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!

I have taken up aeromodelling as a hobby. People in the know told me to invest in a Super Cub trainer and I swallowed hard, convinced my partner that I am not regressing to my teens, and paid up the 160 bucks.

 

A few low altitude (never managed to take off!) but high spirited adventures left my plane broken, but thankfully not as broken as my ego. I sucked up, and signed up with an RC flying forum and made my first post got me free and unanimous advice that I needed to buck up and invest in a flight simulator. I doled out another 40 bucks and bought a simulator and installed it in my old Celeron, time machine…oops…machine. Well, I can bet, it does slow down time. Needless to say, the high end graphics turned my tortoise of a machine into a paraplegic snail. I tried all the tips and tricks that Google could dole out till I realized that I my C drive had only 400 MB free. I almost got suckered into buying Partition magic for 70 dollars till better sense prevailed and I downloaded Gparted.

It is free, fast and can do wonders for your machine's speed, especially if you are low on space on your C drive. No, the simulator is still not what it would be with a great graphics processor, but I no longer have the option of making tea between the time I click the IE icon and the time my home page comes up.  

CNN's list of career gotchas inspired me to come up with my own ones for software services.

Proposals should be done by offshore: Broadly speaking, there are two aspects to any proposal a). The sales pitch comprising the Story, how you want to position vis-a-vis the competition and the value proposition b). The technical approach, timelines ,costs and all the delivery yada yada (usually cut pasted from other proposals). There is nothing wrong in taking offshore contributions for a proposal. In fact all delivery related aspects must be owned and driven by offshore. But unless the guy who is close to the customer moderates and drives important differentiators are likely to get missed out.

The client is wrong: It is human to err. Or is it? In this business, the client is always right and yes, clients are human. There are times when clients make mistakes and the vendor ends up paying a price. Take these as learning opportunities, introspect, and see what you could have done to avoid the mistake. Maybe there was a communication gap that you could have resolved proactively but did not. Understand the client as a person and not just as a 'client'. Cover up for him when he has a slip up,make him look good in front of his boss and don't keep score. You might take a tactical blow once in a blue moon, but you'd end up building a solid long term relationship. I don't mean that one takes anything and everything lying down, but with customers it is important to pick your battles wisely. You cannot win a fight against the customer, you can only fight to win him over.

Saying 'No' to the customer: Never ever use the word 'no' in front of customer. Just go back to the time when you were a little boy and someone said "no' to you. How did you feel? Paralyzed? Rejected? Angry? Now imagine if your child were to say "No" in front of you. You would feel even worse than your child did when you said "no" to her. Outraged, confused, and wanting to punish your child for her impudence. After all, you are more powerful than your child. Now, clients have more power than you do because they sign your paycheck. It is easy to imagine what the word "No" does to the client's psyche. So, what does one do if the client makes unreasonable demands to which you simply cannot say "yes"? Well, reframe the demand as a requirement. If the client says, "I want this project for under $10M" and you are damn sure, it cannot be done for less than $12M, reframe and say "I understand what you are saying. You need a highly cost effective solution that stays within your budget" By reframing the unreasonable demand as a requirement, you are emphathizing with the customer and have turned the emotionally charged demand into a mutual goal that both of you can work towards reaching. Often, the client might be saying what he is saying just because he feels you are taking him for a ride, or because he needs to feel in command. The minute you give psychological air through genuine empathy and a real desire to help, accompanied by the willingness to be transparent, the defenses are down. There is simply no place in a salesman's dictionary for the word "no".

Quality assurance is not my job:  While it maybe true that quality was considered more 'glamorous' a decade back than it is today, the fact remains that if you don't do a quality job with your execution, all the front end sales savvy and consulting magic is not going to work. Quality in execution is and will remain the bedrock of the industry. Quality needs first rate people and quality begins with each employee and ends with her. It cannot be shoved into a corner, into a group or a department. It is everybody's job including that of the salesman who sells. 

If only I had more time: This is a tough industry. Work follows the sun and when you are asleep someone else on the other side of the globe is creating 'work' for you to do when you wake up.


 Stop cribbing about how with a little more time, you could have done a much better job or had a more fulfilling life. It only makes a person look incompetent.

My recent attempts to get back a tax refund lead me to the tax dept's website which had a prominent marquee running that said "New Income Tax blog". Here's the landing page of the blog. Yes. That's correct. You need a goddamn login id and a password to read the "blog" and there seems to be no way of knowing how to get login credentials. If someone can help me get into this blog I would love to know what the babus in the tax dept are thinking. Will be a good case study on how not to use blogging as a medium.


     

Anonymity is prized in today's world. True. Sites like Anonymizer have flourished for more than a decade thanks to the basic human right of wanting to reveal to the outside world only what the individual desires to expose. Fair enough. The problem arises when people attempt to misuse anonymity. JP highlights the dangers that anonymity can potentially cause. The recent Kathy Sierra episode could have been prevented had we had complete onymity without any ambiguity.

In my own view though, the critical need is to balance the risk of abuse of authority with the risk of abuse of anonymity. If people in authority themselves seek shelter under anonymity that is a sure case for complete onymity. *laugh* Anonymity is not so much of a danger so long as the power dynamics are skewed (anonymity seeks to balance the same), “collective intelligence” can be banked upon to override misuse of anonymity and misuse of power is a bigger threat than misuse of anonymity. Eg. An employee satisfaction survey could be completely anonymous.

Take an election. Before the election, the power is with the people and the real risk is one of misuse of anonymity by voters. Hence voters are onymous. Once the election is over, power of authority is with the politician. He can target individuals who have gone against him. Hence the votes themselves are anonymous. But some politicians are smart enough to target whole constituencies that have gone against them! Stephen Smoliar seems to agree with this line of argument with an amendment that systems can be fragile…..

"Prakash has hit an important nail on the head. I would like to amend it, however, with the observation that systems that deal with misuse of power, when they exist at all, are highly fragile."

PS: Hope Kathy starts blogging again. Her marketing insights are unique and I will miss them.
Kathy: If you are reading this. Don't let cowards who hide behind login id's bother you. The vast majority of the blogsphere is with you!