Leadership
What follow-the-sun delivery actually costs (and saves)
Jun 2026 · 5 min
Follow-the-sun delivery sounds efficient in a slide deck — work never stops, handoffs pass the baton across time zones, incidents get resolved overnight. In practice, the model only pays off once a team has invested in the handoff discipline it requires.
The cost most leaders underestimate is documentation overhead: a team that hands off cleanly writes down 30-40% more than a team working in a single time zone. The savings show up later, in incident response time and in the ability to staff urgent work without asking anyone to work through the night.
