Managing Offshore IT

In a sense, Big Kahuna seems to imply that many EMs are snake oil salesmen who are “fairly short sighted, constantly chasing monthly billing,” a fact that may become more pronounced this month as we approach the fiscal year end. Speaking of viewpoints on EMs, I came across Steve Shu's blog that summarizes the essence of what an EM does

Engagement managers own the problem statement from the perspective of the customer, and thus, have the responsibilities to ensure that consulting team both structures the problem solving methodology correctly and executes on the problem solving methodology.

Besides customers, I would extend Steve's definition to include other key set of an EM's stakeholders – service firm’s employees -- that successful EMs focus on. While the ‘client is certainly the king,’ it is people, employees who work with teams that make a difference in delivering successful solutions to the clients.

During my years with Infosys’ I have worked with some really great EMs who effortlessly manage the (sometimes) diverging goals of stakeholders, including managing aspirations of the staff. Of course, I have on occasion come across the odd EM from my firm and other service organizations, who just doesn’t cut it as s/he is unable to get past a single-minded focus: either entirely on billing (as Big Kahuna mentions) or just bending backwards for every client request, refusing to say ‘NO’ even when unfeasible requirements come their way.

Bottomline: great Engagement Managers and client partners are worth their weight in gold and can make a huge difference to the divergent group of stakeholders: client teams, client and service firm’s management and employees.