristics which support FTS adoption [6].
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