Handling the different timezones in a distributed team

Team Collaboration, Usability, ,

When you schedule cards on a Kerika Task Board or Scrum Board, we offer a simple way to pick a date:

Setting due date
Setting due date

We don’t support setting a specific time (e.g. 5:00PM) along with the time: these times are generally useless in most work settings and add unnecessary complexity to the user experience.

And, yet, it’s possible that Kerika reports a specific time for a due date, like in this example:

A specific time for a due date
A specific time for a due date

So, how did happen?

Well, Kerika took note of the fact that person making that time commitment (“I will get it done today”) was based in India.

And midnight in India is 11:30AM in Seattle — at least now, with Daylight Savings Time in effect.

So Kerika shows the Indian team member’s commitment  of “I will get it done today” in terms that make sense to a colleague in Seattle:

Handling timezone differences
Handling timezone differences

11:47 AM Pacific Standard Time with Daylight Savings Time in force is 12:47PM Indian Standard Time; something that Kerika figures out automatically.

This simple, elegant way of handling timezones eliminates the frequent disagreements over “I meant my today, not your today…”

An example of the incredible attention to detail that Kerika brings to the needs of distributed teams.