Though I have been a constant provider of class notes to my fellow friends through out my +2 ,engg and MBA studies ,I had underestimated the importance of writing "minutes of meeting" after coming to the Industry.but after some serious differences with the requirements provider and my ITPL , i came to the real world. Suddely ,I was invited to a presentation on mind mapping techniques .I found this useful .Perhaps it wil help me in becoming a better listener and writer.
As a process and way of thinking ,it's a better method encapsulating the holistic view of things.
A highly recommended stuff from me.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Business Analysts @ IT Industry (1)
I stumbled upon two blogs on a fairly interesting topic concerning my education – and my role and my behaviour in the workplace specifically to the industry I have chosen.
The fellow bloggers have hit the points .So pls go through the same
http://www.prakashonsoftware.org/blog/index.php/2006/07/19/why-domain-consultants-must-learn-technology/
http://lakshvivek.blogspot.com/2006/08/fresh-mba-grads-as-business-analysts.html
From an organizational perspective:
The IT industry in India is not sure how to utilize Indian MBAs @ offshore .Onsite I am not sure. ( Because while I am happy with my work at onsite my client asks me hey mahendra .u have done mba in finance why u r writing use cases u not in investment banking ,trading ,alternative investments etc.. ---------- The perception and expectation differs)
Till 2001-02 the players were picking up only guys with prior IT experience. But keeping pace with the demand, they have started recruiting freshers also.
Initial two/three years:
Profile of a BA
Some PPTs, Presales work, some training sessions and some Collateral (from Google or some project doc) and some white paper once a while.
If u get a project then u r lucky perhaps.
Then why the industry is recruiting and why MBAs are coming?
Thanks to all the 3rd/4th generation methodology of off shoring, moving up the value chain etc... , the IT companies have to create an impression in the minds of the clients that, they have people from the best institutes (May not be the best people from the best institutes), proven academic track record etc.
Why MBAs are coming to the industry – In this world of information, orkutting and alumni networking I won't say people, don’t know the work and the environment. Then perhaps the reasons are Money and Onsite …………….. (U agree or disagree??)
At onsite: These Business Analyst (BA) folks are expected to talk to the client and gather requirements write use cases and pass on the same to the developers.
Now the problem arises when the developers find that something is very difficult to implement /realize, but the BA who has gathered reqirements has ignored the diffciulty part.
There can be two reasons:
The BA is ignorant of the enormity of the issue.
He has failed to convince the client (business) regarding the issue that the developers would face within the budget and the time frame
But what a typical technical /developer thinks is that these BAs don’t know anything and they promise anything and everything to the client and the developers face the music. This is the easier part.
No body touches the second part …..
Some of the requirements that I faced from the business but that were not acceptable to my development team
1) Displaying 20,000 records on a single page without pagination facility with sub grouping ( +expand collapse buttons) with sorting
2) Addition and deletion of columns dynamically ( from a list of 60 columns) on a particular page ( JAVA HTML )
And some others……………
(As a BA these two are representatives of potential issues for consternation)
So it was my onus perhaps to make the two parties come to a common platform.
I did something which didn’t go well with the mgmt .I felt that I was somehow not able to act as a streamliner in the communication .So I arranged a direct communication talk of the offshore team with business guy here at onsite. One can debate on this method, but at that point perhaps I though it the best way.
What I did was successfully avoided any possible embarrassment due to my ignorance on the subject. And the team members were motivated thinking that they talked directly to the client business guy
I got the following mail from one of my team members when I left the project
“Hi Mahendra,
It was equal pleasure to work with you.
I really appreciate the patience with which you have handled all our queries and provided timely resolutions. Also I appreciate that you accepted our technical suggestions that this will be tough to implement, this does not make sense, let’s do this in this way etc and that you could communicate all this to the client :) “
Perhaps the last line is the most important thing.
Actually MBAs have place of their own. But this IT Industry has been a great leveller. There is no rocket science involved.
So if a techie with experience acquires good business knowledge (either out of own interest or by virtue of being involved in domain intensive project) s/he can challenge and beat a fresh MBA squarely ……. (Definitely my fellow blogger friends fall into this category)
But the reality is different ……. There are so many people with excellent tech skills but no aptitude to learn business ………
The other side of the coin will be revealed in my next post.
The fellow bloggers have hit the points .So pls go through the same
http://www.prakashonsoftware.org/blog/index.php/2006/07/19/why-domain-consultants-must-learn-technology/
http://lakshvivek.blogspot.com/2006/08/fresh-mba-grads-as-business-analysts.html
From an organizational perspective:
The IT industry in India is not sure how to utilize Indian MBAs @ offshore .Onsite I am not sure. ( Because while I am happy with my work at onsite my client asks me hey mahendra .u have done mba in finance why u r writing use cases u not in investment banking ,trading ,alternative investments etc.. ---------- The perception and expectation differs)
Till 2001-02 the players were picking up only guys with prior IT experience. But keeping pace with the demand, they have started recruiting freshers also.
