Three Roundtables on Global Teams at Design Automation Conference

I blogged about some “Opportunities for Serious Conversation at DAC 2009” and wanted to fill in some details

• Mon 10:30-11:00 at Synopsys’ Conversation Central “Global Teams and Multi-Firm Collaboration”
• Tue 10:30-11:00 at Synopsys’ Conversation Central “Global Teams and Multi-Firm Collaboration”
• Wed 10:30-11:00 at Synopsys’ Conversation Central “Global Teams and Multi-Firm Collaboration”

Format

1. 1 minute introduction from each person that addresses their experience working in, supporting, or managing global teams. They can also suggest a relevant issue for the group to discuss.
2. Open discussion on topics suggested plus one or more of the questions below

Here are a list of some questions we may have a chance to cover.

• If you are managing a global team what are some challenges that it introduces?
• What steps have you taken to address them?
• What additional tools, (e.g. Skype, Webex, continuous build servers, …) beyond E-mail and conference calls have you found useful?
• If you need to get the team in a “synchronous meeting”–e.g. an “all hands”–what times do you normally select from?
• How often is this required?
• If you are supported a global team what additional policies or process have you put in place to provide quality service?
• For EDA Vendors: when you look at the feature roadmap for your tools, have you added or do you contemplate adding features to make them more global team friendly? (Do not need to disclose any NDA or unannounced features).
• As the design service chain becomes as global as the manufacturing supply chain, are their implications for licensing and support?
• For EDA Vendors: do you license tools to a customer who permits a supplier to use them on their behalf in another location?
• If you are a EDA customer, how do you look at this situation?
• Put a different way, many licensing and support assumption assumed that contractors were co-located: distance collaboration technologies now allow for partners and suppliers to be several time zones away. Does this break any of your assumptions from five or ten years ago?
• Note: this is not intended to get into a discussion of the merits of outsourcing, I am assuming that many folks around the table are involved in or are managing global teams–or supporting them–and want to allow folks share practical tips and techniques or what’s worked and what hasn’t.
• If “software is the promise of a relationship” and semiconductor IP is increasingly a subscription to a stream of versions (another relationship) as opposed to a single fixed configuration that’s instantiated and left alone, what new relationships are global teams now requiring for IP.

Please drop by if you are interested in taking part. A number of folks have indicated interest in taking part, I will also be blogging about these conversations as time permits (which may be this week or late August).