Think of the home base as the product owner. This is because work happens almost round the clock, compared to just eight hour efforts in traditional software workflow. A research carried out by Yap [7], a globally distributed software project team (UK, USA, and Singapore), followed the FTS approach under the Extreme Programming (XP) model (an Agile methodology A subteam can consist of one or more members. See pricing, Marketing automation software. Technology Tools and Infrastructure to Support FTS. When compared to traditional global software development, FTS workflow is more difficult to achieve. 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. If your team is still in the lean, jumping phase, you might not be ready to offer global support. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door., I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours. Follow the Sun: Introduction (1 of 3) The Sun's apparent path across the sky for each day of the calendar year - from sunrise roughly East to maximum altitude (or "culmination") exactly South to sunset roughly West - has been observed and thought about for at least the last 5000 years. Plus, with a follow the sun model established, your company will be better prepared to support customers around the world, allowing your business to branch into new markets. The initiative was unsuccessful, and the project was ultimately implemented using only the essential principles of global software development. 4KKq#VPd)M(*=X i d`rdadcNaVdnep!!!!|F_f0b By its basic definition, "follow-the-sun" means that support literally follows the sunit's a type of global workflow in which issues can be handled by and passed between support locations in different time zones to increase responsiveness and reduce delays. 0000067800 00000 n Agile also provides an opportunity for every team to maintain a sustainable pace of development i.e. Salesforce App Management Services and Support | Rimini Street The number of sites had only a small impact on the accuracy. For me, staying connected with clients in every corner of the globe was always important. This schedule is determined by global stock exchange hours. There is only one site that owns the product at any point in time. 0000066494 00000 n 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. One way to implement a follow the sun approach is to have customer support owned by one site at a time -- wherever the sun is up. Hand-offs are the central idea of the FTS approach. Project collaboration becomes immensely easier when the status of each task (and the progress made on the task) is clearly documented. Initial handoffs mainly consisted of daily work summaries, which were later augmented by knowledge transfer activities. ](Ohg2jFy0tz H`?d/r_@IEPCZGr H The follow the sun customer support model is designed to address customer needs without regard to geographic location or current time. Some companies go with the more traditional application of follow the sun: which means providing anytime, anywhere, 24/7/365 support. Research in Follow-the-Sun software development has been done since 1990. 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. What is the Follow the Sun Customer Support Model? Although there were very less successful cases, some companies still showed positive intent in applying FTS model. CX is a top priority for financial services providers, and for good reason. By checking this box, I agree to Zendesk contacting me with marketing-related communications about Zendesk products, services, and events. Is a follow the sun model right for your IT and cloud teams? This is where FTS potential gains a lot, as is evident in the bottom rows of the table. Because of the hand-offs, work is owned by and worked on by one site at a time. However, since we are talking about the FTS model, we already imply that our teams are most likely disproportionate and may need to be more interchangeable regarding specific tasks. A survey of major approaches for accelerating new product development. As an agency with many Ukraine-based staff members in February 2022, it was the kind of situation none of us wanted to believe would ever happen. If communication issues are not addressed they will create significant challenges in FTS adoption. As a management approach, FTS provides your business with several opportunities that, when fully realized, may benefit your business. 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. [17] Amar Gupta, Rajdeep Bondade, and Nathan Denny. Do you also have self-service options like a knowledge database? The table in Fig. 5 are applied in practice. I am talking about the follow-the-sun model, or FTS for short. Since the teams may have different tasks, it is important to ensure that each team has a common understanding of goals, methods and company policies. The work involved a software project developed by teams in Mexico, India and Australia, which followed Scrum. Following the sun: Case studies in global software development. IBM Systems Journal 45.4 (2006): 773-783. Opinions expressed are those of the author. We would like some form of handover application within Microsoft teams to assist with a "Follow the Sun" support model. FTS has many challenges associated with it and it also faces same challenges of GSD as it is a part of GSD. Working normal daylight hours keeps employees happy, healthy, and motivated to work while your company is still able to offer round-the-clock service. 