Initial two/three years:
Profile of a BA
Some PPTs, Presales work, some training sessions and some Collateral (from Google or some project doc) and some white paper once a while.
If u get a project then u r lucky perhaps.
Then why the industry is recruiting and why MBAs are coming?
Thanks to all the 3rd/4th generation methodology of off shoring, moving up the value chain etc... , the IT companies have to create an impression in the minds of the clients that, they have people from the best institutes (May not be the best people from the best institutes), proven academic track record etc.
Why MBAs are coming to the industry – In this world of information, orkutting and alumni networking I won't say people, don’t know the work and the environment. Then perhaps the reasons are Money and Onsite …………….. (U agree or disagree??)
At onsite: These Business Analyst (BA) folks are expected to talk to the client and gather requirements write use cases and pass on the same to the developers.
Now the problem arises when the developers find that something is very difficult to implement /realize, but the BA who has gathered reqirements has ignored the diffciulty part.
There can be two reasons:
The BA is ignorant of the enormity of the issue.
He has failed to convince the client (business) regarding the issue that the developers would face within the budget and the time frame
But what a typical technical /developer thinks is that these BAs don’t know anything and they promise anything and everything to the client and the developers face the music. This is the easier part.
No body touches the second part …..
Some of the requirements that I faced from the business but that were not acceptable to my development team
1) Displaying 20,000 records on a single page without pagination facility with sub grouping ( +expand collapse buttons) with sorting
2) Addition and deletion of columns dynamically ( from a list of 60 columns) on a particular page ( JAVA HTML )
And some others……………
(As a BA these two are representatives of potential issues for consternation)
So it was my onus perhaps to make the two parties come to a common platform.
I did something which didn’t go well with the mgmt .I felt that I was somehow not able to act as a streamliner in the communication .So I arranged a direct communication talk of the offshore team with business guy here at onsite. One can debate on this method, but at that point perhaps I though it the best way.
What I did was successfully avoided any possible embarrassment due to my ignorance on the subject. And the team members were motivated thinking that they talked directly to the client business guy
I got the following mail from one of my team members when I left the project
“Hi Mahendra,
It was equal pleasure to work with you.
I really appreciate the patience with which you have handled all our queries and provided timely resolutions. Also I appreciate that you accepted our technical suggestions that this will be tough to implement, this does not make sense, let’s do this in this way etc and that you could communicate all this to the client :) “
Perhaps the last line is the most important thing.
Actually MBAs have place of their own. But this IT Industry has been a great leveller. There is no rocket science involved.
So if a techie with experience acquires good business knowledge (either out of own interest or by virtue of being involved in domain intensive project) s/he can challenge and beat a fresh MBA squarely ……. (Definitely my fellow blogger friends fall into this category)
But the reality is different ……. There are so many people with excellent tech skills but no aptitude to learn business ………
The other side of the coin will be revealed in my next post.
Monday, November 27, 2006
The otherside of Offshoring (2)
Continuing from the last Post ..................
In my view offshoring will continue due to the following arbitrages that make the world services market imperfect.Doing justice to my education I have developed an acronym .
It's "SPALID" arbitrage........... ( Help me devise a better combination)
Spatial
Process quality
Labor
Attitudinal
Intellectual
Demographic
One can get enough material on the web regarding the S ,P ,L and to some extent D and off late I .So will not increase the load for google search algorithms ..But I will touch upon Attitudinal aspect first.
A typical Indian at onsite slogs a lot for meeting a delivery deadlines .But the client person doesnt simply care much about it. If it's world cup football time he will go to watch football . Same for Christmas etc.......It's the so called earned leaves .........
personal aggrandizement comes first in most of the cases barring some extreme ones.but the situation is totally different back home in India .
What I am trying to drive at is that "Even if I am a vendor employee ,I am also committed to deadlines and I expect the same from the client." At the end of the day , I will be the happiest person in this world ,if the job is well done.....
While it might not be an initiator of offshoring ,but it will continue to be a lubricator.
Second Process Quality:
The success to offshoring is documentation ,documentation and documentation and more of it
This is required to
1) Make knowledge independent of individuals
2)Smooth transition between client -vendor ,vendor-vendor ,peer-peer ..
