Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Outsourcing to Vietnam

My hotel in Beijing gave me a free copy of The Wall Street Journal Asia yesterday. The cover story got my attention with the title "Vietnam wins attention as new outsourcing hub." The article goes on to explain how companies like Harvey Nash PLC are using Vietnam to service clients such as Belgium's Belgacom SA, Honda Motor Co.'s British unit, Discovery Communications Inc.'s Discovery Channel, and NBC Universal's MSNBC. I did a little poking around on www.ibm.com's site search capability and found that my own employer is active as well. See IBM Press room - 2007-03-12 IBM Expands Global Service Delivery Capabilities - New Centers in China and Vietnam.

So which country is next?

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

Friday, May 25, 2007

On War and Aggessive Project Schedules

I recently attended a 3-day "Business Design Assurance" or BDA held by my client. On the first day it was clear that there were still a lot of unresolved issues and the desired delivery date of the rollout to the first country was a risk. There was a lot of talk along the lines of "we can't go live without XXX!" A certain Senior Vice President could not attend the second day of the BDA but had the following as a message posted on the wall when everyone arrived for the second day of discussion.

"A good plan today violently executed is better than a perfect plan next week!"

General George S. Patton

(Dec 2007) English not your native language? I've begun making podcasts of popular posts and they are available at http://artsciita.podbean.com/. Listen online at that URL, with the MP3 player below, or subscribe to the podcast using the RSS feed and listen with your favorite MP3 player.



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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Global Lifestyle Time Challenge

I had a subtle career milestone today. Today I became fully aware that I was now "Global" ... with a capital "G" I think.

At about 6:30 am Central time I checked email at home before leaving for the airport. I saw an email from a business leader in the UK which set off alarms in my head that an important business decision my client needed to make was not being addressed. Knowing that a politically important deadline is approaching, I fired off a "this is a big issue!" email designed to alarm my readers that something important was not happening.

About 8 am Central time today I was waiting for a flight at the airport and my cell phone went off. It was that same business leader in the UK who took notice of my alarm. I don't know about you, but I don't get cell phone calls from people I've never met from other countries every day.

Shortly after arriving at my destination on the East Coast of the US, I scheduled a web meeting for tomorrow morning between people in Baltimore, Raleigh, California, and Beijing.

Later I was on a call between the US and Canada talking about interfaces to a system in China.

Still later I discussed architecture diagrams showing system components in Rochester (NY), Boulder, Dallas, Tulsa, Phoenix, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Toronto. I tried to figure out if the component in Hong Kong was really necessary. Could it be co-located with the rest of the stuff in Beijing?

I ate a hurried dinner of Tandoori Takki with two co-workers. One is a Norwegian citizen born in China but holding an American green card and the other was born in India but has been working in the US for a while. My history is boring compared to theirs.

Five minutes after checking into my hotel, I joined a conference call between the US and China but the co-worker from China didn't make the call. My co-worker later came online in China on instant messenger later and I pinged him about the call he missed. It turned out he was double booked for that timeslot. Heavy sigh. When are we going to solve time zone issues for calendars? I made sure he had the information for the web meeting in 9 hours.

This globalization thing isn't all its cracked up to be. Exactly when is it I am supposed to have some calm moments to think? When is it I am supposed to get more exercize like my doctor told me? Will the guy in California get up to make the web meeting at 6 am his time? Did I even have a right to call a web meeting that required someone to be there at 6 am? Will the guy in Beijing who has to join at 9 pm his time have a decent Internet connection? Did I have a choice on the time given that the guy we want to talk to was available then and it was a comfortable 9 am for him? Will my flight home on Friday be on time so I can make my daughter's piano recital? How early do I set my alarm clock for tomorrow? Early enough to hit the hotel treadmill or late enough to get another hour of sleep?

I have another trip to China coming up in two weeks. It is still fun for now. I can see how this could get old. I would love to hear how my readers in similar situations are handling the demanding hours, encroachment upon personal time, cultural differences, etc.

FYI, globalization has been a frequent topic of mine. You might take a look at some previous posts such as:


(Dec 2007) English not your native language? I've begun making podcasts of popular posts and they are available at http://artsciita.podbean.com/. Listen online at that URL, with the MP3 player below, or subscribe to the podcast using the RSS feed and listen with your favorite MP3 player.

Copyright © 2007 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.