Sustaining High Performance in an Offshore Team in Globally Distributed Development: A Success Story

Abstract

Siemens has wide ranging experience in global development. Corporate development centers located in different geographical areas define their own processes to deal with the challenges in their respective location. It is to be understood that there is no "true globalization" in any business. From previous studies of managing offshore centers for product development, one expects that there is an amount of localization which comes in to play in projects when compared to the organization as a whole. This paper is an effort to describe how we achieve and sustain high performance effectively, in a globally distributed development, considering some of the main parameters of localization, where interaction among Germany, India, Hungary and China is involved. We describe some key practices that enable our offshore team to achieve and sustain high performance. We also show the value addition done by the offshore team along with awards, recognition, and ratings received that makes it a success story.