With the Stakes High, A Lucent Duo Conquers Distance and Culture Wall Street Journal; New York; Apr 23, 1999; By Thomas Petzinger Jr.; Holmdel, N.J. -- IMAGINE DESIGNING the most complex product in your company's history. You need 500 engineers for the job. They will assemble the world's most delicate hardware and write more than a million lines of code. In communicating, the margin for error is minuscule. Now, scatter those 500 engineers over 13 time zones. Over three continents. Over five states in the U.S. alone. The Germans schedule to perfection. The Americans work on the fly. In Massachusetts, they go to work early. In New Jersey, they stay late. Now you have some idea of what Bill Klinger and Frank Polito have been through in the past 18 months. As top software-development managers in Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs division, they played critical roles in creating a new fiber-optic phone switch called the Bandwidth Manager, which sells for about $1 million, the kind of global product behind the company's surging earnings. The high-stakes development was Lucent's most complex undertaking by far since its spin-off from AT&T in 1996. Managing such a far-flung staff ("distributed development," it's called) is possible only because of technology. But as the two Lucent leaders painfully learned, distance still magnifies differences, even in a high-tech age. "You lose informal interaction -- going to lunch, the water cooler," Mr. Klinger says. "You can never discount how many issues get solved that way." THE PRODUCT GREW as a hybrid of exotic, widely dispersed technologies: "light-wave" science from Lucent's Merrimack Valley plant, north of Boston, where Mr. Polito works; "cross-connect" products here in New Jersey, where Mr. Klinger works; timing devices from the Netherlands; and optics from Germany. Development also demanded multiple locations because Lucent wanted a core model as a platform for special versions for foreign and other niche markets. Involving overseas engineers in the flagship product would speed the later development of spin-offs and impress foreign customers. And rushing to market meant tapping software talent wherever it was available -- ultimately at Lucent facilities in Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina and India. "The scary thing, scary but exciting, was that no one had really pulled this off on this scale before," says Mr. Polito. Communication technology was the easy part. Lashing together big computers in different cities assured everyone was working on the same up-to-date software version. New project data from one city were instantly available on Web pages everywhere else. Test engineers in India could tweak prototypes in New Jersey. The project never went to sleep. Technology, however, couldn't conquer cultural problems, especially acute between Messrs. Klinger's and Polito's respective staffs in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Each had its own programming traditions and product histories. Such basic words as "test" could mean different things. A programming chore requiring days in one context might take weeks in another. Differing work schedules and physical distance made each location suspect the other of slacking off. "We had such clashes," says Mr. Klinger. Personality tests revealed deep geographic differences. Supervisors from the sleek, glass-covered New Jersey office, principally a research facility abounding in academics, scored as "thinking" people who used cause-and-effect analysis. Those from the old, brick facility in Massachusetts, mainly a manufacturing plant, scored as "feeling" types who based decisions on subjective, human values. Sheer awareness of the differences ("Now I know why you get on my nerves!") began to create common ground. Amid much cynicism, the two directors hauled their technical managers into team exercises -- working in small groups to scale a 14-foot wall and solve puzzles. It's corny, but such methods can accelerate trust-building when time is short and the stakes are high. At one point Mr. Klinger asked managers to show up with the product manuals from their previous projects -- then, in a ritualistic break from technical parochialism, instructed everyone to tear the covers to pieces. MORE THAN anything else, it was sheer physical presence -- face time -- that began solidifying the group. Dozens of managers began meeting fortnightly in rotating cities, socializing as much time as their technical discussions permitted. (How better to grow familiar than over hot dogs, beer and nine innings with the minor league Durham Bulls?) Foreign locations found the direct interaction especially valuable. "Going into the other culture is the only way to understand it," says Sigrid Hauenstein, a Lucent executive in Nuremberg, Germany. "If you don't have a common understanding, it's much more expensive to correct it later." Eventually the project found its pace. People began wearing beepers to eliminate time wasted on voice-mail tag. Conference calls at varying levels kept everyone in the loop. Staffers posted their photos in the project's Web directory. Many created personal pages. "It's the ultimate democracy of the Web," Mr. Klinger says. The product is now shipping-on schedule, within budget and with more technical versatility than Lucent expected. Distributed development "paid off in spades," says Gerry Butters, Lucent optical-networking chief. Even as it helps build the infrastructure of a digitally connected planet, Lucent is rediscovering the importance of face-to-face interaction. All the bandwidth in the world can convey only a fraction of what we are.
answer the following questions.
(1) Could the 500 Lucent engineers who worked on the Bandwidth Manager project be called a team? Why or why not? Could Bill Klinger and Frank Polito be called a team? Explain.
(2) What role, if any, did trust play in this case?
(3) What lessons about managing virtual teams does this case teach us?
(4) Which of the key attributes of high-performance teams are evident in this case? Which are not?
(5) Based on what you have read, what was the overriding key to success in this case?
_____________ Case studies have been adapted from INC 5000 (“Best Compensation: Cashing In” and “The Productivity-Boosting Gain-Sharing Report” by Tom Ehrenfeld) and fastcompany.com (“What Makes Teams Work?” by Regina Fazio Maruca).