Managing a Global Team at Sun
LEAD – Managing a Global Team: Sun Microsystems – 9/16/2010
Situation * HS Holdings (HSH), enterprise customer with online banking, had servers go down * Sun’s CS team didn’t respond, servers stayed down for 2 hours, cost HS Holdings thousands * HSH has $300k/yr premium contract for 24/7 service: potentially violated by outage, threatening suit * Flow of crisis * Praveen D. got call from HSH, pages on-call after-hours US manager 3x, MISTAKE: used weekday number not weekend (still weekend in Cali, not India) * Did not call Nick E. directly: insulted by earlier Nick comment “India team incompetent” * Possible mistake: Nick E. had cell phone off, assumed others would call his home * Praveen D. tries to fix problem with Indian team, couldn’t find HS Holdings contact info * MISTAKE: Nick E. had not updated the contact number when client contact moved * Praveen D. and Rahul A. blame bad queue for not forwarding the proper contact info * MISTAKE: India supposed to program queue for missing numbers, UAE ended up programming, misunderstood instructions and assumed not for emergencies, did not send to support queue or include automatic page to managers on call * Meanwhile, Elizabeth F. on phone with HSH, Nick E. and Greg J. miss her calls, and Praveen D. only gets call in time to miss the HSH manager’s EOD * Email response times: Rahul-Robert: 30 mins, Nick-Rahul: 3 hours (3.5 post start), Rahul-Praceen: 11.5 hours (15 post start) * Existing team issues * Indian team feels slighted: long work days (6:30AM to 9PM for calls) to keep up with US and global team, also gets maintenance work vs. creative engineering like US * French-US tension: France angry that US paid 30% more, US angry that France gets longer vacation allowances due to government regulations * UAE neglect: feels Greg J. does not give enough face to face with them * UAE culture clash:
Situation * HS Holdings (HSH), enterprise customer with online banking, had servers go down * Sun’s CS team didn’t respond, servers stayed down for 2 hours, cost HS Holdings thousands * HSH has $300k/yr premium contract for 24/7 service: potentially violated by outage, threatening suit * Flow of crisis * Praveen D. got call from HSH, pages on-call after-hours US manager 3x, MISTAKE: used weekday number not weekend (still weekend in Cali, not India) * Did not call Nick E. directly: insulted by earlier Nick comment “India team incompetent” * Possible mistake: Nick E. had cell phone off, assumed others would call his home * Praveen D. tries to fix problem with Indian team, couldn’t find HS Holdings contact info * MISTAKE: Nick E. had not updated the contact number when client contact moved * Praveen D. and Rahul A. blame bad queue for not forwarding the proper contact info * MISTAKE: India supposed to program queue for missing numbers, UAE ended up programming, misunderstood instructions and assumed not for emergencies, did not send to support queue or include automatic page to managers on call * Meanwhile, Elizabeth F. on phone with HSH, Nick E. and Greg J. miss her calls, and Praveen D. only gets call in time to miss the HSH manager’s EOD * Email response times: Rahul-Robert: 30 mins, Nick-Rahul: 3 hours (3.5 post start), Rahul-Praceen: 11.5 hours (15 post start) * Existing team issues * Indian team feels slighted: long work days (6:30AM to 9PM for calls) to keep up with US and global team, also gets maintenance work vs. creative engineering like US * French-US tension: France angry that US paid 30% more, US angry that France gets longer vacation allowances due to government regulations * UAE neglect: feels Greg J. does not give enough face to face with them * UAE culture clash: