| Course | MT262 Leading Global Teams |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 5 |
| Paper type | Asynchronous process design |
| Length | About 850 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT262 Unit 5
A Bug Report That Travels Around the World in a Day: A Unit 5 Asynchronous Process Design
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT262: Leading Global Teams
Unit 5 Asynchronous Process Design
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The tour-booking firm, its offices, the process and every example are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.
The Problem
Partner bug reports, problems reported by tour operators using our booking system, have been taking an average of about three days to resolve. The review of recent cases found that most of that time was waiting: a report logged in Auckland sat until Lisbon woke, a question from Lisbon sat until Auckland woke, and decisions waited for whoever owned them to be online. The team's offices span the clock, which means someone is always working, but the work was not designed to pass between them. O'Leary and Cummings (2007) note that temporal dispersion can be a resource as well as a cost, if work is arranged so that one site's evening becomes another's morning.
The Relay
The design sends each bug report around the offices in the order the sun reaches them.
1. Auckland partner support logs the report in the morning, Auckland time, with the operator's description, the affected bookings and screenshots, and reproduces it if possible.
2. Ho Chi Minh City's mobile team picks it up in its morning, which is Auckland's afternoon, during the four or five hours the two offices share. If the bug is in the app, the mobile team fixes it; if it is in the backend, it adds its findings.
3. Lisbon's backend team takes it in its morning, Ho Chi Minh City's afternoon, during their shared three or four hours, reviews any fix, adds backend changes and deploys to the staging environment.
4. Phoenix product approves the release in its morning, Lisbon's late afternoon, during their two or three shared hours, or sends a question back.
5. Auckland partner support verifies the fix with the operator the next morning, Phoenix's afternoon, during their shared five or six hours, and closes the report.
Each change of hands falls inside hours the two offices share, so the person passing the work and the person receiving it can speak if they need to. The only pair that never shares hours, Lisbon and Auckland, never hands off directly.
The Handoff Note
Every handoff carries a written note with five required fields. The note lives in the bug report itself, so the next office does not need to find it.
State: what has been done so far, in plain words
Next action: what the receiving office should do first
Open question: anything unknown, with who might know
Who can decide: the person or role who can make the next decision if one is needed
Do not: anything that must not happen before the next office wakes, such as telling the operator the bug is fixed
The fifth field comes directly from the release note incident earlier this term, when a fix was announced to a customer before it was complete. A handoff note that says "do not tell the operator until Phoenix approves" would have prevented it.
The most useful line in a handoff is often the one that says what not to do.
The Decision Rule Table
Not every decision should wait for a meeting, and not every decision should be made by whoever is awake. The design sorts decisions into three tiers.
Any office may decide: reproducing a bug, writing a fix, choosing a test approach, updating the operator on progress without promising a date
One lap of written objection time: deploying to staging, changing a database field, telling an operator a date for a fix; the deciding office posts its intended decision and proceeds after one full relay, about a day, unless another office objects in writing
Reserved for overlap meetings: releasing to production during peak season, changing pricing logic, anything that affects payments
Majchrzak et al. (2000) found that distributed teams work best when they adapt their structures to the technology and distance they face rather than copying co-located routines. The decision tiers adapt the team's approvals to a schedule in which the person with authority is often asleep.
When a Decision Cannot Wait a Day
Some problems cannot wait for a full lap. If an operator's customers are being charged twice, for example, the receiving office may act under the first tier to stop the harm, by disabling the affected feature, and must post the action immediately with a note that a reserved decision is pending. The product lead in Phoenix is on call by phone for payment problems only.
Measures
The team will compare, over the next quarter, the average time from report to verified fix, the share of handoffs with all five fields complete and the number of times a "do not" field was ignored. Espinosa and Carmel (2003) model the cost of time separation in software teams as a coordination burden that can be reduced by deliberate handoffs, and the measures test whether this design reduces it.
References
Espinosa, J. A., & Carmel, E. (2003). The impact of time separation on coordination in global software teams: A conceptual foundation. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 8(4), 249-266. https://doi.org/10.1002/spip.185
Majchrzak, A., Rice, R. E., Malhotra, A., King, N., & Ba, S. (2000). Technology adaptation: The case of a computer-supported inter-organizational virtual team. MIS Quarterly, 24(4), 569-600. https://doi.org/10.2307/3250948
O'Leary, M. B., & Cummings, J. N. (2007). The spatial, temporal, and configurational characteristics of geographic dispersion in teams. MIS Quarterly, 31(3), 433-452. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148802
What the MT262 Unit 5 assignment asks for
The fifth unit asks students to design a process that lets a dispersed team keep work moving without waiting for everyone to be online. Choose one recurring kind of work and map its path across locations through a working day. Place each handoff where the two locations share hours if possible. The prompt usually expects a written handoff template, rules for which decisions can be made by whoever is awake and which must wait, and a plan for urgent cases. Base the design on a real problem, such as delays from waiting, and say how you will measure improvement. Most designs fill around five pages once the relay diagram, the template and the decision table are in.
Inside the MT262 Unit 5 example
The design states the problem, three-day resolution times caused mostly by waiting, and cites O'Leary and Cummings on dispersion as a resource. The relay sets out five steps from Auckland to Ho Chi Minh City, Lisbon, Phoenix and back, each in shared hours, under a margin note on handoffs between people who can reach each other. The handoff note's five fields are listed, with the do-not field traced to the earlier release note incident and the highlighted line on what not to do. A three-tier decision table follows, with Majchrzak and colleagues on adapting structures. A section handles urgent harm such as double charges, and measures close it with Espinosa and Carmel, under a final note.
Where the points sit in the MT262 Unit 5 rubric
Asynchronous process designs are graded on fit to the team's time zones, the quality of the handoff, clear decision rights and attention to urgent cases. Handoffs placed inside shared hours earn more than a relay that passes work between people who can never speak. Instructors reward handoff templates whose fields prevent known failures, such as a field that blocks premature promises to customers. A decision table that separates routine, objection-window and reserved decisions shows understanding of authority across time zones. An urgent path, with limits on what may be done alone, shows realism. Measures that track handoff quality as well as speed, and accurate citations, complete the rubric.
Common MT262 Unit 5 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Students often design a follow-the-sun process without checking whether each pair of locations shares any hours, so the relay has a gap where work sits. Another common weakness is a handoff template with so many fields that nobody fills it in. Some designs leave every decision to the person who happens to be awake, which risks irreversible actions. Others route every decision to headquarters, which brings back the waiting the process was meant to remove. Test the relay on one real past case. Describe the work you want to move across locations, and a writer can map the relay, draft the template and sort the decisions into tiers.
Get an MT262 Unit 5 example written to your instructions
Describe the work your Unit 5 scenario needs to move, the offices or members involved and where each is located. Share that with the prompt and rubric. A first design is free, back within 24-48h, and names every handoff, what it carries and which decisions can proceed without anyone waiting for another site to wake. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT262 Unit 5 questions, answered
Does every team suit follow-the-sun work?
No. Research suggests it works best for tasks that divide cleanly and can be handed over with little context, such as testing, support and verification. Work requiring deep shared understanding, like designing one module together, suffers from constant handoffs. A strong design says which tasks travel and which stay in one office, and gives the reason for each.
How detailed should the handoff template be?
Detailed enough that the receiving office can act without asking a question, and short enough that people complete it at the end of a tiring day. Five or six required fields is common. Justify each one by what goes wrong without it, since graders look for templates designed from the team's actual failures rather than copied from a generic example.
What should happen when a decision cannot wait a full day?
Name who may decide alone and under what limits, such as reversible choices or anything below a stated cost or risk. Escalation paths should reach someone awake: a deputy in another office rather than a manager asleep at headquarters. The design should state these rules in advance, since improvising them at two in the morning is how teams make poor decisions.
Where can I find a free MT262 Unit 5 sample paper?
The whole MT262 Unit 5 asynchronous process design is on this page. It routes partner bug reports around four offices in a day, with handoffs in shared hours, a five-field note and a three-tier decision table.
How does the MT262 Unit 5 sample handle urgent bugs?
The receiving office may act alone only to stop harm, for example by disabling a feature that double-charges customers, must post the action at once and leaves the reserved decision pending. The product lead is on call for payment problems only.