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. Follow the Sun: Introduction (1 of 3) - SlideServe 0000009498 00000 n You'll have increased response times, fewer delays in solving issues, and satisfied customers. 0000004606 00000 n In reality, setting up a Help Center doesnt have to be a monumental task, and by offering community forums, you can give your customers the chance to help each other. The process of hand offs must be smooth and conflict free. Are you using a tool that makes it easy to scale, and to quickly hand off support tickets? Follow the sun is also used in software, technology, and other sectors as a customer service model. Because they have sites spread across the world, companies using the follow the sun model will find it difficult for everybody to be in the same room at the same time. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, everyone can work visually and collaborate in real time while building flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, and more. Some other day to day tasks enabled by software include logging time spent by developers, issue tracking, real time reporting, code reviews, and documentation. Free and premium plans, Sales CRM software. For more information, check out our. Its also important to have daily stand-up meetings. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, everyone can work visually and collaborate in real time while building flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, and more. Zuora also employs a daily handoff model, in which open and pending matters are passed along to the next team when one goes off duty. 3 levels of support delivery model. Non-stop development can become a serious advantage when you need to reduce time to market or offer your clients better production, development and deployment terms. 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. Computer, 42(1):66-73, 2009. 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. Regardless of where the bulk of customers are located, if you know that youre receiving a lot of tickets outside of your standard support hours, then its time to start thinking about a rotational support model. We operate a 24/7 global support team. Follow the Sun Support - SyncApps, the #1 Integration Cloud Formal systems such as discussion forums or internal Wiki sites may prove to be useful. Please select this checkbox if you do not wish to receive marketing communications from Zendesk. It is commonly used and regarded as the "gold standard" in the field of presentation applications. If your business proceeds with follow the sun, managers should do their best to schedule meetings when its most convenient for both locations, and IT should adopt video conferencing and cloud-based solutions for everyone to work together. But it might not, and thats OK; there are other options that allow you to deliver anytime, anywhere service and get global, fastregardless of the size of your company. You can update your preferences or unsubscribe at any time. [12] Miguel Jimnez, Mario Piattini, and Aurora Vizcano. Beside this benefit, there are also other advantages as well which can be found on Fig. Apart from the usual difficulties faced in globally distributed software development, FTS also has the additional challenges of managing daily job hand-offs. The second case study involved three distinct projects with development sites in the United States and India, and met with drastic failure. A novel approach to distributed concurrent software development using a follow-the-sun technique. And due to these restraints, teams may have a tough time truly collaborating. Do I qualify? 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. If youre a small company looking to provide global support, consider what steps you can take now to achieve your longer-term support goals. [8] Christian Doerr. ITSM Support Model | Why is the ITSM support model so important? - ITarian You can, however, start planning for it. This is very important especially for industries whose products become outdated in a very short time (e.g. 0000007912 00000 n Heavy overload still improves the efficiency by just 12% but it is not an effective long term strategy due to employee burnout. 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. 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. HWY1S%lI^t#ByFwOC+aPvrsjL However, if the communication within the system is poor, it may also end up in chaos, production delays and sufficient losses for the company. And when the shifts switch, you'll have each site hand off work to the next shift. The specifics of this model require team managers to have constant control over the workflow because delays may result in the poor coordination of teams. Since hand-offs are such an important aspect of Follow-the-Sun software development, recent research studied hand-offs management. Well explain how to calculate and reduce turnover in your organization. Self-service is often the best place to start when building out global support, but some companies overlook self-service because it feels like there arent enough resources to build out a nice-looking repository of help articles. A part of this may be attributed to the availability of efficient tools and enabling technologies for implementing the FTS model. Start small so that you dont overpromise what you can actually deliver. Their teams are based in Honduras, Romania and the Philippines. Organization . They also need to train employees on how to use the software and then respond to any service tickets upon deployment. 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? 