Managing diverse and multi-located teams poses challenges like communication issues, lack of team cohesiveness, and difficulty controlling projects. To address this, a case study program implemented strategies like standardizing communication in English, conducting team building activities, and setting up proper communication mechanisms. This led to benefits such as an encouraging work environment, employee satisfaction, and satisfied clients. Key lessons included understanding team and project needs, creating a conducive work culture, and having strong leadership and contingency plans.
2. Managing Diverse Teams – An Effective
and Efficient Way
Rajesh Rajagopalan – Assistant System Consultant,
TATA Consultancy Services Limited
3. Contents
1. Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 4
2. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 4
3. Case Study ................................................................................................................................... 4
4. Key Challenges ............................................................................................................................ 5
a) Managing Diverse teams: ......................................................................................................... 5
b) Managing teams in multiple locations: ................................................................................... 6
5. Methodology/Process Followed ................................................................................................. 7
a) For managing a diverse team: ................................................................................................. 7
b) For managing teams in multiple locations: ............................................................................ 9
6. Critical Success Factor ............................................................................................................. 10
7. Quantified Benefits To Business ............................................................................................. 11
8. Lessons Learnt ........................................................................................................................... 12
9. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 13
10. References ............................................................................................................................... 13
11. Author’s Profile: ........................................................................................................................ 14
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4. 1. Abstract
Every project has its own complexities. Managing a project comprising of members from diverse
cultures and languages, always poses a challenge, more so, if the project team is divided across
multiple locations.
Projects with multi-lingual and multi-located team members pose numerous challenges. Overcoming
these challenges require careful planning and threadbare analysis. Each challenge requires timely
and precise intervention resulting in its permanent resolution.
Primary Challenges revolve around the efficiency of communication – in terms of proper and timely
communication, project control, resource availability, team bonding, team recognition, providing
opportunity and team building activities.
This paper helps in finding an effective and efficient way to address these challenges.
2. Introduction
Any project or program, having multi-lingual and multi-located teams provides a stiffer test in a
dynamic global IT environment where an organisation has to keep pace with ever evolving customer
expectations while at the same time keeping competitors at bay.
Multi-lingual teams provide a chance for the management team to draw the insights of the team’s
strengths and weaknesses. Presence of multi-located teams would help the management team to
assess the strength of the project lead. With the help of a case study which points out the challenges
faced in a multi-lingual and multi-located team(s), let us dwelve upon the approach to overcome these
challenges.
3. Case Study
Web Based Reporting System (WBRS), a program, was launched, to view the audience for TV and
Internet Viewership, for the Customer “NES”. The program had three projects namely Engine of
Statistics (EoS), Report Formatter (RF), Front-End And View (FEV). The program had offshore and
onsite delivery centres in India and USA. It had several delivery centres in India with Chennai as the
primary delivery centre, followed by Bhubaneswar, Bangalore.
Initially there were not only technical challenges in the program. There were also complex challenges
in managing the team members distributed across various locations and also the fact, the resources
of the project, came from various states of India and thereby imbibing different work culture and
styles. This hampered the smooth functioning of the project/program.
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5. 4. Key Challenges
There were quite a few challenges in managing diverse teams and managing teams distributed
across various locations.
a) Managing Diverse teams:
Communication:
The team in Chennai had a size of 30 on an average. Bhubaneswar had 3. Bangalore had 2. In
Chennai location, about 60% of resources in the team spoke Tamil. 20% spoke Hindi and the rest
spoke the other south Indian languages. As the program was done using Agile methodology,
communication played a key role in the program. Invariably most of the times, communication within
the project happened, in Tamil. This put the non-tamil speaking team members in a spot of bother as
well the project, at times. Figure 1 shows the communication process that existed in the earlier stages
of the program.
Figure 1: COPIS Diagram of the Original State (AS – IS Process)
Team Cohesiveness:
Natural Alignment did not happen among team members because of different cultural styles/work
styles and different spoken languages. Also, because of the availability of more than one person
knowing a particular language, group affinity, based on language was formed, and as there was no
need for the team members to speak to the Organisation’s common language (English), the need for
cohesiveness, became irrelevant.
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6. Preferred Language:
Since the team members knew that they could affinitize themselves to resources/team members who
speak their languages, they chose their mother-tongue as their preferred language ignoring the
organisation’s preferred language of English.
Regional Bias:
In one of the project in the program, the Project Lead (PL) and one of the team members in the
project, shared the same geographical region. There was an open chance for that project team
members to showcase their mettle on a Business Opportunity. But the PL provided the opportunity to
the particular team member who came from his region.
b) Managing teams in multiple locations:
Control Over the Project:
The FEV Project team had its offshore team members split across Chennai and Bhubaneswar and
Bangalore. Initially the Project Lead did not have control over the project proceedings since there was
lack of effective work coordination and cooperation among the team members either due to work
culture of the place or due to the work style of the individual.
