While delays and extensions may be common in many IT projects, Hong Kong staff in general still aim to hit deadlines. But in China, deadlines are often irrelevant, and sometimes problems in meeting deadlines aren't revealed until the very last moment, he added.

"I do understand the rationale behind this attitude," said Fok. "China is such a huge country and things rarely roll out on time anyway. Projects seldom are carried out as planned, because numerous changes get into the way. Therefore mainland employees have the mentality that implementation should be a prolonged process."

Fok's strategy for managing his China IT team is to hire newly graduated students. "We train and educate [them] not only in IT skills, but also work ethics and [business] culture," he said.

At the MTRC, the IT shop in Hong Kong tends to take a project management role, while its team in China carries out the technical work. But he added that managing the Chinese outsourcing provider in Zhuhai has provided tremendous insight in running an IT shop in China.

The MTRC began outsourcing its application development work to a development house in Zhuhai 3.5 years ago. Currently, there are more than 30 developers providing programming, coding and testing services.