Follow-the-sun is a type of global workflow in which tasks are passed around daily between work sites that are many time zones apart. Such a workflow is set up in order to reduce project duration and increase responsiveness. Thus, the work is "following the sun" and never stops.
For example, at the end of the day, a systems support team in Silicon Valley will pass its work tasks to a support team in Bangalore, India, which, at the end of its day, passes its work on back to Silicon Valley.
This workflow is effective in software support and help desk operations. It is also discussed in software development, but is more difficult to achieve because of coordination costs.[1]
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A related concept is follow-the-moon, which is scheduling work to be performed specifically during local night-time hours in order to, for instance, save on datacenter costs by using cheaper night-time electricity[2] or spare processing power.