Offshore development - maintain transparent communication

The most important thing at work is communication. This is especially true in offshore development projects. The biggest problem with offshore development work is mistrust. Because of the distance, there will naturally be distrust.

For example, you live in the Northeast, buy a house in Hainan, and then find someone to decorate it. With such a long distance, you can't see the progress every day. Do you have enough trust in the renovation workers?
What does he do every day, whether it is done according to plan, how is the quality, whether he is lazy, as an "onshore", you will definitely worry about such problems.

Therefore, as an offshore company, we should stop complaining about onshore's distrustful behavior. It's not that Onshore's character is bad, it's really "distance leads to mistrust" - it's the same with anyone.

Under such a premise, how to maintain mutual trust? One of the most important principles is maintaining transparent communication.
See the scene below.

Someone from offshore accidentally logged into another server while operating a production server. Originally, we had an agreement with our customers. Before logging in to any server, we must apply to the customer—even if you have the user name and password of this server.
Now I am logged in to the wrong server, what should I do?
The thinking of most people should be: Isn't it because I logged in wrongly, I didn't do anything, just log out and it's over!

But the result of this matter is not so simple. Although the operator logged out of the server, thinking that he was unknowing, in fact, each server will record the users who log in to the system, and the client will use the record information to compare the record information with the application record—and found a user that day , I have not applied for it, but I have logged into the system.

The client directly believes that this is an illegal intrusion. When it is found that someone from offshore has used this user, onshore will naturally ask us about the situation.

Our people found that they couldn't hide it, so they had to tell the truth. Once a concealment is discovered, all trust will evaporate.

Since it is possible to hide from onshore about logging in to the wrong server, how many other things that onshore does not know about have been concealed---onshore will definitely think so.
The working status in the future can be imagined: as an onshore, everything will stare at you until the trust gradually accumulates; as an offshore, I feel that onshore is making a big deal of a fuss, being stared at all day long, and my enthusiasm for work gradually increases. disappeared.

How to avoid this bad outcome: that is to maintain transparent communication.
For the above scenario, the operator does not need to hide, but should contact onshore immediately to inform the current problem. Onshore can also contact customers to inform them that this is not a system intrusion. Thus, all the contradictions about trust do not exist. We made mistakes too - logging into the wrong server - but wouldn't it be easier to fix a small mistake than to rebuild the whole trust relationship?

It's not just about logging in to the server. Don't hide anything. Telling the truth is the best way to build trust. Every time you tell a lie, you cover it up with more lies. By the time the paper can no longer wrap the fire, all trust will be lost.

Do you think the handling of the following situation is correct? Please think about it:
1. Originally, I wanted to test in the test environment, but I made a mistake in the server. I did the test in the production environment and modified the user's data.
     But I responded very quickly and corrected it immediately. Since there is no impact, it is okay not to report it to others.

2. Offshore has a lot of work, but for the sake of customers, although the tasks given to me by onshore are already overloaded, I have a high sense of responsibility
     .

3. In order to improve work efficiency, offshore has improved a lot of work methods. But this is our offshore business, there is no need to tell onshore.

Not all bad things need to be communicated with onshore. Changes and improvements on the offshore side also need to be told to onshore. Because everyone is not sitting in the same office, if one day onshore finds that the practice of offshore has changed, although there is no bad impact, there will always be an idea like "why didn't they tell us".

Maintaining transparent communication requires persistence. For the long-term cooperation between onshore/offshore, maintaining transparent communication is an indispensable measure.