Project Environmental Setup:
The FEV project team members at Bangalore and Bhubaneswar, had to toil hard to setup their project
environments as they had to get the requisite softwares and their corresponding licenses after
obtaining necessary approvals and permissions, by which time, the project work had started .
Communication on Time:
At the start of the program, project communication between team members of FEV project did not
happen smoothly mainly because of the difference in the work culture/timings of the resources.
Availability of Resources on Project Need:
For some time, till the beginning of the development stage, FEV project lead did not have proper
control over the availability of the resources (team members) in Bangalore and Bhubaneswar at any
given point of time. This was because the team was often thinking themselves working in isolation
and not part as of a team.
Difficulty in Setting up Meetings/Trainings:
In the beginning of the FEV project, the project lead had trouble in arranging meetings and trainings.
It is because he could never ascertain that all the resources placed at the various offshore locations,
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7. would be available, at any given point of time, even though he had the Resource Calendar of the
team, at his disposal. Arranging a meeting/training often required some follow-ups or concurrent calls.
Recognition of the Remote Teams:
Project leads of the program, looked for the successful outcome without peeping into what will ensure
a successful outcome. In other words, they looked for the end results and not the means, to achieve
them. The efforts of the team members at remote locations were not fully understood and appreciated
by the leads.
5. Methodology/Process Followed
a) For managing a diverse team:
Following methodologies/steps were judiciously used, as the program/projects started to gain
ground, in order to overcome the challenges faced while managing a program with a multi-
culture background
Communication Standardization
Team Building Activity and Team Outing
Transparent way to provide an opportunity
Communication Standardization:
1. Awareness sessions were conducted to the team members, to speak in the Organisation’s official
language or client-specific language or a common language to all the project members, which
obviously was “English”.
2. Trainings on mail etiquette and basic communication were conducted by experienced
professionals in the program, to all the members in the team.
3. Activities 1 and 2 were included as part of the Induction Program.
The resultant effect was that the team understood the need of the hour and started to appreciate the
work ambience and embrace the situation. Figure 2 shows the modified communication process
(depicting these activities) that was later followed in the program.
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8. Figure 2: COPIS Diagram of the New State (Improved Process)
Team Building Activity and Team Outing:
Team Building: Team building activities evolved as the program started to develop. Following were
the activities used in the program:
a).“Friday” Fun Time: This helped in team members having a camaraderie among the team
members. Team Building games were organised .Some of the games were “Construction of Bridge
(using Straws)“, “Group games like Anthakshris, Quizzing on Movies/Technical” etc.,.
b).“Birthday Bash”: Birthdays were celebrated at the end of every month, with a gift, given to the
birthday boy/girl.
Team Outing: Team Outing activities started to flourish as an extension of team building activities.
This became useful when and there were stressful times and also when there was a project/program
success.
These activities effectively had a terrific positive impact on the team and the team members started to
know each other better and there was better rapport among themselves which in turn started to
improve the productivity and quality of the project.
Transparent way to provide an opportunity:
Any initiative or business opportunity that came to the program, were intimated in detail, to the team
members immediately. This made the team members think that the project management think tank
team was open and transparent to them and that the project management team was transparent to
their aspirations. This motivated the team members to excel in their respective projects.
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9. b) For managing teams in multiple locations:
Following were the methodologies /approaches used to overcome the challenges faced in managing
the project teams (members) distributed at Chennai, Bangalore and Bhubaneswar.
Availability of a strong lead with a good process background.
Set up proper communication mechanism.
Creation of flexible and contingency plans.
Proper Planning prevented delays in meetings/trainings.
Routine Feedback, timely appreciations and providing opportunities.
Availability of a strong lead with a good process background:
A resource with leadership traits and with a good process background was identified for FEV project.
This helped in resolving the logistical and project communicational issues and enabled the smooth
functioning of the project and hence the program.
Set up proper communication mechanism:
A proper communication mechanism was setup through proper planning. Apart from the normal back-
up plans , judicious usage of open source status reporting tools such as Bugzilla and internal
repositories of the organisation, helped in tracking of the project work statuses of the team members,
which ensured project communication gap was reduced to a great extent.
Creation of flexible and contingency plans:
At times, the resource calendar, which had the details of resource availability for a given year, would
go in disarray as there were unavoidable leaves taken by or absence of the team members. In the
case of such scenarios, as a contingency, the back-up persons were called for, into actions.
Every project lead had discussions with her/his team members on what each one of the team
members are doing. Apart from that the entire project team had almost regular status call with the
clients on what was achieved on a single day. This gave each one, an insight of what the other team
member is doing with his/her deliverable. This helped the project lead to find the right back up person
easily.
As the projects had onsite location (USA) as well, project communication had to happen between
onsite and offshore locations. This was a problem for onsite team members, who were less in size
when compared with offshore. They were given the “work from home” option and they worked in a
secured network.
