Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory in Software Development

Working Paper Series Introduction " The Sun never sets on the British Empire, " was a notion emphasized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to highlight that the British Empire was far-flung, and that the sun was always visible from some part of this vast empire. While the British Empire has gradually disintegrated, we can now coin an equivalent notion: " The Sun never sets on the 24-hour Knowledge Factory! " The notion of the 24-hour Knowledge Factory can be traced back to the industrial revolution. Since the installed equipment was scarce and costly, the employees were scheduled to work in shifts of 8-16 hours in order to use the manufacturing facilities on a round-the-clock basis. With the advent of electronic computers and diminishing costs for telecommunications, one developed the notion of 24-hour Call Centers. Depending on the time of the call, it is automatically directed to a call center that is active at that time. Using a cluster of 3 to 4 call centers located in time zones 6-8 hours apart from the time zone of the neighboring call center, one can ensure that all employees of these geographically distributed call centers are working during daytime in their respective countries. The notion of multiple support centers was subsequently adapted for supporting global communications networks over time. Now it has become feasible for one to use a geographically distributed workforce of highly trained professionals to complete an endeavor in a much shorter timeframe as compared to a scenario in which all personnel are based at one location, irrespective of where location is. By involving specialized microchip design engineers located at multiple places around the world, a semiconductor chip design firm may create virtual " 24-hour knowledge factories ". This allows for an efficient design process that has a faster turnaround time. It provides the firm with access to high-talent designers who would otherwise have to move to a different country, or work at odd hours of the night; some persons call the latter type of shift as the " graveyard shift ". The creation of professional service teams that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries offers the potential to change the face of many industries. This innovation will dramatically impact the manner in which companies build, test, sell and support their products and services. Years ago, people in India and the United States thought the time difference was a negative-they thought …