Virtual Teams In Srilankan It Industry

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Business environment today is characterized by complexity and acceleration of everything from communication to production methods by spreading the business across globe. The worldwide availability is good for any business but the competition has increased with the availability. Therefore it has become a challenge for organizations which are restricted in to a specific location and time zone, because the success of the business requires the team members to be in touch when it’s required. Simultaneously, making profit means reducing production cost. But as the quality is completely depend on the inputs and the process, labour is the only possible way to reduce the production cost. . The strategy that is applied to overcome this situation was to use the best available resources irrelevant of the place it is located. As a result of this approach the organizations consisted of team members across the globe, although they did not have their subsidiaries build in those countries.

This is how the concept of virtual teams originated. As Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha (2009) defined Virtual Team is, a small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/ or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organization tasks.

As IT (Information Technology) plays a major role within this business complexity and acceleration, the demand increases day by day. Hence, Virtual teams have become more common in the IT industry. Taken from the IT field, Software development sector has uprooted as it does not require much physical interaction with the business organizations. Having virtual teams give unique opportunities as well as challenges. As many researchers believe "It is the people not the procedures and technology that are critical to accomplish project objective", which means that Project management and project teams are the key drivers for project success. Therefore the opportunities and the challenges that are related to virtual teams directly reflect on the success of the projects.

Hence, the focus of this research is to study the ascendency of having virtual teams towards the management of projects in the IT industry. The research will focus on the IT offshore software development centers in Sri Lanka.

1.2 Background

Nowadays various organizations have identified the importance of having an effective team towards their success. As Blanchard, Carew and Parisi-Carew (2007) describes, the people are the most important resource for a project and the concept of team work is more important to the organization in order to drive them towards success. some individuals operate as a group, they can sought out more complex problems, make better decisions, release more creativity and do more to build individual skills and commitment than individuals working alone. But working in a team is complex, because teams are dynamic, ever-changing living systems that just like individuals have behavior patterns and have their own life.

As Padgett (2009) has stated, the general concept "First, you build the team, and then the team produces ‘Teamwork’" be other way around as "Teamwork builds the Team". According to Grewal, Lilien and Mallapragada (2006), the network enablement or the nature of the relationship among projects and team members effect on the project management for success. But as The MITRE Corporation (2012) shows, the distance among team members play a significant role in determining their level and frequency of communication and their ability to achieve a high level of collaboration in order to build team network and achieve project goals.

1.2.1 IT Industry in Sri Lanka

The IT industry of Sri Lanka has witnessed a remarkable expansion in the past decade. It has caused by the keen interest in IT education which lead by the awareness that has been created among the younger generation as IT has a bright future.IT industry in Sri Lanka can be categories into 3 sectors ,

Application product market

Software services

Off-shore development services/ centers

1.2.1.1 Application Product Companies / Organizations

Initially, Sri Lanka served the IT market by re-selling applications which were developed by the IT market dominated multi-national companies such as IBM, Siemens-Nixdorf, etc. But today SriLankan entrepreneurs have started developing products in financial markets, capital markets, leasing and financial services, insurance, stock broking and human resource systems for the telecom, banking and air-line industries by positioning Sri Lanka in the application product sector of the global market in a small way. SriLankan companies in IT application product market are focusing on the business application segment, which requires customization, configuration, installation and support.

1.2.1.2 Software Services Companies

Sri Lanka has a strong software services industry where Sri Lanka acts as the distributer and the system integrator for many large international IT companies. There are many local companies which represent the international IT companies and implement their systems and support them and also there are companies which implement enterprise systems like banking systems, insurance systems, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems, and MRP (Materials Resource Planning)systems for the use of Sri Lankan organizations.

1.2.1.3 Off-shore Development Centers

Last few years, Sri Lanka has shown a steady growth in offshore development centers because of the incentives provided by the BOI (Board of Investment). The BOI incentives have provided them the opportunity of having 100% ownership of the development centers and establish joint ventures with local companies. As a result several countries like the USA, UK, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have selected Sri Lanka to establish their offshore development centers. WNS, HSBC, Aviva, Microsoft, Motorola, Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS), Amba Research, RR Donnelley, Quattro, Virtusa, eCollege, Valista and Innodata Isoge are some of global firms that have already established and operating in Sri Lanka.

1.2.2 Virtual Teams in SriLankan IT Industry

As per the National ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Workforce Survey conducted by ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2010), SriLankan IT industry provides 20% on-shore services, 44% off-shore services, and 36% both services. As many IT companies in Sri Lanka operate with the global firms on overseas projects, it is rare to have all project team members as a collocated team. At least few of the team members of a project team need to be onshore in order to maintain communication channels with the clients. Therefore Virtual project teams are common in SriLankan IT industry.

