In my previous post, I mentioned that the discussion surrounding our assignment to design a localization production team was very helpful. After taking it into account and learning more about how some L10N companies are organized, I decided on some key changes I would make to my organization.
First of all, I would add more project managers. My original design looks a little more like a mom and pop shop than a mid-size localization company. My company would have a team of five project managers overseen by a senior project manager or team lead.
I would keep my engineering team of six, but rather than assign each engineer a specific task (i.e. pre- or post-processing), each engineer would be assigned to projects from start to finish. This would ensure that engineers are always familiar with their projects and would contribute to project cohesiveness.
Also, I would bring my quality assurance team in-house. Not all of my linguists would need to work in-house, but I would definitely include several language quality managers to provide expertise and to oversee the LQA process.
These teams would be supplemented by a database of hundreds of professional linguists, desktop publishing professionals, and QA professionals.
This exercise has increased my understanding of basic localization processes. I'm realizing that localization projects involve larger numbers of people and resources than I previously thought. After preparing a quote for a localization buyer (a process I'll post about soon), I really began to understand how expensive localization can be! It makes sense when you consider all the people working to make localization possible.