There was a time when the Spanish empire did not set the sun. Their domains ranged from the colonies in America, to Europe and Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, global technology startups are recovering that model to develop your AI-based products 24 hours a day.
When a team in San Francisco is finishing its work shift, its work continues in Europe, and then moves on to Asia, ensuring that development does not stop. The “follow the sun” model is not new, but the combination of distributed remote work and the development of AI has turned it into a formula to stay ahead of the competition, without exhausting the workforce.
The IBM empire in the 90s. In the 90s, IBM was an empire on which the sun did not set either. He IBM giant was one of the first to try the “follow the sun” model (Follow The Sun or FTS) with a team of five offices spread over different time slots to chain days and shorten software development times.
This model is based on the concatenation of days. Each group works during its normal day. When this ends in an office, the day begins in the next time slot that collects the witness of the work of his colleagues. The process is repeated throughout the day, synchronizing the journey of the star through the sky with the different work days throughout the planet.
Although in principle this model ran into some difficulties due to the poor performance of the connection networks of the time, IBM refined the process and managed to reduce projects by up to 67% by coordinating three offices in the United States, Australia and India.
A model that makes sense with AI. Today, Silicon Valley has stepped on the accelerator pedal of AI and new startup founders technologies have embraced days “996” in which all hours of the day that are dedicated to product development they are few.
As and as I pointed out analyst and software engineering expert Gergely Orosz, in the context of high competitiveness in the development of AI models experienced by the startup ecosystem on the west coast of the United States, more and more companies are choosing the “follow the sun” model to add normal days for teams in different countries. Thus, a model designed in Europe is tested on equipment in Asia at night and reviewed in California the next morning. The development machinery does not stop.
Global clients, local attention. Likewise, the clients of these technology companies are spread all over the world, so offering a technical support service is complicated if it has to be done from a single location.
According to data From Zendesk, 73% of customers switch to competitors due to bad experiences with support servicesso the distributed remote system allows the change of time slot so that the service adapts to the languages and local culture of each region. The user who needs help always speaks to someone during their normal hours, no matter where they live.
The push for AI and remote work. The rise of AI has improved the efficiency of the system at its most critical moment: shift change. This was one of the points that was most difficult for IBM managers to polish in the 90s. AI tools have helped unite shifts with chatbots that resolve doubts to employees, agents who summarize conversations with customers, prepare error reports or give solution ideas based on the context of the information that has been collected throughout the shifts, so as not to lose details when changing teams.
Companies that have opted for this model in which the sun does not set highlight that products are developed faster, there are fewer unresolved cases by the support service and customers see the company as always available.
Companies, especially technology companies, opted for elimination of teleworking and back to the office. However, no one said that this office should be on the same continent as that of their colleagues. A new evolution of remote work.
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Image | Unsplash (James Harrison)
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