International Collaboration in Transorganizational Systems Development: The Challenges of Global Insourcing

There are a number of compelling reasons for companies to look outside their own organizational and national boundaries for the skills and knowledge needed to compete in the global marketplace. Improving telecommunications infrastructures around the world and highly skilled talent pools in low cost nations are only a few of the drivers motivating companies to collaborate with partner firms located abroad. Such collaboration is, however, extremely difficult to control and coordinate. This paper examines a special case of global transorganizational insourcing in which two dispersed, semi-autonomous organizations within the same parent entity collaborate on a software development project. The project involves an American and Indian team working together to develop an enterprise-wide SAP application for Transangara Corporation, a large software publishing house headquartered in the United States. Using a transorganizational development (TOD) model, the study analyzes the reasons behind the failure of the collaborating teams to meet the scheduled release deadline for the project and presents the steps taken to address the challenges. The paper concludes with a set of lessons learned and best practices for companies dealing with similar projects.