Dissatisfaction is the need of hour of Indian IT Industry

Recently, I was going through a post written by a developer in America, wherein he addressed the issue of outsourcing developing activities to Asian, and more specifically India companies. He compared the investment in terms of time and money spent on project in each scenario, wherein a vast majority of outsourcing companies were dissatisfied with the work done or time spent on the project, and compared that to the work of an American. He was of the opinion that Americans do the work faster and the quality of work is much better than an Indian firm.

Well, I don't totally agree with his opinions, but looking at the services that we give in India, we can somewhere connect to the experiences faced by him or his clients. I am not much aware of the service culture of the American society, but I know that commitments, in India, are sometimes are just words blown in breeze, i.e. their only purpose is to generate a sense of good feeling. After reading the post I mused about it for a long time, and realized, that somewhere or the other, we need to change.

In India, we believe that doing the work and earning money is of much more importance, as compared to the quality of work or fulfilling commitments. Moreover, the organizations don't have any agreed or defined standards, and wherever there are, they are not being followed diligently. The main reason behind this can be traced to "Chalta hai" psychology, which is much prevalent in our society. This leads to complacent attitude, which usually is not favorable to improvements and growth. Improvement and growth take place when we are dissatisfied, when we want something better that the prevailing standards. When we want something more. Japanese car manufacturer Toyota is quintessential to this dissatisfaction. Toyota has changed the car industry and has dealt a heavy blow to GM Motors and Chrysler in America. But it was not always the case. Toyota wanted to make things better, faster, reduce the wastage and produce cars on time, and this is how it revolutionized the industry. Similarly, we can change things around, we can be better, but the desire or the dissatisfaction with the present is must to reach there, to be better, and who knows tomorrow when competition would threaten much more than it does today, we will start working on quality and deliver better results, but till then we might just suffer the blows. And anyways, its always better to walk ahead of time and try improving as soon as you can!

Systems Thinking: Does it come hard to you?

How I overcame the inner reluctance of following process

A large number of organizations go for ISO standards and CMMI Appraisals each year. A very large number of employees opt for training in systems thinking and process improvement. All these trainings and implications have got their own advantages, which, when people attend training they realize, but a week or so after the training, they are back to normal!

I myself have been subject to many process improvement and systematization and systems thinking training, but effect did last more than 3 weeks at most. I always wanted to follow the approach, but somewhere deep down there was reluctance to do so. I didn’t want to be tied or may be answerable to myself at the end of the day. Hence, it wasn’t an easy deal.

Systems thinking came easily to my peers, who day after day kept on filling the templates, recording their works task after task and hence, completing all that was there SYSTEMATICALLY. I somehow managed to complete, because there’s a part played by forgetfulness.

It was then that I started playing with various tools to help me. The most helpful was having the checklists right in front of me, where I can’t escape filling them, and setting the reminders on my outlook, to further remind me to work in systems, and moreover, I asked my colleagues to review my work in accordance to the set systems.

The most useful was the Peer Review. It helped me identify where my efforts were being diverted from the systems and how to overcome them. Slowly, and steady I started following systems, and now it’s been a while since I have been up to date with the systematized processes.