Resource Allocation - Why it Sucks

 “IT consulting is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT consultancies often implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf.”

 

The key phrase here is “meet business objectives”. This is the center point of any services company on the paper. This phrase will be imbibed into almost every literature associated with services or consulting IT firm. Be it the “documented” values page or training materials or induction problems or in fact the annual reports. Now, it looks like such a harmless and simple phrase. The person who must have thought and coined it must have been very intelligent and foresighted. But then Communism when conceptualized was supposed to have set right all the wrongs that the world has seen. We all know the history. Why did we go there? It is because a phrase that looks so simple and logical when misused can be a very powerful weapon just like communism was in the hands of several tyrants.

Remember the day you got out of your reputed colleges and joined one or the other services firm. I am sure all do. Now, there were some lucky ones who got into product development. Let’s forget the chaos theory and ignore this small natural disturbance to the normal process of one joining a services firm. Almost in every services firm the inductee gets some initial training. This training will help him understand how the real world works and also he is made to believe that he will work on the things that he was trained for. Don’t laugh guys… You all thought that it would be like that!!! Then you get allocated to a project. It has no relation between what you were trained and what the project is all about. As a fresher one takes time to realize what he is getting into. The famous phrases used by manager to tell the more persistent guys are “It is the best learning opportunity you will have”…. “One has to be flexible to make it big in the industry”… “You stick with me and you will go places”… Poor chap, falls trap in many cases. That’s how the resource allocation happens. Business needs, client needs… Bull shit right… I mean to meet client’s business needs you need the person best suited for that job or the one who has the attitude to get that work done… But then the one who is free is taken and put into that and the client is informed that he is the best and then… show just goes on…. This is what happens with lesser experienced people…

What about the ones who have been there and done that? It’s not much different but then the way is handled well might have been a paradigm shift in the IT management when it was first thought about…

Imagine a person who is joining a big firm after working in smaller firms and has already proved his mettle. He is an expert in his field of work. So this big firm hires him and promises him things that he can’t get in the small firm like higher pay, onsite or designation etc etc… The person who is joining knows that it will be difficult to get all this, but then joins hoping that at least his job will be safer and his expertise will take him places. Very logical I must say. Logic and rationale can be used to resolve or fight issue with “Sense”. What will you fight non-sense with? It is the most underestimated intellectual or rather foolish power. The power of non-sense!!! So when this person joins, he is treated well, generally and then asked to take session on the knowledge that he has so that his “visibility” increases and he can climb the ladder faster. Poor chap, his confidence is boosted and he takes all the sessions and explains many things that he knows… Meanwhile a very good project comes in. Before he realizes in front of his eyes people who he trained use the jargons that he taught them. They portray that they are experts and grab that project based on there contacts with the top management. What happens to this guy? He is been named as an expert trainer. Funny right? The best person for the job is training people and the project is getting screwed. Today’s recession has added to this. When one goes to the top management with his concerns of the job role he is playing and the under utilization of his skills; he is told that the times are bad and he needs to be flexible. Does the story end here? No sir! There is more… As it had to happen, the project in which the blue eyed boy managed to enter gets screwed up!! Nothing works… The client is furious… All this for the value “Focus on client’s needs”… So some big shot pitches in… Calls all the managers and asks them who can fix this… Definitely, our poor chap’s name comes in… He is appointed as “Subject Matter Expert” and sent to this screwed up project to fix it. Timelines are in-human. The reasoning, again “Client Focus and Business Needs” have forced us to take this decision bla bla bla… Would the project be screwed up in case the person best suited for the job would be put in that? There are a plethora of different ways the experience and expertise is wasted other than the one pointed out. Like, put that person in a previous version of the same technology; put that person in a role that is just to look over the happenings; put him in a pseudo-management role with power on just paper; etc etc etc… At the end of this all, the entity that loses in the long run is the software service industry as a whole.

 Well anyway this is the sad story of almost all the services company and thus the story of all the screwed up implementations… Maybe the definition of IT Services needs to be modified:

 “IT consulting is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives which closely aligns with the implementation expertise that the consulting company boosts to have. In addition to providing advice, it often implements, deploys, and administers IT systems on businesses' behalf in order to fit in “there” people who eventually screw up and allow the company to use more people to fix and thus make more revenue”

 Comedy of Errors or great Business sense, who am I to decide?