0000065007 00000 n 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. The method literally follows the sun so work is performed during normal work hours anywhere in the world. And customers in one location do not get preferential or more support than any other location. 0000013868 00000 n This means that efficiency in task hand-off is of paramount importance to the success of the FTS approach. After considering your demographics and volume, could you make up some of the support volume by using a mobile app? @|Q%q_2.gINPQ1Aq!>(ob@d9I8j3.a(fdb@n@8nZk;aza azv(;@ r endstream endobj 129 0 obj <>>>/Metadata 126 0 R/Outlines 108 0 R/PageLayout/SinglePage/Pages 123 0 R/Type/Catalog/ViewerPreferences<>>> endobj 130 0 obj <>/ExtGState<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]/Properties<>/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/Tabs/W/Thumb 109 0 R/TrimBox[0.0 0.0 612.0 792.0]/Type/Page>> endobj 131 0 obj [/ICCBased 142 0 R] endobj 132 0 obj <> endobj 133 0 obj <>stream How Follow the Sun Model helps you Deliver 24/7 Global Support Start off by asking key questions. Free and premium plans, Content management software. [4] AGupta, Amar. 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. Organization Support: Role Communications Manager (CM) Description Coordinates emergency communication strategy across teams: customer success, marketing, legal, etc. 0000063342 00000 n We have also elaborated in depth about the real world examples where FTS was applied. on, pages 185194. Determine which services will be provided, when they will be provided, and what skill set will be needed to provide those services. uyLY@= 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. You can turn light-speed production and service delivery into one of the signature advantages of your brand. 0000013504 00000 n Two case studies reported on the application of FTS in software development is elaborated below. But as you grow, you begin to standardize, build out streamlined processes, and build teams. 0000065768 00000 n Join 64,500+ Customer-Facing Professionals, Pop up for FREE CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP TEMPLATES. Now, what does this look like in action? When a task is handed off from one engineer to another, there is an up-to-date, accurate architecture diagram to work from.. I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery store. HWn1WLKZE In Global Software Engineering Workshops (ICGSEW), 2013 IEEE 8th International Conference on, pages 1823. Hence it is important to select a software development methodology which extends over the entire software development cycle and satisfies the special needs of daily hand-offs. We have discussed how technology tools and infrastructure play an important role in the successful implementation of FTS. 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. To get a proper picture of the background on FTS, there is a need to understand a development pace and its associated concept of time to market, which are the main drivers of the development of FTS. 0000016106 00000 n Many translated example sentences containing "follow the sun model" - French-English dictionary and search engine for French . The main goal with implementing a follow the sun support model is that people in one location don't receive preferential support. It is also known under different names such as 24 hour development or Round the clock development. For instance, I could post for the other team to monitor a ticket I have opened. 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. Quarterly Executive. (2006). 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 described by Carmel [1], the agile methodology is best suited for FTS. Let's talk about providing 24-hour support without overwhelming one location and forcing staff to work overtime. The various composition features of this PowerPoint image like the design, color, text, etc. This efficiency further increases with the number of locations and shifts. As a result, the benefits of FTS tend to be concentrated around isolated phases rather than having an overall impact on the development cycle. 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. 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]. 0000067044 00000 n Rimini Street Managed Services for Salesforce clients benefit from the responsive, client-centric support model that Rimini Street is known for with its Oracle and SAP enterprise software support. The handoffs can be applied to any software development task. A typical ITSM process can involve something as simple as an employee asking for a new laptop. [11] Siri-on Setamanit, Wayne Wakeland, and David Raffo. In order to understand and use FTS, some key principles on which FTS is based are mentioned in this section. 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. Some sites could feel isolated and out of the loop. Keeps Support and the business informed so IC can focus on resolution. 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. 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. IEEE, 2009. Follow the sun 2011 - SlideShare In this section we give a number of research themes within Follow-the-Sun software development research. There was a 30 and 60 minutes overlap between locations to enable the daily handover of tasks. 0000066419 00000 n We identified three main themes, namely challenges and best practices, location selection and hand-offs management. Most agile practices emphasize face-to-face communication. We showed that there are three main research themes, namely challenges and best practices, location selection and hand-offs management. 