0000013868 00000 n A systematic literature review of best practices and challenges in follow-the-sun software development. Additionally, it will help you determine the processes you currently use and if your customer support is robust enough -- do you offer email, phone, and live chat support? Follow the Sun Support - SyncApps, the #1 Integration Cloud However, FTS is not. Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates. 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. 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. These are reactive in nature. 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. What about the companies your business aspires to emulate? Stars, 16 Agency Leaders Explore The SEO Trends Impacting Their Work In 2023, 15 Smart Ways To Address High Employee Turnover, How Vietnam's Entertainment Industry Can Increase Its Global Reach, 6 Best Practices For CEOs And Professional Leaders Using LinkedIn. Presentation Mode allows you to show off the specific parts of your design that stakeholders care about most., There you have it. Essentially, it's 24/7 support, no matter where the sun is up, without needing any customer service department to work late shifts. The model you choose, develop, and refine should be the one that works best for you and your customers. Employees hand off work at the end of each shift to the next site that is beginning a new shift several time zones to the west. PDF How to Provide Global Support Having multiple subteams on deck to keep a project moving along 24 hours a day empowers your entire IT department to set realistic short-term deadlines, avoid working overtime, and complete roadmaps more efficiently., Think about what your IT team is really trying to accomplish on your roadmap for the next year. It is also known under different names such as 24 hour development or Round the clock development. [3] Frederick P Brooks Jr. Tiered support model with queries and system administrators. Establish goals: Define your goals around your customer's needs in each location you service. However, it may be one of the most potent benefits for your business. Calendar efficiency can be increased in a simple way by working overtime (overload mode), but this only improves the efficiency by 6%. Where are our customers primarily located? 0000005432 00000 n Inverse schedules on an escalation policy - If you have two or more users that rotate primary and secondary on-call shifts, then you will want to create two on-call schedules and add . The purpose of this article was to present a comprehensive study on the FTS model for software development. 0000063342 00000 n Its hard to fill swing or overnight shifts. By submitting my personal information, I consent to Zendesk collecting, processing, and storing my information in accordance with the, By submitting my personal data, I consent to Zendesk collecting, processing, and storing my information in accordance with the, The value of agent education and training during economic slowdowns, What is employee turnover? Is a follow the sun model right for your IT and cloud teams? 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. For others, keeping all major communication and production processes in a single office or at least legislation may make more sense. working only during daylight hours. Advances in Software Engineering, 2009:3, 2009. 0000067119 00000 n The work involved a software project developed by teams in Mexico, India and Australia, which followed Scrum. However, the distance between time zones of production can be an issue since the real-time communication between the teams can be very limited. The process of hand offs must be smooth and conflict free. [4] AGupta, Amar. Some key assumptions in deriving the above principles are listed below: Follow the sun approach involves daily handoff of the work which suggests that there will be some reduction in the project duration. Production sites involved in the software development are many time zones apart. time zone difference and hand offs management), communication and culture. %PDF-1.7 % If your team is still in the lean, jumping phase, you might not be ready to offer global support. The tools you use should emphasize team collaboration and the automation of reporting, scheduling, planning, and progress tracking. In this distributed model, the CIA [8] (the triad of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of service and data) assumes paramount importance. Figure 6: Five essentials for applying the FTS model in practice. How do companies similar to your own handle support? A daily dose of irreverent and informative takes on business & tech news, Turn marketing strategies into step-by-step processes designed for success, Spotlighting bold Black women entrepreneurs who have scaled from side hustles to profitable businesses, For B2B reps and sales teams who want to turn complete strangers into paying customers, Get productivity tips and business hacks to design your dream career, Free ebooks, tools, and templates to help you grow, Learn the latest business trends from leading experts with HubSpot Academy, All of HubSpot's marketing, sales CRM, customer service, CMS, and operations software on one platform. 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. This type of customer support can help you provide quality, on-time support to customers 24/7. User interface data decision support system model with arrows and icons. Challenges and improvements in distributed software development: A systematic review. Tools for estimating and planning schedules, allocation of project tasks, sprint management, progress tracking are essential utilities for front line managers. 0000013744 00000 n z.,'ECC4@ad4pw7?/.iyfhLV%=>=(TvxZN}!p7oN3~4T i+U[8 fZ)6 +r) Are you ready to follow the sun?. ITSM Support Model | Why is the ITSM support model so important? - ITarian 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. Organization Support: Role Communications Manager (CM) Description Coordinates emergency communication strategy across teams: customer success, marketing, legal, etc. Some companies go with the more traditional application of follow the sun: which means providing anytime, anywhere, 24/7/365 support. [8] Christian Doerr. This means that efficiency in task hand-off is of paramount importance to the success of the FTS approach. The FTS approach is based on the principle of handing-off unfinished work to the next location at the end of work day. 0000066494 00000 n 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. Heavy overload still improves the efficiency by just 12% but it is not an effective long term strategy due to employee burnout. In traditional software development, global teams are less dependent on one another and usually do not pass on the work (hand-off). This workflow model is specifically designed to help address customers' needs without regard to