The Real Problem with “Offshore” Software Development

"Why can’t those developers over there get anything right?”

“We asked for one thing, but we get back something totally different!”

Sound familiar?  

If you are part of an “offshore” software development project, maybe you have heard (or said!) something like this.

Why do “offshore” software development projects have so many problems? Are the people “over there” just bad programmers? Are they lazy? Are the timezones too far apart?

In my experience, you can find bad (and good!) programmers anywhere in the world. No one region is universally “good” or “bad." You can find motivated and indifferent programmers all over as well. Even different timezones can be overcome by teams shifting their working hours to maximize overlap.

None of these things is the real problem.

The real problem is that each member of the team brings their own set of culturally-influenced values to work and then assumes that everyone else on the teams holds the same values. This causes subtle, but significant conflicts and miscommunications that eventually render the partnership ineffective. We all operate on a set of value-based assumptions like cooperation vs competition or short-term orientation vs long term orientation that are a product of the culture in which we were born. When we interact without knowledge of those built-in cultural assumptions, we end up with rampant miscommunication. The message that is received is far from the message we send. 

Let’s look at the example of emotional expression. This is one of the core cultural values that varies from culture to culture and person to person. Suppose you have a meeting with the “offshore” software team where you present an exciting new direction for the product. You expect your offshore team to show and express what they feel at the moment. You expect your excitement to create excitement in their team. You expect them to express how inspired they are and how engaged they’ll be. Instead, you’re met with silence. No one is responding with any emotion at all! Frustrated by the lack of response, you call out individuals - "What do YOU think about this?"  The only response is a nervous giggle.

What meaning do you take away from this encounter?  If you have an affective (emotionally expressive communication) cultural value, you might come away critical of your “offshore” team.  "Those people just don’t care about our product or their job. They are so disengaged in what we’re doing. Why don’t they care more?” 

That might be a good assumption if the team shares that high affective cultural value with you.  But what if the team has a more neutral assumption when it comes to emotional expression? In that case, the silence is more likely to be an expression of respect. The team may just be giving each other time to take in and reflect on what has been said. The nervous giggles could be a result of the extreme discomfort caused by your calling out individuals.

So how can you build a high performing team when their respective cultures show emotional expression differently? Does one culture need to fix the other? Should you be less expressive? Should you send the team to an emotional expression camp? 

Neither cultural value is “right” or “wrong.” These are just different assumptions that cause individuals to experience the same event differently. 

The way forward is to take these implicit cultural values and make them explicit. If both cultural groups are aware of their own cultural values, then the team can have a conversation and build an agreement about how it will operate. 

That’s exactly what we do at the start of every One World Coders engagement. All members of the team take a cultural values assessment that helps make each individual aware of their own built-in assumptions, then we meet together as a team to understand how each of the 10 values is distributed among the team. Then, together, we build a set of agreements about how the team will work together in light of those differences. This becomes an artifact that can be revisited on regular cadence as a part of the team’s retrospectives.

If you had awareness of the emotional expression difference in the above example, perhaps you would have approached the team in this way: “Ok team, I’ve got a new direction for our product that I want to share with you today.  I’m very excited about this, so I may get a little bit worked up as I am telling you about it. I don’t need your reactions today, but I’ll ask that you share them in the team slack channel by tomorrow.    

You have fused the best of what these two cultural values bring to the table. You’ve asked for permission to be a little more expressive than the team might naturally be comfortable with, easing their tension. And you’ve harnessed the reflective power of the neutral emotion cultural value to get really well-formed, insightful feedback.

Here is where we find real power in diverse teams. When we can openly talk about our different values and each contribute from the strength that comes from holding that value, we can overcome the problems of miscommunication that tank most offshore development efforts and build a team that truly crosses borders.