Episode 99: Global Remote Teams and Follow-the-Sun Delivery
Follow-the-sun delivery is a powerful model for global teams. By distributing work across time zones, projects can progress almost continuously, with one region handing off tasks to the next as their workday begins. This model promises efficiency, but it only works when the system is deliberately designed. Without clear agreements, disciplined handoffs, and robust artifacts, follow-the-sun turns into follow-the-chaos, with duplicated work, missed context, and unresolved incidents bouncing between regions. PMI’s lens here is simple: design the system intentionally, run it consistently, and refine it on a cadence. Success is not luck—it is structured collaboration across geography.
The artifacts that support this model must be strong. Working agreements define expectations for responsiveness, documentation, and overlap. Handoff checklists ensure that deliverables passed between regions are complete, with status, blockers, and acceptance criteria clearly documented. A single source of truth—a shared repository or board—prevents version drift. Access logs confirm that every team member and vendor is using approved systems. Incident and on-call guides define ownership during off-hours. These artifacts serve as the backbone of global collaboration, ensuring that when time zones shift, trust in information remains intact.
Scenario one illustrates a common failure. The Asia-Pacific team finishes work overnight, but when the Europe, Middle East, and Africa team picks it up, they find unclear acceptance criteria and multiple versions of the same file. They redo the work, wasting hours. Options include adding more meetings, appointing a liaison, delaying the release, or standardizing asynchronous templates with examples and enforcing repository standards. The correct answer is to fix the system: use standardized async acceptance criteria with examples and non-examples, enforce repository discipline, and add a brief overlap review window to confirm alignment.
Adding more meetings may feel responsive, but it undermines the async-first principle and burdens distributed teams with late or early calls. Appointing a liaison helps, but it does not solve the systemic ambiguity. Delaying the release simply masks the root cause. Standardizing async documentation, enforcing a single repository as the truth, and using minimal overlap for quality checks are the actions that solve the underlying problem. The artifacts that prove it—acceptance criteria templates, repository logs, and overlap check notes—become the evidence trail for both performance and governance.
Scenario two addresses access delays. A partner team is blocked because access approvals for a tool are slow. Options include sharing credentials, telling them to wait, moving work elsewhere, or fast-tracking access through policy using sanitized datasets in the meantime. PMI expects you to avoid shortcuts like credential sharing, which violate both security and compliance. Telling teams to wait wastes productivity, and shifting work elsewhere disrupts planning. The professional move is to fast-track the request through the approved policy path, provide a sanitized dataset temporarily if possible, and log the exception. That way, productivity is restored without compromising security.
Artifacts in this scenario include the access request log, the exception register documenting the sanitized dataset, and updated access lists once approvals are finalized. Offboarding hygiene and periodic reviews also come into play—without them, shortcuts multiply. PMI situational questions will often test whether you choose speed at the expense of control. The correct answer is always the one that unblocks through policy, protects sensitive data, and leaves an auditable trail. Sharing credentials may be fast, but it undermines trust in the entire system.
Scenario three explores incident handling in a follow-the-sun model. A Severity-2 outage occurs right as one region hands off to another. Ownership is unclear, and updates fall through the cracks. Options include ignoring the issue until the next morning, emailing chains back and forth, escalating aimlessly, or invoking the on-call guide. The correct choice is to invoke the incident playbook: assign an incident commander, timestamp updates, and establish a cadence for status reports. This ensures continuity across time zones, with a single thread of accountability. PMI wants you to recognize that incidents cannot be left to chance—they require predefined roles, timestamps, and evidence.
Artifacts for incident response include the on-call roster, the incident log capturing each timestamped update, and the CAPA plan created once the issue is resolved. Without these, teams fall back on “hot-potato” escalation, where ownership is passed but never held. Ignoring until morning is unacceptable in a global model; customers expect continuous stewardship. PMI’s exam will test whether you see incident playbooks as artifacts, not as “nice to haves.” The ethical and professional choice is to follow the documented system, keep records current, and communicate transparently.
