Gary Hamel of 'Core competence of the corporation' fame says "The Facebook Generation….. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web". He goes on to layout web 2.0 practices that are most at odds with current management practices for large companies.

 I am listing these down below with my thoughts in italics on how it will affect Indian outsourcers:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
Idea sharing itself is currently contained within well defined teams. Any sharing beyond these established boundaries happens as a result of management intervention or through rigid, formalized mechanisms like a KM portal. Fast forward 2020: Employees will expect organizations to encourage them to be part of virtual teams, freely contributing outside defined boundaries. Problems will be posted for anyone to attack and solve. Solutions generated in project X would be instantly accessible to someone in project Y leading to greater productivity. Web 2.0 technology would allow it!
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
Pay would get linked not just to designation as it currently is, but to your ability to contribute to the organization outside of your project. People on the bench would be expected to contribute to projects as part of virtual teams. Why can't it happen today ? Because the technology does not allow it. Technical problems that do not require the client or project context can easily be attacked by anyone in the organization. Future IDE's would allow this to happen. Metrics would be tracked around these and compensation linkages established.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
More power would flow to the developer on account on her increased ability to contribute. The power a given project manager has over her developer would decrease as multiple peer projects managers would have an 'indirect' relationship with the developer by virtue of virtual teams. The same would apply at all levels.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
I would modify this clause as "Managers would falter. Leaders would flourish". Getting things done through positional authority would take a back seat and skill would become central. Web 2.0 enabled virtual teams would make everyone stand naked. Measuring contribution would be easier and leaders would be forced to contribute as individuals and not just as 'bosses'.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
Virtual teams attacking problems would naturally allow individuals to choose tasks. People would gravitate towards tasks they are more skilled at doing. Individual work packets would get disaggregated into project contextual tasks and generic tasks. Generic tasks would get attacked by virtual teams who would choose the tasks they wish to do. I also envision a kind of 'competitive bidding' among employees for tasks.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
You won't always know who your project mates are. Skill and dynamic matching of those skills to tasks would define which group you belong to, who you work with and what you do.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
Smarter projects run by better managers would command the best resources. People would have the freedom to choose.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
Keeping knowledge to oneself and applying it to one's own task in one's own project would still be good. But applying that in a virtual team to a dozen projects would get greater visibility and recognition.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
Web 2.0 allows you to be anonymous. This would allow real time review in virtual teams and poor decisions would get a public roasting.

Is any of this any good for us ? Well, there is good and bad in everything. :-)

How do you think Web 2.0 would affect the work force ?

Career Corporate IT Program Management Project Management Web2.0

Crime rates go up in a recession and we know that. Peter Allen of TPI blogs about a perceived increase in information security risk in the light of Satyam and the Mumbai attacks. He makes the case that captives might have an advantage here. More perception than reality IMO. The risk itself can be broken up into:

Individual risk: Basically a 'terrorist' getting into your company. The only way you can lessen this risk is background checks. Captives cannot do better background checks that larger local players. You recruit from the same pool and your chance of weeding out the bad boys is actually lesser. At the end of the day, the agencies that actually do the checks are the same and a traditional offshore player would be able to command lower prices on these checks because of scale. To make matters worse, decades of experience of dealing with these agencies would have taught the traditional players the loopholes that they need to watch out for. Higher cost, higher risk. Traditional player wins.

Firm specific risk: With today's technology (virtualization+warp speed access+security) almost any work can happen from offshore without a single byte of sensitive data actually landing on a foreign hard drive or RAM. Add to this the ability to completely control the hardware and software environment from onshore and you have virtually the same level of firm specific risk. Actually terrorists might be more inclined to target an 'Western captive' than a more traditional player for the same reason that the Mumbai attacks were directed at places frequented by westerners. More firm specific risk at a higher price. Traditional player wins.

Country specific risk: Obviously the same for a captive and a traditional player. It's a draw.

Verdict : Don't go the captive way for the sake of risk!

 Corporate IT Outsourcing

Here are a few good reads on the impact of the fiasco with some snippets below:

Investors.com 

"Hardware purchases will be postponed, software upgrades will be postponed and customer projects will slow. This is not a time for (corporate customers) to take big risks. No big spending decisions will get made."

