I am thinking of reviving this blog yet again.
I’ve been part of the System Integrator industry for a long time and have seen it from close quarters. I believe there is much hype, too many myths as well as a lot of FUD about SIs. I also think there’s a serious lack of "balanced" perspective about this industry. One of the main reason for that probably is that a lot of good people are employed by these very SIs and so its difficult for them to be unbiased and open.
So I’m going to be writing about various aspects of System Integrators and more generally about the IT industry – such as software development, off-shoring, outsourcing, Indian software companies, project management models and so forth. I will also be talking about some "cool" concepts and why they do or do not work – such as Center of excellence (CoE), Solution Center, shared services, six sigma, CMM, CMMi, PCMM, Agile and so on.
Obviously, I can’t be balanced if I don’t talk about some of the other related things like stupid project managers, unrealistic clients, work life balance (or the lack of it), Indian IT leadership and their so called innovations to reduce costs.
This is an industry where people are called resources and are usually identified by cells in an excel sheet. However, as I said, I will try my best to be balanced and so it won’t be just bad things. Instead, I will also write about the advantages, good things as well as best practices.
So all you folks from Wipro, Infosys, TCS, CTS, Accenture, IBM and others – send me your comments and anecdotes. I will obviously keep all your information confidential.
excellent idea apoorv…most of these terms are hackneyed and deliciously abused. CoEs for example means different things to Clients and to SI 🙂 and the output expected from these CoEs are as varied as they are from Pre-Sales 🙂
Nice idea, I think a book will be a better choice. trust me you will rock and of course $$$.
Anyways, this is what my perspective and my definitions-
Pre-Sales – This is the area from where the whole story starts within an IT campus. High Expectations from Verticals, Quick Response time from Pre-sales team, A fat head sales guy in between, and just a few intellectuals to take the pain. A lot of copy-paste, search-replace and few innovative solutions. A effort estimation which becomes 1/3rd till it reaches customer and back to project team.
Project Team- The implementaion team, who has to work on the pushed 1/3rd of the proposed and rejected timelines. Hardly 1-2 people knowing the technology/product, few are trained on need basis, all comes under one experienced, dignified, cool project manager, who sooner or later looses his all patience when the delivery timlines are not met. Not to mention, some sharp brains who really takes the project to success. And what happens to the fate of the guys trained on latest technology / niche products – they are send back to java/.net based project and they are locked there for lifetime.
SixSigma- I do not see any real value-add for a pure IT-Development-Integration type projects. Its takes lot of time to define, analyze and synthesize every single requirement/inputs/solution when you work on a sixsigma project.With Indian IT cos, we always have a tight delivery timlines, it’s a big No from my side. On the contrary, I can see IT companies getting benifitted from sixsigma methodologies while defining a busines/ enterprise processes.
COE- I see it as a cost-center doing nothing just locking up few brains and building big castles in the air. You will find them using ‘innovation’ word in every sentence. What you see at the end is just the nice looking user interface with no busineess logic anywhere. They have never dying and never ending projects, the best part I like about them is, some nice cool titles in their business card.
Apoorv,
Any updates on this? I am eager to see your views in the uncivilised corporates who call themselves “knowledge industry”.