3)Effective tracking
One of my clients ( other local vendor complained) complained that "ur ( indian ) Use cases are text heavy and lot of duplications of info .............. " and this is a cultural issue.( read diff between Indians and the locals)
me - So what is the problem ? the objectives of the text heavy use cases were 1) to reduce the no of documents that our developer needs to refer while going through the same.
And 2) to document everything so that a new person in a project team can start delivering on day one..... ( meaning I don't care if u leave tomorrow) .......
Though he did seem to be convinced , he posed a difficult question to me .
"If you make all the processes independent of the individual and he doesn't have any competitive advantage being there& done that , then how u keep ur employees motivated??"
Honestly I didn't have any convincing answer........
A point to ponder for the BPO and Software vendors in India .....
In my view offshoring will continue due to the following arbitrages that make the world services market imperfect.Doing justice to my education I have developed an acronym .
It's "SPALID" arbitrage........... ( Help me devise a better combination)
Spatial
Process quality
Labor
Attitudinal
Intellectual
Demographic
One can get enough material on the web regarding the S ,P ,L and to some extent D and off late I .So will not increase the load for google search algorithms ..But I will touch upon Attitudinal aspect first.
A typical Indian at onsite slogs a lot for meeting a delivery deadlines .But the client person doesnt simply care much about it. If it's world cup football time he will go to watch football . Same for Christmas etc.......It's the so called earned leaves .........
personal aggrandizement comes first in most of the cases barring some extreme ones.but the situation is totally different back home in India .
What I am trying to drive at is that "Even if I am a vendor employee ,I am also committed to deadlines and I expect the same from the client." At the end of the day , I will be the happiest person in this world ,if the job is well done.....
While it might not be an initiator of offshoring ,but it will continue to be a lubricator.
Second Process Quality:
The success to offshoring is documentation ,documentation and documentation and more of it
This is required to
1) Make knowledge independent of individuals
2)Smooth transition between client -vendor ,vendor-vendor ,peer-peer ..
3)Effective tracking
One of my clients ( other local vendor complained) complained that "ur ( indian ) Use cases are text heavy and lot of duplications of info .............. " and this is a cultural issue.( read diff between Indians and the locals)
me - So what is the problem ? the objectives of the text heavy use cases were 1) to reduce the no of documents that our developer needs to refer while going through the same.
And 2) to document everything so that a new person in a project team can start delivering on day one..... ( meaning I don't care if u leave tomorrow) .......
Though he did seem to be convinced , he posed a difficult question to me .
"If you make all the processes independent of the individual and he doesn't have any competitive advantage being there& done that , then how u keep ur employees motivated??"
Honestly I didn't have any convincing answer........
A point to ponder for the BPO and Software vendors in India .....
Thursday, November 23, 2006
The otherside of Offshoring
I Was talking to a client person who has become closer to me.
Him ... "See I am 45, and the people from India are half of my age doing the same work. I cannot compete with them .they are hungry for work (they can work 9 am to 9 pm) and they are motivated and they never say "No" to anything. At this age I don’t have the motivation also to work like hell and compete with them. U know they don’t stay here for more than 2 years but the problem never ends there. There is another set of Indians with similar personal and professional profile takes over …
How long this would continue?
I know "many experienced local developers are in no comparison with the kids from India in terms of quality . I refer them as kids because they are actually kids. (Half of my age...) "
For him, job insecurity looms large ………….What is the deeper malaise?? What r the drivers? What is the impact of this invasion of Indians? More on next blog
Him ... "See I am 45, and the people from India are half of my age doing the same work. I cannot compete with them .they are hungry for work (they can work 9 am to 9 pm) and they are motivated and they never say "No" to anything. At this age I don’t have the motivation also to work like hell and compete with them. U know they don’t stay here for more than 2 years but the problem never ends there. There is another set of Indians with similar personal and professional profile takes over …
How long this would continue?
I know "many experienced local developers are in no comparison with the kids from India in terms of quality . I refer them as kids because they are actually kids. (Half of my age...) "
For him, job insecurity looms large ………….What is the deeper malaise?? What r the drivers? What is the impact of this invasion of Indians? More on next blog
Friday, November 17, 2006
I have the knack of coming up with flashes of brilliance in terms of literary out puts.
In my highschool/engg days ,through creative writing ,often stemmed from grasp of inner realities with superfluous English vocabulary. So thought let's try blogging .Though not a serious thinker on small issuses ,I just now decided to pen them down . So came to this world of blogging… .Hope the stream never ends
In my highschool/engg days ,through creative writing ,often stemmed from grasp of inner realities with superfluous English vocabulary. So thought let's try blogging .Though not a serious thinker on small issuses ,I just now decided to pen them down . So came to this world of blogging… .Hope the stream never ends
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