Metrics and rituals are what refine the follow-the-sun system. Handoff quality can be measured by checking how often receiving teams had to redo work or chase missing information. Work in progress should be tracked for aging—if items stall across multiple regions, that signals breakdowns in flow. Cycle and lead time by region show whether handoffs add friction. Weekly asynchronous retrospectives allow teams to reflect without requiring all-hands calls. Monthly norm reviews revisit agreements: are handoffs working, are tools serving, and are decisions clear? These rituals provide a cadence for continuous improvement.
Artifacts tie these metrics together. A single link to status dashboards and decision logs prevents duplication. Async retrospectives produce action items stored in the same repository as work items. Norm reviews are recorded so expectations remain visible. PMI wants you to avoid duplication—the trap of having three different tools each claiming to be the “truth.” The professional choice is to consolidate into one system, update consistently, and communicate decisions where everyone can see them. Transparency is not achieved by volume of communication but by clarity of artifacts.
The first half of this lab has shown how global teams succeed or fail not because of talent but because of systems. Follow-the-sun delivery only works when handoffs are clear, access is managed through policy, incidents follow playbooks, and metrics refine the process. The traps—adding more meetings, sharing credentials, relying on email—are seductive but dangerous. PMI’s exam will test whether you choose async-first, artifact-driven solutions over knee-jerk fixes. The professional answer is always to design the system, run it consistently, and refine it with evidence.
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Security and compliance sit at the heart of global delivery. When teams are spread across continents, the temptation to relax access rules or overlook device hygiene can be high. But PMI expects project managers to recognize that least-privilege access, strong device posture checks, and adherence to data residency constraints are non-negotiable. Least privilege means granting people only the access they need, nothing more. Device posture refers to ensuring laptops and mobile devices meet baseline standards such as encryption, patches, and endpoint protection. Data residency requires that sensitive customer data remain in specific regions, aligned with local laws. Cutting corners in any of these areas introduces systemic risks that threaten not just compliance but the credibility of the delivery model.
Artifacts supporting this discipline include redaction and sanitization processes for test data, exception logs for temporary deviations, and vendor access rules. Redaction ensures that sensitive details are obscured before being shared across environments. Sanitization guarantees datasets do not contain personal identifiers outside of approved uses. Exception logs provide a formal mechanism for approving and tracking temporary deviations, so nothing is “off the books.” Vendor access rules govern external contributors, ensuring they comply with the same standards as internal teams. Project managers demonstrate integrity by insisting these artifacts are complete, current, and auditable.
Another critical dimension is offboarding hygiene. In global teams, people join and leave frequently, whether contractors, vendors, or employees. Ethical project management means ensuring that when someone exits, their access is removed promptly and comprehensively. Too often, global projects leave dormant accounts active, creating both compliance and security gaps. Periodic access reviews are also essential: even if someone is still active, do they still need all the permissions they hold? Integrity means not only granting access correctly but also revoking it promptly when roles change. PMI situational stems will often test whether you recognize offboarding and access reviews as part of compliance, not optional extras.
Culture and language play a huge role in global collaboration. Teams in different regions bring diverse ways of communicating, and without attention, misunderstandings multiply. Language leveling is the practice of simplifying communication, avoiding jargon, and confirming intent in writing. Idioms that work in one culture may confuse or alienate in another. PMI expects project managers to foster clarity by encouraging teams to use plain, direct language and to confirm shared understanding rather than assuming it. Respect shows up in these details—when people feel understood, they participate more fully.
Time zones create another cultural nuance. Ethical project management means fairness in scheduling, not forcing one region to carry all the burden of late-night or early-morning calls. Rotating meeting times spreads the inconvenience. For standing forums, camera-optional policies combined with written summaries show respect for bandwidth, environment, and accessibility. Asynchronous tools are the backbone, but when synchronous touchpoints are needed, fairness in scheduling is part of respect. PMI’s exam may test whether you recognize rotating times and written summaries as ethical, people-first practices.
