I'm in a position where I am leading two teams of 4. Both teams are located in India. I am on the west coast of the U.S.
I'm finding leading remote teams challenging: First, their command of the English language is weak. Second, I'm having difficultly understanding them through their accents. Third is timing, we are 12 hours apart.
We use Skype to communicate.
I have a month to get the project done. We've burned through a week just setting up the environments.
At this point I'm considering working their hours, 11p PDT to 7a PDT, to get them up to speed, so that I can get the project off the ground. A 12 hour lag time is too much.
I'm looking for steps I can take to be successful at leading an offshore team.
Update
The offshore team's primary task is coding, of course, most coding tasks do involve some design work.
The offshore team's are composed of one lead, 2 mid level (4 to 5 years) developers and a junior (~2 years) developer.
The project is classic waterfall. We've handed the offshore team a business and a technical design document. We are trying to manage the offshore in an agile way. We have daily conference calls with them and I'm requiring the teams to send me a daily scrum in the form of an email answering the following questions:
What did I do today?
What am I going to do tomorrow?
What do I need from Chuck so I can
do my job tomorrow?
There is some ambiguity in the tasks. The intent was to give them enough direction for them to develop the task with out writing the code for them.
I don't have a travel budget.
I am using Fogbugz to track the tasks. Each task has been entered into Fogbugz and given a priority. Each team member has access to FogBugz and can choose what task they wish to complete.
Related question: What can we do to improve the way outsourcing/offshoring works?
Update 2
I've decided that I can not talk to the team once a day. I must work with them. Starting tonight I've started working the same hours they are. This makes me available to them when they have questions. It also allows me to gain their trust and respect.
Stackoverflow question
Leading an offshore team