Save Your Ass - Blame Game Tactic

In all the industries people thrive to excel. If they can’t then they at least try to follow the principle “Save Your Ass” (SYA) from the getting whipped. This is an art which is normally acquired by experience, even though there are some lucky bastards who are born with this. So what are we talking here, how to save one’s ass? No sir. That’s the least of anyone’s concern and almost every coffee shop discussion revolves mostly around this.

Now in the software industry as many are aware, the responsibilities are pretty diluted. The management calls this famously “Risk Mitigation”. Even though this has a lot of advantages, when misused can cause greater vice than all the virtues that it was meant for. Due to the dilution of the responsibilities in the s/w industry for a particular task’s success and failure there are many people responsible all along the hierarchy and mainly across the hierarchy. What I mean by across is “peers”.

This is the problem area that we will try to focus today and see what SYA principle does. Assume a big project in which many people are working. For Risk Mitigation, each task has many people working as primary, primary secondary, secondary secondary, Risk Manager, Quality Manager bla bla bla… Not one has his or her responsibilities clear. Each pitches in for the other at any given time. So everyone is doing everything no matter the expertise or inclination. No one’s complaining until things go fine.

But then murphy’s laws, things that can go wrong will always go wrong. Assume in this scenario where everyone is doing everything, something goes wrong. Hmmm… Now someone has to fix it and go ahead right. But as it happens always, the first thing that is done is to find “Who” did it… That’s when the risk mitigation funda falls on its ass. Who is to be held responsible? All have done everything right… There is no traceability and thus no real ownership and further no responsibility. The SYA principle kicks in and the blame game starts… Each one blames the other and the politically stronger even though un just generally wins this blame game and saves his ass. The ones who might be innocent are caught and punished for the folly and are made to slog… Now these victims understand this principle of “SYA” and one of the tactics of practicing it “Blame Game” and this viscous cycle continues until… I don’t know.;. Haven’t seen that yet. Maybe the project gets scrapped… May be the management is changed…

But is that the solution? Can this so called theory… Everyone can do everything really mitigate the risks… I don’t think so…

Insecuriy in the Dirty Clone

Insecurity is an interesting phenomenon. What we are talking is the professional insecurity. Now imagine a person on the chair of power. An appointed leader.. We will come to the appointed part later.. But someone like him has this feeling.. Insecurity… Now can you imagine what effect this might have…

Let’s just take an example of the software industry as it is now. As one knows, the management in a software industry is just a “Dirty Clone” of the core industries like engineering with half of the DNA structure in cancer. So who can actually do this job are the ones who can handle this anomaly that exists and prevails; the anomaly that the software industry is not about computers or processors but the people who use it. The so called “resources” or “Bench Strength”. So the output of a resource in a software industry is not predictable unlike in a manufacturing industry where it depends on the machine which is so so predictable. But then since the processes are just a dirty clone, what the plan predicts never considers this fact that the deadline and the output depends on the people and not the computers and people being people one can imagine what all can go wrong. Also just like this process, the process of having someone is the management as a manager is also borrowed. The more experienced the person is, he is fit for management. What one fails to realize here is unlike the other industries, in S/W the output is not tangible and hence not track-able. So any experience in the s/w industry doesn’t guarantee that the person can manage to manage a s/w project. Hence I used the word appointed!!!

Moving ahead, say in this sorry “state of affairs”, when a manager comes in who is Insecure. The effects are catastrophic! Initially due to the anomaly, it always happens that to meet the deadline the most efficient person will be slogging his ass off since he has to pitch in for the wrong plan that was done and for the less efficient people whose efficiency was not considered in planning. The after effect of what we just mentioned is that, the client or the end customer is really impressed with our efficient guy. Now the insecure manager comes in and sees what is happening. He sees that this fellow is doing far too well. So he decides that this might hamper his position as a manager. So he starts omitting the person from important discussions, from mails etc etc… Or “accidentally” forgets to add his name when mailing the customer about the solution that he worked his ass off to find and just sends an “fyi” of the reply. So in general, the efficient person is made to feel insignificant and naturally he is gets pissed. And as I mentioned above, people being people this reason is more than enough for him to either leave the company or say stop working as efficiently as he used to. He thinks what the use, if it is not recognized. After all this is not the time of Arjun and Krishna right…
So what happens at the end of all this is there is another dead weight in the project doing nothing really productive and every time the insecure manager says this to him, it infuriates him further and as many call it the “vicious cycle” is set into motion.
Now who is the loser here… The manager or the efficient person… Well actually it’s the project and thus the client and thus his business.
Until and unless we handle anomalies like this and find a way through them and not around them; just as today software implementations are going to be in the same sorry state bleeding money from everywhere.