Written decisions are another cultural anchor. Encouraging teams to record decisions in shared systems, with respectful tone and context, prevents ambiguity and builds trust. Verbal decisions, especially across time zones, are quickly lost. Written decisions that include reasoning give quieter voices a chance to engage asynchronously. They also create a record for audits and retrospectives. The project manager sets the expectation: every important decision should live in writing, in the shared system, for all to see. This reinforces the PMI values of transparency and accountability in multicultural settings.
Exam pitfalls for global projects usually involve reflexive over-reliance on meetings, shadow tools, and undocumented shortcuts. “More meetings” is a common knee-jerk reaction to handoff problems, but PMI expects you to prioritize asynchronous clarity instead. Shadow tools—teams keeping their own spreadsheets or trackers—undermine the single source of truth and create version drift. Undocumented decisions may feel fast but leave no trace for accountability. Sharing credentials, as mentioned earlier, is another tempting shortcut that fails compliance. Skipping on-call ownership—leaving incidents to bounce between regions—is another failure PMI may test. The heuristic to apply is: asynchronous standards first, minimal overlap for critical points, and one single source of truth.
Let’s work through a mini scenario. Two regions discover they’ve duplicated the same work because backlog ownership was unclear. One region built a feature while the other region built a parallel but conflicting version. The options could be to blame one region, to add more meetings, to accept the duplication as wasted effort, or to consolidate the backlog and clarify ownership. The correct next action is to consolidate the backlog into one single system, clarify ownership explicitly, set work-in-progress limits to prevent overcommitment, and establish a cross-region demo cadence. Updating the working agreements ensures all teams know how ownership is decided going forward.
Artifacts for this duplication fix include the consolidated backlog, updated ownership notes in the working agreements, and demo records showing alignment across regions. Work-in-progress limits prevent multiple regions from starting the same type of work simultaneously. Cross-region demos ensure that what one region delivered is visible to the next before they start related tasks. The cultural impact is strong: instead of blame, you demonstrate systemic fixes. PMI’s exam will often test whether you choose systemic artifact-based solutions over interpersonal blame or meeting overload.
The quick playbook for global remote teams and follow-the-sun delivery is straightforward but powerful. First, standardize handoffs with checklists and clear acceptance criteria. Second, protect access hygiene with least-privilege, sanitized datasets, exception logs, and regular access reviews. Third, define on-call roles clearly so incidents are never ownerless. Fourth, use one single source of truth for backlog, status, and decisions—no shadow systems. Fifth, monitor flow with metrics like handoff quality, cycle time, and aging work-in-progress. Sixth, refine norms continuously through retrospectives and cultural reviews. The constant thread: decisions and criteria are written clearly, shared asynchronously, and linked to artifacts.
Teaching teams to write decisions and acceptance criteria clearly is perhaps the single most important cultural skill in global delivery. A well-written acceptance criterion with examples and non-examples can prevent hours of rework across time zones. A clearly written decision note can prevent duplication and conflict. As project manager, you model this by writing with clarity yourself and by reinforcing the practice through retrospectives. PMI values are lived in these habits: fairness through clarity, honesty through documentation, responsibility through ownership, and respect through inclusive language.
The closing reflection is that follow-the-sun delivery is not about working faster but about working smarter. It leverages time zones to create continuity, but it only works when underpinned by ethical practices: secure access, documented evidence, inclusive culture, and clear agreements. Shortcuts—like extra meetings, shared passwords, or shadow tools—erode the model. Discipline—like async standards, single sources of truth, and transparent artifacts—makes it sustainable. PMI situational questions will test whether you instinctively choose discipline over shortcuts. The professional answer is always the same: design the system, run it consistently, refine it transparently, and leave a clear trail of evidence.