"Total revenue for the Indian outsourcing market is down 31% this year"

"Disruptions and uncertainty for U.S. financial markets are likely to delay some new software projects until the fourth quarter or next year"

ZDNet.com

"Right now, there are four clear survivors: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan. Tech spending elsewhere may go kaput. "

"Infrastructure consolidation projects will last for years. In IT spending surveys demand for consultants hired by the project remains strong. "

"Project managers will be in demand. Systems integration skills will be critical and you’ll need project managers to consolidate all of those applications and data centers as well as rearchitect systems. "

Ganesh Nagarajan of Zensar.

"The preliminary analysis of the current situation indicates that the impact will be short term and company-specific and though all strategy planners will continue to keep a watch on any further downstream impacts"

Computerweekly

"Tactical software and hardware spending will be hit first, followed by the more-strategic IT services in the long run"

"Software as a service could be a winner from this as could any model where people pay on consumption rather than up front cash"



Yeah, I am lazy!

Corporate IT Gotchas Indian Business

Tom Foydel over at Sightlines writes about the next wave of technologies that will hit the SME sector. The regular suspects are all there : RFID, Open Source, SAAS, Clouds and stuff. There are a couple of surprises as well because you don't hear so much about these yet: Alternate energy, Cell Technology. Tom's list seems comprehensive but I'd like to know what you think? Are there any emerging technologies that are not in the list?Corporate IT Technology

Ramshankar laments about the lack of visibility when it comes to the services that IT departments support and expose to the business. "There are very few organizations where one gets a sense of what IT truly delivers to its customers at what cost, at what performance level, conditions and so on….What about “make your own Service menu” like “make your own pasta”! Is there flexibility within IT Services to accomplish this?" He goes on to suggest ITIL V3, a standard that recommends dynamic catalogs as a possible solution that can help end users and business see IT like a burger. Log in to an intranet portal or something and 'order' IT. Essentially hide away complexity and expose a very simple front end to business.

Renjith blogs about ITIL V3…"the Service Catalog concept have been enhanced and coupled with Demand Management, Portfolio Management and Request fulfillment."  

Interesting. Now, where's the burger?



IT plays multiple hats when it comes to business. I briefly touched upon the two broad types of IT demand in a previous post. Basically, there is the transformational 'change the business' part, and then you have the keep-the-lights-on 'run the business' aspect. 

Certain portions of 'run the business' are definitely like a burger. Desktop software installations come to mind. You have limited complexity, a fixed set of ingredients (read skills sets), a mature and repeatable execution model, resources are interchangable and not too many unknowns. When was the last time an IT engineer failed to install Office on your desktop ? Surely you can, given the right tools, adopt sophisticated demand forecasting with integrated resource fullfillment and maybe even aggregate demand across customers and have a portfolio level approach. The benefits are clear and easy to quantify.

'Change the business' is an entirely different game altogether and so will any aspect of 'run the business' that requires close integration with 'change the business'. This is more complex stuff that requires a more strategic approach both from business and from IT. 'Change the business' is more like a full course meal in a gourmet restaurant, replete with all the bells and whistles. 

Burgers are cool and have their place. So do gourmet dinners. The trick is to know what to serve to which customer.

Corporate IT Project Management

The CIO magazine has published it's annual state of the CIO report. Here are some interesting snippets from the report:
-Strong CIOs don't innovate. They figure out ways to make money for the business.
-Stop talking about alignment. It marks CIOs as outsiders. Strong CIOs work with their peers. They guide them, educate them, persuade them, debate them, hear them, help them, decide with them and execute the enterprise's strategy with them.
-CIOs are of three broad types: Functional heads-who run the IT shop , Transformational leaders- guys who can lead business process change, Business strategists- Works with external customers to develop new business ideas that use IT. No prizes for guessing which category gets paid the most.
-Average tenure of a CIO is about 4 years and five months.
-Only 41% of CIO's report to the CEO.

You can read more at http://www.cio.com/

Corporate IT