UVA-OB-1054

Rev. Jul. 29, 2015

The Global Software Team: Jugaad Needed1

The Global Networks Company (GNC), headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, made its
global footprint in India in 1994 by establishing a presence in Bangalore. Although mainly a
sales support office, GNC grew name recognition from its contracts with India’s government to
help build nationwide networks. Not quite 20 years later, GNC decided to further invest in India
and tapped a manager from the Boston office, Jim Notrika, to establish and then manage GNC’s
first global software center in Mumbai.

Notrika had been with the firm several years, having worked his way
up from software engineer to software center manager—a position he’d
held for eight months when he assumed responsibility for the new
Mumbai center. His employees were now split between the Boston and
Mumbai, and he looked forward to seeing productivity from both
locations.
Notrika’s first set of decisions was about how to structure the Mumbai
software center facility, as well as how to coordinate the workflow
between Mumbai and Boston. He decided that the Boston group would
interface with customers—including all aspects of client engagement
from presales to sales to implementation—and the Mumbai group would
design and then develop the software. His plan was for the Boston group
to meet with clients (all of whom were based in the United States) and
then communicate the outcome of the client meetings to the Mumbai
group. Allowing for the time zone difference, the Mumbai group would
work on the project, communicate its progress, and raise any issues by
the start of the next business day back in the United States.
Two elements drove Notrika’s decisions about this work process:
client involvement and team member expertise. Clients often demanded
solutions quickly and wanted to be heavily involved in the products that
evolved out of early presales meetings. In fact, some clients got so
involved in the daily development that GNC referred to them as partners.
By keeping the Boston group on the client-relationship side and the
Mumbai group in development, each group could share insights within
and between locations and stay focused on the work it was responsible
for. Notrika anticipated that this division of work would be more
efficient and thought it invited constant communication between team
members in both locations. Notrika also wanted the Mumbai facility to
be different—he did not like the idea of using global offices solely for
support of the Boston headquarters. And while recruiting talent, Notrika
discovered that there was an immense resource pool of engineering talent
in India. Realizing that the software engineers he employed in India were
far more qualified
than those working in Boston, he decided to limit the Boston group to
client engagement and allow the Mumbai group to focus on the
technical aspects of the project.

1
Jugaad is a Hindi term that usually describes a creative idea or fix.

This case was compiled from various accounts of actual events and prepared as a composite case by
Kristin J. Behfar, Associate Professor of Business Administration, and Gerry Yemen, Senior Researcher.
It was written as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an
administrative situation. Copyright © 2014 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation,
Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to
sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School
Foundation.
Page 2 UVA-OB-1054

All Lawyered Up

The global software center started out by successfully completing

some minor projects and, in the beginning of 2013, was assigned to
work on the implementation of a project for a large, prestigious law firm
in the United States. During the first part of the project, Notrika’s team
designed and implemented a digital infrastructure of client records that
served the eight offices in the firm’s system. That infrastructure created
massive efficiency gains in automating the scheduling of client
appointments and scheduling orders, streamlining generations of
litigation, and improving client processing from preregistration to case
closure.2
The next phase of the project was to integrate the law firm’s wireless
handheld devices as a data input source. Lawyers typically moved
between three locations with clients (office, court, or jail) and wanted to
have access to a client’s full file regardless of the location—something
the partners believed was essential to the organization’s mission:
“Delivering high-quality legal services in a timely manner and exceeding
client expectations by solving problems and creating value in
unexpected ways.”
But just a few months into this phase, things weren’t going so well.
Notrika had overheard unflattering comments in Boston about team
members in Mumbai—different assumptions about the work process
seemed to be the cause of the complaints. Work in India was behind
schedule and workers there were starting to quit. Rivalry started to
undermine the relationship between the engineers in Mumbai and those
back in Boston. Although no one said anything to Notrika, while
walking the hallways in Boston, he recognized that the group was
showing signs of strain—especially when he overheard one engineer
complain:
Look, working with these guys in India, you have to assume
deadlines won’t be met. That’s just the way they work over there,
and they won’t ever tell you any bad news so you can deal with it
up front— I found another problem today that’s going to add to the
delay. When I do specifically ask about a problem, they either just
don’t answer, take forever to answer, change the subject, ask the
same dang question 20 times, or talk about what is going right.
Things got worse, and two weeks into the project launch, the group in
Mumbai was indeed behind schedule. In addition, one after another,
three of Notrika’s most skilled Mumbai engineers quit. When the third
resignation occurred, Notrika hopped on a plane for an emergency trip to
Mumbai to analyze the situation. What he learned from the Mumbai
group was confusing.

Old Box, New Data

The first thing Notrika noticed when he walked into the Mumbai
office was a suggestion box on a table across from the row of cubicles.
After a quick round of hellos, Notrika took the box to his office, opened
it, and found four slips of paper containing the following typed
messages:
Mr. Notrika needs to take charge of this team.

We are constantly accused of missing deadlines that we do not

agree to. The U.S. people tell us that when they assign an active
request in the United States, it should get done and that what we
need to do is simple! We shouldn’t need any more time—no
agreement on that.

2
There were several stages in ligation requiring scheduling orders, including complaint filing,
discovery, pleading, motions, trial schedules, and court appearances.
Page 3 UVA-OB-1054
When the client starts to get demanding, the U.S. group just tells
us to “work harder.” They make us feel like us the “bad guys in
India.” We might be “bad guys,” but we do all the good work.
We make all the changes that make the client happy and we
work hard. The Americans know we are behind, they
acknowledge it outright—but then create new active requests. It
is downright disrespectful. They don’t care that we work longer
so we can take real time requests from their time zone.

This may be difficult to get used to, but in most firms in India,
employees address a senior business person as sir or madam, not
by Bob or Susan. The Boston people don’t seem able to do that.
I’ve worked in the United States, where reporting relationships
exist, but for whatever reason, in our meetings, they seem to
speak to everyone in very familiar terms.
 Notrika’s management style included the belief that some failure was
essential for success. But he was concerned about what was going on
with his globally situated team. He was surprised at some of the things
the team complained about and appeared to be quitting over. Notrika
reminded himself that he was an engineer, not a sociologist. Who
could he talk to regarding what he should do about the
situation?