How to keep IT professionals tune in with times?

As seen in the last blog, the expectation from the IT professional has increased manifold. He is no more the technical geek. If we take the cross section of Indian IT business we will find that more than 60 percent of the revenue comes from maintaining legacy systems for their clients. What has that to do with our software professionals? A lot. From a commercial stand point, for Indian IT companies these maintenance projects are a significant segment to reduce their costs. You may ask how. These projects run for years and provide ample opportunity to try out new resource mix by inducting fresh graduates and non-engineering graduates (read reduction in salary costs) and thereby improving the organization’s bottom line. Compared to a new green field project the number of “billed” rookies in a maintenance project would always be substantially higher. As these resources would be maintaining systems that are live and contributing to the business of their clients they cannot just start tinkering with the code. They need to understand the overall architecture of the system, understand or probably learn new software languages (as most of the legacy applications would have been in some 3G languages), understand the existing coding structure, understand the original business need, develop skill to elicit requirements (for the new ticket items), arrive at decisions on what to incorporate and what to leave out for future releases, develop the skill to document these requirements, understand the impact of the current changes to the existing system, write code, write test cases (generally these small teams cannot afford to have separate testing teams) and execute both unit and regression tests and deploy them as well. These processes are neither taught in their colleges nor do they undergo these as part of their induction training program when they get recruited. You may argue that the business has been doing good so far and this model has not adversely impacted the client’s business in anyway … so why bother? This argument may soon fall apart as the clients get to understand the outsourcing model much better and would ask more for the same. Because the IT professionals lack any formal training in handling maintenance projects their productivity get greatly inhibited. On an average, if you look at the ticket resolution per resource per month it would hover around 6-8 tickets.

Can this improve? Definitely. The first step in this journey is to understand at a broad level the various skills the maintenance resource has to grapple with. The second step is to plan learning programs to groom these resources holistically on all these skills. The third step is to figure out how best to train them without compromising on their billable time. All of these and more in my next blog… Till such time ….

The Making of an Indian IT Professional…3

It has been quite some time since my last blog…better late than never is my motto…Let me continue from where I left off last time … Let us take the example of a .NET developer as our IT Professional. Would he be successful if he is just an excellent programmer? Let us look at the typical expectation from our .NET programmer from various stakeholders… his supervisor expects him to be self-managing and be as much independent as possible, his peers expect him to help them with technical queries whenever required, as far the client is concerned they are paying top dollars for him and expect top work from him, the organization expects him to be a brand manager of the organization… the list is endless. Our programmer has to talk to the client many times to get clarifications or to explain some of his work. In many cases, where his work might overlap with his peers he may have to collaborate with them to develop the solution. All of these may sound simple but the truth is our programmer is trying to balance many skills… he has to communicate effectively to convey his thoughts, he has to actively listen, develop curious questioning skills and speak authentically. A decade back all the decision pertaining to the project would have been taken by the Project Manager but over the past several years the decision making levels have come down the order. Our programmer is expected to make instant decisions when speaking to the business user or to the client’s technical architect. Has he been formally groomed to to all these? I think not. This situation is not just true for our programmer. It prevails across the IT food chain.

The clients over the years have mastered the ropes of offshoring. They expect more bang for the buck. Unfortunately, the skill levels of the IT Professionals has not kept pace with the expectation. Why is this mismatch? Can something be done about it? All of these and more in my next blog … till such time…

The Making of an Indian IT Professional ...2

After 4 years of engineering and with few computer diplomas under his belt, our young engineer is ready to take on the world ...at least the world was ready to take him.. the dire shortage of IT professionals anybody who could spell IT landed himself in a plum IT job. Having secured the job, dream of 4 years now achieved, the spark of Indian middle class soon realizes that all his dream about high end technical work, flying every week to different nooks and corners of the world are still ...a dream.. The work he encounters is not all that state of art. He has been asked to maintain some legacy crap or he is part of a large team where he is asked to cut code with everything specified for him...No room for the creative juice to flow.. This was not how it was supposed to be .. He becomes rebellious ...wants out from the maintenance team, wants out from the organization.. jumps jobs...in search of that elusive complex application developed using the state of art technology ...the lucky one amongst them gets to board the flight out of the country..becomes apple of his/her father's eyes and envy of the neighborhood.. while the others continue to jump.

With the recession cloud looming overhead, reality has started knocking many doors. As the IT fever is slowly subsiding, it is probably the right time to take a hard look at what really makes an IT professional? It is just technology or there is more to it? Given the hard times what does the IT organizations look for in an IT professional? What does the fortune 1000 and other global customers expect out of an IT professional? All of these and more in my next blog..Till such time ...

The making of an Indian IT professional

In the past decade, the Indian IT world opened its door to aspirants from all walks of life. Even well settled 'babus' from the public organization were lured to the call of IT. My attention this week though is on the young wannabes...who pass out of different disciplines across India with a single minded focus to land a plum job in this field. These are well informed, highly motivated Gen 'Y' folks with a rock solid determination to get what they want...and many do. I remember interviewing a young pass out with dream in his eyes trying to convince me why he should get the job. He told me that he is the son of a very poor farmer and he was the only graduate in his family (Engineering to boot) and currently sharing a one room shanty with his brother-in-law. He had faltering English but he assured me that he is polishing his linguistic skills by religiously watching CNN and BBC. He went on to explain how he would be of value to the organization...his zeal and confidence landed him in the coveted job he was after. There are numerous such examples..but one thread I found amongst all these aspirants is that they come with a one dimensional view about the IT world ...More about this in my next blog..Till such time...

Musings...The decades gone by...

Some stray thoughts... being part of the IT industry for last two decades I have had the opportunity to have a ring side view of a world metamorphosing in front of my eyes. When I entered the IT field two decades back very few people knew the world of computers existed and even fewer people believed that a career can be made sitting in front of a monitor...back in those days, anything to do with computers meant that you are one of those geeky, day dreaming creative guys punching yourself to glory...

Over the next few years as the 'computer fad' caught on...the middle class young college grads in India realized that one can make more moolah in one year in the IT industry than his dad earned in his life time in the conventional industry...as the herd mentality caught on, the local dream merchants started dishing out the right menus ..IT training courses to prepare you for earning millions in SAP..Recruitment companies to get you that dream positions in dreamier companies ... travel agents to service your travel needs...builders enticing you with that dream house ..marriage brokers with those "For me!" kind of beautiful girls ... and the list continued..

As the Y2K era dawned... many Indians found themselves all over the world either by accident or by design..making their dad proud (a guy whom his dad had written off as a bum) ...the 'foreign' bug was so bad that any opportunity to go abroad was not to be missed even if it meant cheating your employer...I remember an incidence ...when a guy took a month's vacation (sick leave) from his employer and travelled abroad ...helped by a 'body shopper' to do a project in Europe .. eventually found and thrown out..

Over the last several years, the 'new age' Indian 'having been there done that' attitude are returning home either out of choice or compulsion...Having seen both the worlds and with enough experience packed under their belts they are either occupying key decision making positions in various IT organizations or or rolling up their sleeves to create something that they believe is the right way or doing something to 'give back to the society'...

This short prelude will help me to link my future blog articles on the want/ needs and must haves of the new-age IT Indian. Till such time ...