Globally distributed technology projects thrive on experience working together apart: Impacts of team balance, task balance, and task heterogeneity

Abstract

Enabling shared experiences could be key to managing technology projects successfully. The advantages gained from the experience of working together can be complemented, but also offset, by common aspects of technology projects—like the dispersion of team members and the integration of heterogeneous tasks across global sites. This study develops and tests a conceptual framework that scrutinizes the impact of team familiarity and task allocation challenges. It identifies three elements of task allocation in technology projects that affect the familiarization process: (i) team (im)balance, (ii) task (im)balance, and (iii) task heterogeneity. An examination of 27,948 software tasks in six projects involving teams working apart on heterogeneous and dispersed tasks in the Netherlands and India shows that the experience of working together apart reduces the average cost of software tasks. This positive effect is enhanced by task heterogeneity and team balance, despite being hampered by task balance. These findings shed new light on task allocation challenges in cross-organizational technology projects distributed over the world.