Date: 04. April 2008, written 06.04.2008 Place: Bangalore Duration: 30 min
Interviewer: Mugunthan Dharmadas (MD) Support: Mitos Supervisor Interviewee: Ano1, transcript approved by interviewee
MD: Could you tell me about your role? What you do?
Ano1 says he joined Mitos 3 years ago. He handled some engagements for US clients before starting to work on NCom projects on July 2007. His role is program manager for the Desert project, and therefore he is also the point of contact for the Norway - India communication about Desert.
Ano1 also says that they have leads for each subproject. His main responsibility is to work with his Norwegian counterpart and these project leads at IMO to handle people management, looking at risk issues, and make sure that they have a good quality delivery to the customer.
MD: Are you the only one talking to Norway, or are there other people doing the same?
Ano1 tells that the leads are talking to their respective leads in Norway, but he is on the higher level and keeps talking to the leads too. Also, those below the project leads are also free to talk to NMO staff if they have any issues.
The rest of the interview is more specifically about ProjO:
MD: Can you tell me about how that project is organized? Like, how many in Norway, how many here? What types of roles are in Norway and what types here?
Ano1 says that they have technical and managerial resources in both sites. It is more management, high-level design, and functional design in Norway. India has 20 resources working in ProjO. My Mitos supervisor says that in Norway the amount is 50.
MD: How is the complexity of the project?
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MD: Do you have direct contact with the customer, or only Mitos Norway?
Ano1 says that IMO talks only to Mitos Norway, and NMO will handle the talk with the customer.
MD: Could you tell me about the demography of the people here? Junior/seniors? Experts? And how you organize it
Ano1 says they follow the standard mix of juniors and seniors that is common in IMO. It is almost 6-8 junior resources (fresh students), 5-6 above, 4-5 above, almost 4, and one in the top.
MD: Could you tell me about the communication with Norway? How does it happen? Tlf, mail, visits etc.?
Ano1 tells that they use all types of communications. They also visit Norway regularly, and NMO staff visits IMO. Sometimes videoconferencing equipment is used. All kinds of communicational methods like telephone, mail, chat etc. is used. MSN Messenger works well in communicating with NMO.
He further tells that video conferencing is a very good way in combination with visits.
MD: Do you think you should have been more in Norway, or the Norwegians should have been more here to get to know the project even better?
Ano1 says that people should visit each other. This is a good way of getting more knowledge about each other, and it helps knowledge transfer. By visiting each other it is easy to know how the other teams work. In ProjO there is a great focus on this, and they try to send and receive people to build more knowledge about each other’s work, way of working and the different issues that is raised in different locations. After last November, IMO had two people in Norway, after that one person from NMO came to IMO, and now there is also one NMO resource present in IMO. Also, there is plan for more visits to each other’s offices for the future.
MD: Have you been developing any personal contacts during your time with the NCom projects?
Ano1 says that he has personal contact with all the leads in NMO, but not much with customer. With NMO he has several one to one meetings, and also there is interaction on a monthly basis. When asked for how the interaction is with the customer, he says that NCom uses Norwegian instead of English, and that makes customer interaction not possible.
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MD: The knowledge transfer, of for instance functional knowledge, knowledge about NCom etc… How has the transfer of these issues from NMO to IMO happened?
Ano1 says that initially IMO lacked much functional knowledge, but they have decreased the knowledge gap by visiting to get more understanding. Within different projects, if there are for instance any change requests that need to be implemented, IMO resources contact SMEs onsite to try to understand the purpose and implication of the change request. He tells that these activities to decrease the knowledge gap are important to efficient cooperation and that this is a focus area for the future.
MD: Have you been to Norway, and met the customer?
Ano1 says he has been in Norway once. But he did not meet NCom directly. Very few people from IMO meet the customer directly, but some of us meet. Especially people from ProjD have met the customer many times. So this depends on the projects. In ProjD, IMO interacts directly with the customer, because there are very few NMO people in that project.
MD: How is the distribution of the work in different phases among NMO and IMO people?
Ano1 says that coding, detailed design and unit tests is mainly done in IMO, while the higher level design, requirements specification and acceptance test is done in NMO. But also this depends on each project, for instance in ProjD almost 100% of the work, including all phases, is done by IMO.
NMO is close to the customer, so it is easier for them to do the initial, customer-dependent work.
The documents are basically written in English, but sometimes the documents from the customer are in Norwegian and then we use NMO to help translating. We use SharePoint for sharing the documents in a very well organized way. People have access to the documents they need depending on their role and project. For instance if he is not working with ProjD, he will not have access to ProjD documents.
MD: Do you use any agile methodologies here?
Ano1 says that they do not use any agile methodologies directly.
MD: Compared to what you believe is a perfect way of communicating with each other, what do you think lacks in the IMO-NMO communication now?
Ano1 says more communication between the leads and team members is the perfect way of communication. Understanding of why we do certain things in certain way sometime lacks between NMO-IMO.
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In India people will not raise issues unless they know each other very well. It is Indian culture.
Mitos Supervisor: You have been working with Norwegians and Americans… How do you feel with working with Norwegians?
Ano1 says that when talking about Norwegian Mitos employees, there is not a major language issue. English works fine both with Norwegians and Americans. But when it comes to confidence there is a difference. It is harder to build confidence among Norwegians, and European clients. Americans need less time to build confidence in Indian workers. Until Europeans get the correct confidence level needed to deal with Indian resources, they tend to get into each small detail, and IMO may feel that they are micromanaged.
Mitos Supervisor: How do you feel about NMO’s information sharing with IMO? Do you feel they want to share information or that they sometimes hide information?
Ano1 says that there have been some problems regarding lack of information flow from NMO to IMO before, but that it has improved much over time. Also, if there is much risk involved with one delivery, the importance of sharing information and building confidence is stressed even more so that people understand the need to consider them selves as one big team even though they are spread over distance. He also explains that the confidence level is low only in the initial phases, in a few months. Generally it improves over time. Over all he believes that the communication processes is good and that proper communication is happening between NMO and IMO.