When you buy IKEA furniture, you are expected to assemble it, to get a good quality furniture to a low price. In IKEA the self-service is key. When we implement translation solutions to simplify multilingual communication for co-workers in IKEA, we provide the Allen key and the assembly instruction, and require the requester to assemble their project and what is needed, so they can make it by themselves. The PM-less approach is central in all parts of our implementation, but it also challenges the implementation, which sometimes stops certain translation requests, requires rethinking and a lot of fun.

When you buy furniture from IKEA, you know you will get quality furniture at a low price … and that you will have to assemble it when you get home. The approach to translation at IKEA is similar. To simplify multilingual communication for co-workers at IKEA, we provide the allen key and the assembly instructions and require requesters to assemble their own projects. The PM-less approach is central to all parts of our implementation, but it is not without challenges which sometimes stop certain translation requests, require rethinking, and lead to a lot of fun. Join us to explore a different approach to multilingual communications, IKEA-style!