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. If a system goes down or a major bug cripples workflows, employee productivity and customer experiences can plummet quickly., More than ever, customers expect instant action and response when they experience a technical problem with a product theyre using. How do companies similar to your own handle support? Linear sequential approaches such as the Waterfall model seem to be inefficient for the FTS approach. This facilitates easy job hand-offs and fits nicely within the FTS model. Document what has been accomplished so each site can avoid repeating work. A follow the sun model can help your organization provide 24/7/365 support to customers across the globe, regardless of time or location. Test the plan before implementation to ensure that hand-offs between sites will run smoothly and make tweaks to the processes as needed. The FTS model has proven its potential for decreasing time to market, accelerating product development and ensuring consistent client communication. 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. In the gaming and retail industries, for example, 24/7/365 support might be pretty standard. CNSC released the formal follow-up report to Sun Media, with the un . Prashanth G.L, Santosh Malagi, Laurens Van Den Bercken, Ade Setyawan Sajim and Bernd Kreynen are the authors of this blog. Follow-the-Sun Strategy: A Process for Global Software Development Learn how to use a follow the sun model for your IT and cloud teams. 0000068636 00000 n [10] Eoin Conchir, Helena Holmstrom Olsson, Par J Agerfalk, and Brian Fitzgerald. 'r( bU:nL,/C^=E#$c;kNaw ] ^6JaI-~5%)IScN8D!MZl1?/*8(Y 7 3go>".X@`kDe!K Slide 1 of 2. Since these aspects above are reported to increase efficiency, it was also concluded that when these aspects are taken into account the duration of the project is reduced. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 9(1):53-69, 1992. I have a team that is 12 hours ahead so we're not online at the same time. The follow the sun model is based on the following principles: When a follow the sun method is implemented correctly, it will reap the following advantages for you and your business. Time to market is the amount of time it takes from the moment the product is conceived until the product is available for use or sale. Calendar efficiency can be increased in a simple way by working overtime (overload mode), but this only improves the efficiency by 6%. Many factors influence the need to develop the products quickly such as avoiding contract creep, schedule slippages, budget overruns and other managerial reasons. Here's how to deliver an experience that meets people's high and evolving expectations. Free and premium plans, Operations software. 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]. Its also a great record to have on hand to show various stakeholders just how much your department can accomplish in any given window of time., Visualizing your cloud infrastructure in a centralized location that is accessible to all global team members will create an accurate and consistent picture of your follow the sun model from day one. 0000064539 00000 n [2] Murray R Millson, SP Raj, and David Wilemon. 42nd Hawaii International Conference on. In Management of Engineering and Technology, Portland International Center for, pages 24582466. That means customers requests and communications are coming in quickly and oftenand these businesses must meet that demand. 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. 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. Employee turnover is the number of workers leaving your business at any given timeincluding voluntary and involuntary exits. 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. 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 . Agile seems to be the best and most suitable for FTS based approaches because the principles of Agile anf FTS complement each other. Cameron [13] highlights the example of FTS application at EDS (now a part of HP). In ', Successful businesses satisfy customer needsand for some businesses, especially those that have expanded globally, that means providing superior customer service and support 24 hoursin a row. With Lucidscale, you have a single source of truth for every project, feature, and bug being worked on by IT engineers. [6] Carmel, Erran, Yael Dubinsky, and Alberto Espinosa. Based on the discussions in the Principles of FTS section which explains the minimum criteria for a work flow to be considered as a FTS approach, the following do not fit in this category [1]: Agile software development practice consists of a set of principles which advocate continuous improvement, adaptive planning, early delivery and flexibility in responding to change. 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. For example, you may need skilled bilingual managers and associates to help with international communications. 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. The FTS approach is based on the principle of handing-off unfinished work to the next location at the end of work day. Picture this. Each production site works during the day as a subteam and it needs within-site coordination. Note that it will only suit some business models. How to use a follow the sun model for your IT and cloud teams - Lucidchart 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.

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