geolocation or time zone. The three teams consist of 2 micro-teams (composite persona [17]), with at least one person from each location. Our offerings for Salesforce include the same 24x7x365, follow-the-sun support with a guaranteed response of under 10-minutes for P1 critical issue . And that's where the follow the sun customer support model comes in. Hand-offs are the central idea of the FTS approach. In Global Software Engineering, 2009. Keeps Support and the business informed so IC can focus on resolution. And customers in one location do not get preferential or more support than any other location. There are claims that FTS is being used at General Motors and at OfficeTiger [4] [5]. We operate a 24/7 global support team - Microsoft Community In any case, one thing is clear: To provide the highest level of customer service, your support team must decide when to be available. Improving global software development project performance using simulation. In addition to verbal communication, teams can also use visual documentation, such as flowcharts, kanban boards, and Gantt charts as part of their daily hand-offs. Slide 1 of 2. Because of its uncommon nature, FTS is also least practiced in the industry and has very few documented examples of success. Service and development sites are spread out across many time zones, allowing work to be passed from location to location. The initiative was unsuccessful, and the project was ultimately implemented using only the essential principles of global software development. Employee turnover is the number of workers leaving your business at any given timeincluding voluntary and involuntary exits. Linear sequential approaches such as the Waterfall model seem to be inefficient for the FTS approach. I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery store. Additionally, if you have a site for each area around the sun, in different timezones, you'll be able to acquire more leads in that location because you'll be delighting your customers with consistent service. follow the sun workflow in global software development. 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. Agile also provides an opportunity for every team to maintain a sustainable pace of development i.e. 0000069194 00000 n Fourth IEEE International Conference We have discussed how technology tools and infrastructure play an important role in the successful implementation of FTS. The effective utilization of code repositories and version control management systems is crucial to the success of the FTS approach. This means that one team takes over the task when the first team is over. Selecting locations for follow-the-sun software development: Towards a routing model. The three C's of applying a Follow the Sun Model | Appnovation Follow the sun is also used in software, technology, and other sectors as a customer service model. Still, it did, and that is where our plan and ability to coordinate staff remotely across the world helped keep all the processes running. Treinen and Miller Frost [19] published a case documenting two cases of FTS implementation at IBM. Each production site works during the day as a subteam and it needs within-site coordination. You will want to standardize on the technology and tools you use to support your agile methodologies and implement, monitor, revise, and manage your follow the sun model. 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. 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. This process could take weeks if only one team in one time zone is working on the project. Follow-the-sun support model is a very common paradigm for enterprise support companies wanting to deliver round the clock critical support for business critical applications. Communication through emails and Slack with 16+ hour gaps between responses can lead to deployment missteps, security breaches staying open longer, and IT engineers completing redundant work., With a follow the sun model, on the other hand, daily handoffs of projects and tasks build better communication lines between global offices and their network engineers. 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 survey of major approaches for accelerating new product development. 'r( bU:nL,/C^=E#$c;kNaw ] ^6JaI-~5%)IScN8D!MZl1?/*8(Y 7 3go>".X@`kDe!K Follow the Sun (FTS), a sub-field of globally distributed software engineering (GDSE), is a type of global knowledge workflow designed in order to reduce the time to market, in which the knowledge product is owned and advanced by a production site in one time zone and handed off at the end of their work day to the next production site that is IEEE, 2010. Response times are increased, delays in problem-solving are reduced, and customers are satisfied. [15] Christian Visser and Rini van Solingen. If the workdays among satellite offices overlap, work can be passed from an office that is shutting down for the day to an office that is still open or just starting its day. [16] Josiane Kroll, Ita Richardson, Jorge LN Audy, and Jude Fernandez. Free and premium plans, Operations software. Because it is always daytime somewhere in the world, you need a way to support customers around the globe no matter what time zone they are in and without too much delay. The table in Fig. Start off by asking key questions. Quarterly Executive. (2006). IBM Software Group Rational softwareRational User Conference 2003 Presentation Overview Changing Times - The trend towards globalisation . follow the sun model - French translation - Linguee Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application that empowers teams to clarify complexity, align their insights, and build the futurefaster. HWn1WLKZE Lucidscale connects to major cloud sources like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to pull in data automatically. It is interesting to note that there have been very few documented cases of successful FTS application in the software industry. 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. Major lessons learned in the study that could improve FTS from their experience include: It was also observed that hand-offs between different sites were especially difficult in the weekends. Theres no reason to leap forward with global support if most of your customers are in only one or two regions. The follow the sun model is a service and support method that is designed to address and satisfy customer needs without regard to geographic location or current time. IEEE, 2005. We would like some form of handover application within Microsoft teams to assist with a "Follow the Sun" support model. Follow-the-sun - Wikipedia Unpublished EDS working paper, 2004. Consider these basic steps and questions you need to ask before diving into a follow the sun methodology. In order to understand and use FTS, some key principles on which FTS is based are mentioned in this section.
Charles Randolph Obituary, Articles F