The FEV project which had the biggest team in the program got affected, often, with these resource
issues and were bailed out with the contingency and flexible plans.
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10. Proper planning prevented delays in Meetings/Trainings:
Diligent Planning by the project lead of the FEV project, in the development stage of the project
helped him to conduct timely meetings and trainings. Key Meetings and Trainings were scheduled
after getting consensus from the team members and were planned in advance. Meeting Minutes were
taken as well to ensure that the gist of the meetings/trainings were shared to the absentees, due to
unavoidable circumstances and also to emphasise the importance of the meetings.
Planning steps Involved:
1. Advance mail communication to all the Stakeholders
2. Reminder mail : Automatic Alarm sent to all stakeholders excluding the client
3. Tasks were setup on the Internal Project Management System of the Organisation and also task
activities were created on Bugzilla tool.
Routine Feedback, Timely Appreciations and providing Opportunities:
As the program started rolling, the Project leads started to understand the importance of timely
feedback of their wards’ work and started to provide them, routine feedback and timely appreciations
from the project lead and the client. Rewards were given in recognition of the performance of the
team members.
Certification and Rewards were given for Best Performer of the project/program, both at project level
and at the Customer relationship level. Team members who were aspiring to go in a particular
area/domain were identified and were given opportunities to enhance their skills in their area of liking
whenever there was an opportunity.
6. Critical Success Factor
Three critical factors occured as a result of overcoming these challenges
Encouraging Work Environment
Employee Satisfaction
Satisfied Clients
Encouraging Work Environment:
The work ambience in the program helped the team members to motivate themselves to work hard
when needed. Also there was good gelling within the team members, through which they helped one
another.
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11. Employee Satisfaction:
Because the project management team took care of the team’s needs and aspirations, there was a
high level of satisfaction among the team members
Satisfied Clients:
A highly satisfied team produced a high performance from the team which resulted in a high quality
and on-time delivery of the project. This obviously provided a delight to the clients, who gave a very
good Customer Satisfaction Rating.
7. Quantified Benefits To Business
Table 1 and 2 illustrate the benefits of the project that was, before resolving the challenges (issues),
Statistic Before Resolving the After Resolving the Challenges
Challenges
Communication Hassle, Less Productivity Improved Productivity
Team Cohesiveness
Communication Hassle, No appreciable change in the High Quality Product
Team Cohesiveness, quality
Planning
Communication Hassle, No new Business More Business Opportunity, as
Team Cohesiveness Opportunity. It remained as clients were satisfied
such.
the program faced, and after resolving the challenges
Table1: Quantification of Benefits: Qualitative Analysis
Statistic Before Resolving the After Resolving the
Challenges Challenges
Communication Hassle, Not Applicable Saved 5 Working Days = $ 1000
Team Cohesiveness
Communication Hassle, Not Applicable Saved 2 Days in rework effort =$
Team Cohesiveness, 384
Planning
Table2: Quantification of Benefits: Quantitative Analysis
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12. Team Cohesiveness involves the Motivational activities such as Team Building and Team Outing
activities which rekindled the spirit of the team members and made them refreshing while doing their
project work. This was useful especially in hectic work periods. This improved the productivity of the
team and the clients were happy to see such wonderfully well-knit dedicated team.
8. Lessons Learnt
The team did not understand the project needs initially. This created a lot of challenges. The project
management team also slowly started to understand the needs of the team, better, as the program
started to progress. The expectations of both the parties were set and the expectations (needs) being
depicted with the help of a Kano Model. Figure 3 depicts the prioritization of Project needs i.e, it set
the expectations on the team members and Figure 4 depicts the prioritization of team (members)
needs (expectation set on the project / project management team).
Figure 3: Prioritization of Project Needs
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13. Figure 4: Prioritization of Team (Members) Needs
The Basic needs in the Kano model indicates that those needs (expectations) ultimately became
must. The “Exciting Needs” were delighters which ultimately became a “must” over a period.
9. Conclusion
Successfully managing a project team, that has a diverse culture and which is distributed across
multiple locations/delivery centres relies upon several factors:
Project expectations clearly needs to be known, to the team members.
Creating a vibrant and conducive work atmosphere has to be a prerequisite.
Timely communication to all stakeholders is of paramount importance.
Routine team outing and team building activities is a must in the longer run for the welfare of the
project.
Timely Recognition of work performance of the project members
Project should have strong project leads with good process background.
Having an effective contingency plan (backup plan/options) / with some flexible plans will give the
project much needed stability even in emergency situations.
10. References
None.
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14. 11. Author’s Profile:
Rajesh Rajagopalan is a Delivery Manager, who has 13+ years of IT
experience, with 8 years in Tata Consultancy Services and is a Six
Sigma Green Belt certified professional. Has been a Program
Manager/Project Manager for the past 5 years and has been in
Retail domain for the past 6 years.
Mail Id: rajesh.rajagopalan@tcs.com
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