Tales from the Other Side: Confessions of an Offshore Resource

After the acquisition of a company with offices in New York, I pestered my company outrageously until they got fed up and finally relented – they agreed to send me to the US.

To ease the transition, I chose to move onto a project which would allow me to start working in London and continue on the same team after I had moved to New York.

In the extreme over-excitement that followed my relocation, it took me a little while to realise that effectively I was an offshore resource, no different really from any of our Indian test team, and the team needed to manage this appropriately.

I learnt a number of lessons whilst playing this game. Some of these points are also valid for teams with remote resources (e.g. people working from home).

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Metrics and Incentives.

This is a great example of what happens when you try to incentivise intelligent people on very simple metrics.

They cheat.

This was well described in Freakonomics, and something Mr On Software bangs on about regularly. It's clear that there isn't really a good answer to the problem - actually that's not true. The answer to the problem is to have everyone working in a job they are happy in and proud of, one where they are intrinsically motivated, and give them enough information to allow them to make the correct calls when it comes to prioritising work. But I'm guessing that a large portion of the working world does not fall into this category.

Certification

I know there are arguments against certification, and I definitely think that using certifiction to determine whether to interview or recruit people is downright daft, because frankly learning a bunch of answers isn't all that difficult. But I personally find that completing a certification really helps to round out my knowledge in an area. I guess my thoughts are that a fairly recent certification combined with the work experience to back it up is something that would make your CV more interesting to recruiters.

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Certified Scrum Master

Hmm. I have been so busy trying to think of "good" things to write here, and not having the time to actually write, that I see it's been 6 months since the last post.

If anyone is still out there though, I need help. I need a good Certified Scrum Master course in New York or London, preferably in April or May. Any suggestions? The one I wanted to go on was vetoed and now I find it's not running in NY again until Autumn.

PS Do you think it would be inappropriate to use the term "Scrum Mistress" on my CV?