1.3 Problem Identification

"Working Long Hours" have become a norm today in many industries due to various reasons. As Kodzet al (2003) reveled, manual and non-manual workers have different reasons for long hours working and it really is a concern whether overtime is paid or not paid. The most common answer found among manual workers is ‘increase pay’. Planning for overtime is most commonamongst manual occupations. But the most common reason for manual professionals and non-manual workers, who are not paid overtime, is to meet their requirements of the occupation.

It has been noticed that there are some organizations in Sri Lanka which practice this in order to meet deadlines of their projects. This is frequently found in IT industry and especially in software development projects, compared to other industries.

Most of the software development projects in SriLanka run as off-shore development centers where many stakeholders are from foreign countries. So it is not possible to have the whole in a co-location. Because at least few team members need to be on-shore in order to build strong relationships with client and the project team. The time difference and the necessity of the on-time information, certain number of project team members also need to be on-shore. Due to these reasons the team arrangements of the offshore software development centers have become Virtual.

Hence, having virtual teams and working long hours have become ordinary features in offshore software development centers. Workingfor long hours is a requirement that can become a management issue as well because it has become essential in order to achieve deadlines which are defined by the management. Therefore there is a relationship between working long hours and the project management. Hence one can suspect that there is a relationship between virtual team challenges towards their project management.

The Figure 1.3 shows the association of the team location and the project success.

Figure 1.3 Relevance Tree

1.4 Problems Justification

As Robinson (2012) has revealed, 150 years of research have proved that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees. According to Kodzet al (2003), working long hours introduce negative impacts to employers as well as the employees. It has negative impact for the employers in productivity. But for the employee it gives more negative impacts for their career as well as their life. In considering the career aspect, it affects employee performance, motivation, absence and turnover. But in consideration with employees’ life it causes for health and safety hazards and imbalance in work and life. Therefore it has become a major issue among the employee who works late hours.

According to the survey conducted by Geneca LLC., (2011) on ‘Why a majority of business and IT teams anticipate their software development projects will fail’ revelas that 75% of the the participants lack of confidence on their project success. Asthe reason,they have identified that Fuzzy business objectives, out-of-sync stakeholders, and excessive rework. Inorder to succedin a project, it is a must to manage it in a way so as to ovecome those challenges.

According to PMI (2008), the project management, project team and the enterprise environment factors are the key factors that involve in project success or failure during the entire life cycle of the project.The role of the project management is to manage the scope, cost, time, integration, quality, human resources, communication, risk and procurement of the project during the phases of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, closing in project life cycle. Therefore effectively managing nine project knowledge areas is a must to succeed in a project.

The project team is important for managing project effectively. Therefore the nature of the project team located is significant to the project management. As per Plowman N., (2010) team location is one of the key factors that affect the success through human resource management. Team location is vital not only in human resource management but also for managing the other eight knowledge areas.

Having virtual team makes it complex to manage the project compared to collocated project teams since the project manager can not physically walk towards the team members for information. According to Kahai S., (2008) a lot more effort required to achieve the effectiveness from a virtual team as collocated team. As the reasons for that he points out that the effort need to build the relationship with in virtual teams are high compared to collocated teams and more mechanisms are needed to foster teamwork.

1.5 Research Problem Statement

The challenges that exist within virtual teams can cause for management difficulties and that outcome requirement of working long hours in offshore software development centers in SriLanka.

1.5.1 Research Question

Are the challenges of Virtual teams affecting the management of project in terms of Scope, Time & Cost in Software Development Project in SriLankan IT Industry with focus to offshore Development Centers?

1.6 Research Objectives

The aim of this research is to find out the connection of virtual team towards project success or failure via effective project management through the following objectives.

Indentify the positive and negative challenges of virtual teams.

Identify project success criteria

Investigate the importance of achieving the success in scope, cost and time in project management.

How virtual team challenges can affect the project success in term of scope, cost and time.

1.7Report Outline

The remainder of this report organized as follows:

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW covers a critical and comprehensive analysis of the available literature. It describes different aspects of challenges that virtual project teams’ face with regards to the software industry and how it could affect the project success. Relevant practical and theoretical concepts are discovered within this chapter especially in virtual teams in software industry in line with research objectives.

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY illustrates the methodology adopted throughout the dissertation including data requisite, data gathering, analysis and interpretation. Practical and theoretical reflection of research philosophy and concerns on reliability and validity of the study would be discussed in depth within the methodology chapter.

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION includesthe analysis and discussion on the findings which demonstrates the collected data analysis by various means of statistical (quantitative) tools and qualitative techniques directed on objectives of the explored study. Analysis of data would be offered through correlation testing method through categorization of data, which is based on conceptual frame work and the research objectives as well as through interview reviews. Furthermore, core significance of the whole study is presented and discussed by research findings and relevant literature. The discussion would mainly aim on research objectives and overall aim of the dissertation study.

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS the conclusions and recommendations based on the findings of the empirical study and literature. This would have practical and theoretical implications on Virtual team challenges and how to manage them while managing the project scope, time and cost successfully.