Managing Offshore IT

As we continue to globalize, is there a distinct “Indian Management” philosophy that is emerging? This has been a topic of analysis and discussion among management thinkers in recent times. A Business Week article titled “Karma Capitalism” sometime ago set me thinking on these lines.

Before I elaborate, I must add that there is little consensus on what exactly “Indian Management” philosophy is all about… just as most westerners have their personal views on Chinese philosophy equating it to popular classics like the ‘The Art of War’ [Again, an area where I will claim no expertise in]. This said, many managers, academics and executives of Indian origin living in the west seem to be living and practicing a distinctive style of management, weaving in some of their personal values and beliefs in the context of a western/modern management framework.

I began to pen down a few thoughts around the topic that was published in Express Computers [Globalisation of Indian management philosophy.. Notice the editorial liberty: Globalization is spelt differently in India. ]

Now, more than many other businesses that can sometimes get impersonal when it comes to human dealings, the business of offshoring is all about human interactions …though managers, sometimes even our peers get into a ‘resource management’ syndrome [ref: Musings on Offshore Resources, people and individuals?]. I guess it is easy to ask a faceless ‘resource’ to pack her bags and travel across the globe for a client’s project; but the moment one gets to know the team, the balancing between the needs and wants of the team member counterbalance a purely business decision. 

I hope to continue to build on the topic in the offshoring context and particularly like Ratan Tata who is quoted saying, “I want to be able to go to bed at night and say that I haven’t hurt anybody.”

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chetan and Michael made a couple of interesting comments on my recent blog “What’s the big deal about big sourcing deals?”

Michael seems to agree with the theme when he says “Media needs a headline to splash and nothing is more headline-esque than a deal worth hundreds of millions or in some cases a billion or more” but Chetan seems to extend my assertion by pointing out the big-picture: “At a sales/account or program mgt level , larger outsourcing deals could get complex with respect to delivering the desired cost savings , best practices , governance , security & risk compliance , the growing web of SLA’s , program management etc.” These are certainly strategic aspects of larger deals.

Where I would take off on my argument on big and small deals is about how all (sourcing) strategies need to translate to actionable tactics… street level strategies if you will. I find it interesting that hardly any analysts, writers and other blog ‘thought leaders’ focus on this aspect.

Before I go on further, I do enjoy my share of ‘strategic’ reads [Recent reads: Can Indian IT Services Companies Keep growing ....? and Outsourcing & Offshoring: The Smart & Mature Way]

The point I am trying to make is that most analyst reporters and bloggers focus on ‘strategies’ and good, bad and ugly aspects of going offshore. But one wonders if they are barking up the wrong tree. I find it amusing to read accounts by bloggers who take pride in writing “when I was meeting with a CIO of XYZ Inc, we discussed a strategy for….”  Don’t mistake me, I am a big fan of strategic thinking as the next consultant. However during many of my consulting gigs (some of them ‘strategic’), I notice that most, if not all IT Leaders – CIOs, IT Directors et al – are past ‘defending’ their “offshoring strategies” to managers and analysts. For them leveraging external teams, even from across the globe is just another tool in the toolkit. And if one were to take a Pareto’s 80:20 principle, about 80 percent of technology leader’s time is spent on fighting tactical fires, production and operational challenges, aligning with business stakeholders among other tasks.

The tactical nature hit home recently at an engagement where a colleague and I were advising a CIO on his roadmap for an application portfolio. During the first couple of weeks of our engagement, I observed the CIO, his directors and others huddled together well past 7 PM. And occasionally when we’d get to work in the mornings, we’d notice large boxes of pizzas in the breakroom (read: night outs)

I then got talking with my onsite engagement leader who admitted that he also did all-nighters with the client to ensure that the offshore team (thankfully during their day shift) was there to fight the ‘fire’ of the new production release. Now, this CIO does not need descriptive analyst reports or fancy ‘trends analysis’ to see how his global team came together to fight the fire.

What he really needs is a street level strategy to ensure that his team continues to operate optimally….so that in in the rest of his 20 percent time, he can focus on his “corporate IT strategy..” which the consultant in me can blog about (right?)

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When the business press dissects aspects of a technology, one can be assured of one thing: your business users are going to expect that you and your CTO deliver on the promises that the ‘case studies’ they are reading about deliver to those clients. [Note to regulars on the blog: This entry is about a few observations on SOA, not necessarily on offshoring.]

Two articles on the topic make for an interesting read. One is a Harvard Business Review (HBR) Case study (July-August'07) “Too Far Ahead of the IT Curve?” and another is the article “'SOA' Stirs a Computing Buzz” in Wall Street Journal (WSJ) today (17 Jul’07). Both write-ups are targeted at a c-level business audience though the slant of each is towards the different ends of the spectrum: the HBR case study prompts the reader to ponder while the WSJ motivates the reader to act.

The WSJ article quotes Vladimir Mitevski, vice president of product management for Thomson Financial who says “it once took six weeks and roughly 20 people to build, deploy and maintain service offerings for Thomson One, a software platform for the financial industry. After adopting a service-oriented architecture, in part using software from Hewlett-Packard Co., Mr. Mitevski says a single programmer working with various businesses, quality testing and support groups within the company can deploy new and updated offerings in as little as 15 minutes. He cites "speed to market" as his No. 1 reason for adopting the methodology.”

The HBR case study concludes with Candace Markovich (CIO) contemplating how “SOA was potentially the migration path to a transformative way of creating technology capability” with a caution “so you can imagine how it might not totally thrill me to think about spending a bazillion dollars on a brand-new, shiny dinosaur that we’d be stuck with at a point in history when IT world is moving someplace else… but I can see the logic in making it, because SOA is still kind of a crapshoot.”

Though my colleague and friend Binooj does not address the question posted in HBR case study, he is perhaps addressing the issue with a sourcing dimension when he says:
Contrary to the notion of big systems, monoliths or all in one-systems, SOA proposes a modular sourcing approach. Instead of making investment on one big technology or one big product and committed to that for years to come, enterprises are contemplating to adopt modular solutions with smaller investments, with faster time to market and eventually replaceable with latest technologies with out huge reinvestments. Success stories related to Software as a Service (SaaS) providers such as salesforce.com or Amazon marketplace, shows the early signs of such flexible solutions. In addition to leveraging external providers, enterprise IT organizations are expanding the meaning of [internal] ‘shared services’ from conventional candidates such as finance and HR systems to essential [common] capabilities of identity and access management, content management, document generation and so on.

Well, why the musing on the topic? Because in my recent engagements with clients, I increasingly come across the musings of Candace: CIOs trying to juggle myriad priorities while also trying to deliver on the successes like Vladimir Mitevski

Footnote (should be obvious…but still): the names quoted in this are verbatim, not necessarily the people I have interacted with.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A topic that many consultants, leaders and managers are loath to talk about, except offline is that of office politics. To be fair, Most management programs – MBA courses, even PMI’s certification program and workshops and other management training  – offer pointers on addressing and managing organizational dynamics and organizational behaviors and there is an increasing emphasis on interpersonal communication skills and conflict resolution.

Though most management theorists are circular about the issues, there is only one way to move forward while encountering office politics, as with most other issues, address them: do not bury your head in sand.

Case in point, I was working with a client’s CTO group recently where my colleague and I encountered an overt manifestation of hostility from a person who was tasked with facilitating our engagement. Fact was that we were brought in by the CTO for a specific purpose. My colleague – who happens to be a Chinese American – also got the same ‘vibes’ as me from that person -who happened to be of European origin - which lead us to rule out the cultural dimension.  There was only one thing to do: address the issue head on. We scheduled a meeting with the person’s reporting manager to politely and firmly bring up the issue, and surprisingly enough he took it well, speculating on various reasons why that person could be stressed (turns out, he had recently been transferred to this group in the organization, was yet to receive ‘confirmation’ and his former boss in the old group had just been laid-off). The message went back to the person loud-and-clear: we had to work together for the success of the initiative, which we did.

Well, a variation of the above case could be the challenge a client might face while working with member of our onsite staff who is being abruptly told to transition back to her offshore base and is distracted about her logistics, breaking the lease on an apartment, selling the car etc while also fighting the project fires. Just as in my case, the suggestion to the client manager would be the same: address the issue head on.

This essentially means that there are two dimensions to ‘office politics’ that consultants and consultant’s clients typically encounter: the internal (dynamics in their firm’s team) and external (the one in the client’s teams). Office politics can (and does) impact offshoring in several ways

• Turf wars, among groups and business unit leaders, can impact sourcing strategies
• Turf wars, among vendors, especially in multi-sourcing scenarios
• Individual communication styles, cultures and dynamics between client and vendor organization leaders can also impact working relationships
• At a tactical level, interpersonal relationships and team dynamics within teams and working groups can also have an impact on projects and programs

Now, given the given the nature of the topics and dynamics in offshoring, addressing each of the above would require substantial analysis. Note to self: scan the landscape for research and readings on the topic of ‘office politics offshoring;’ and if not much exists, consider adding a chapter on it in a sequel to my book [if and when I get around to working on it]

A few interesting books on the topic I came across during a recent scan.

• Bernstein & Rozen; "Neanderthalls as work: how people and politics can drive you crazy..."
• DuBrin, Andrew J. "Winning at Office Politics"
• Brinkman & Kirscher; "Dealing with People You Cant' Stand"
• Cubicle Warfare: Self-Defense Tactics for Today's Hypercompetitive Workplace.

And a few interesting blogs (though not many with an offshoring slant)

• Interesting musings on how Office-Politics is a fact of life [officepolitics.com]  
• How to avoid office politics [SlackerManager] ... I’ve only paid attention to political maneueverings long enough to learn how to avoid them.
• Avoiding Office Hysteria [Jane] it is best to avoid getting involved with intra-office politics.  Staying out of it will keep you neutral and, hopefully, the other parties will leave you alone.
  
  

Feel free to add to the list and ping me with readings on the topic.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For years management thinkers, textbooks and movies eulogized the glamour of the Expatriate professional. Wikipedia “An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently resident in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence.” With an entire generation of technologists cris-crossing the globe, the glamour of being an Expatriate professional is certainly wearing thin (though not the experience and exposure that it brings).

I sometimes wonder if the conventional definition of Expat is being redefined. For instance, the Wikipedia entry talks about how “the term is often used in the context of Westerners living in non-Western countries, although it is also used to describe Westerners living in other Western countries” Does this mean that Indians living and working in the west, many of whom are permanent residents or Naturalized citizen in their adopted lands are not Expatriates?

A few interesting blog entries by Western Expats moving to India: Lin Chase’s entry on “Building a World-Class Research Facility in India” and Fast Company blog "Dreaming of a Global Career? Think Bangalore"

Just some of the issues that managers routinely come to grips with while planning to manage Expat teams: 

• Compensation, Salaries, wages and allowances: perhaps the most complex aspect of managing expat workers. 
•  Cross-cultural, communication and other issues
• Visas, immigration and other travel related paperwork. [on this topic, it is interesting to observe the recent announcement by Microsoft: managers will try and leverage global skills while observing the laws of the land.] 
• Facilitating and providing an infrastructure for basic logistics for Expat staff.

There are pros and cons of being a temporary or permanent Expat, aspects of which managers of hi-tech companies are coming to grips with. Entire textbooks have been written about counseling western Expatriate on moving ‘east.’ The aspects of managing techie-Exapats from east (China, India etc) moving west is an area that has not received much formal attention from researchers and ‘gurus’ though a lot of empirical and anecdotal studies and articles are being published. 
Bottomline: While these issues may or may not be under the purview of managers of offshored programs, an awareness of the intricacies is certain to be an asset.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few days ago, I was reading an interesting article on “The Basics of Moneymaking” by Ram Charan, which summarizes the essence of  his bestseller “What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works”

The book, just like this article, tries to succinctly articulate the need for everyone to understand what their  business is all about. I had attempted to do just that in my previous blog [It's that time of the Quarter: Offshoring accounting]

A colleague mailed me offline agreeing with the oversimplification of our business of services but wondered if this was also true of the larger IT sourcing deals. I think the basics if our business remain the same for large or small deals. During the course of my consulting engagements, I get to observe the dynamics of sourcing at both ends of the spectrum: client leaders formulating offshoring and sourcing strategies and practicing the tactics and our (‘vendor’) teams working hard to facilitate it by leveraging on the delivery and execution capabilities.  

Some of my recent gigs have been with a few of our larger accounts in North America where scores of our teams work on some of these larger client engagements. And even there, the ‘business of services’ is no different. Case in point was the news headline from a couple of years ago. “ABN deal is a big step for Indian outsourcing industry”  Caveat: the intent here is not to comment on this specific instance of sourcing but how news like this make for splashy headlines and commentary by consultants. After the hoopla over the announcement, it gets to ‘business as usual’ which means that folks at both end of the spectrum roll up their sleeves and begin delivering on promises. Though I have not been involved with the client in the news article, it is not hard to visualize the dynamics : these large/strategic deals are typically formulated to provide a structure to the relationship between sourcing organization and service vendors.

Back to Ram Charan’s article. The basics of “moneymaking” in our business continue to be the same whether it is a big-deal or a smaller one. Our sales/account teams are responsible to ensure that we continue to get a steady stream of projects [“pipeline”] to keep the relationship going, and ensure that the projects have a positive operating margin. In return for the margin, our program managers ensure that there is a right team in place to take on the projects for the client, to deliver software solutions successfully. 

What does it mean to individuals, even developers at the bottom of the delivery totem-pole? Big deal-or-small: the execution is still about ensuring successful delivery of individual projects and programs for the client.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)