Let them Know

A mega event was nearing and organisation was preparing with full thrust , recently developed marketing app to also be used in this event for first time , business was nervous about any issues , its usability , effective support . Constant pressure was built on manager of IT service provider who was supporting this app , every time he visisted his customers in IT/Business , people reminded him how crucial the upcoming event is , mails were started flowing highlighting the situation . IT team and managers were very confident knowing it was a very small app and they have some of the really best SMEs working with this customer for years , they are available and will handle any situation promptly , same was also informed to the the customer but panick continued ..


Support manager understood that emotions can be calmed by showing a structured plan , he sat down with team and developed a shift wise plan for the duration of the event , created a daily report template to be circulated , established escalation structure and wrote it down in the form of document , most of it was already in place as part of application support but team carved out a small support plan very specific to this application , same was submitted to to customer IT and business .
They could now see what all steps will be taken , who can be contacted in hour of crisis and above all thier vendor team is ready to stretch equally to make it a success , they are a stakeholder with written commitment in the form of a plan , emotions calmed down , all aspects were covered.

During event , support team adhered to the plan , there were no issue reported and yet they kept sending thier daily report template . For minor requests also resolution was provided in urgent manner . After successful finish of event Business team was deeply satisfied with IT support , large commendations followed with information on how beneficial new app was .

At times even though things are very obvious , we know that every thing is under control but same need to be communicated . In other times the simple communication may not work , we need to devise ways to comfort people , give them confidence and calm thier emotions.

Changing (BA)asics

Business Analyst is supposed to bridge the gap between business users and technical solution provider by using the business domain knowledge and technology understanding.
As per international institute of busyness analysis, “The Business Analysis Professional is responsible for requirements development and requirements management. Specifically, the Business Analysis Professional elicits, analyzes, validates and documents business,
organizational and/or operational requirements. Solutions are not predetermined by the Business Analysis Professional, but are driven solely by the requirements of the business. Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement or organizational change. “
This traditional definition for role of a BA is accurate for customized application developments where some needed to help customer understand his requirement , document it and explain to technical team for developing application. In current IT project landscape there are many ways to address a business problem and hence role of BA is changing with broader set of responsibilities

Package Implementation : Packages are off the shelf component which provide standard set of solution for a particular business function ( with minimum development effort) so in such projects the role of BA changes to Business process Analyst and even business process re-engineering. BA will perform "AS-IS" and "TO-BE" process analysis and then help technical consultants to customize wherever needed.
Support Projects : For support projects BA will handle level 2 and level 3 support for an application where his job would be to resolve functional queries posted by end users. He may also be involved with application developers for bug fixing and other maintenance related issues.
Reporting projects : One of core responsibility of BA is process large data and derive conclusion from it, reporting or data warehouse projects focus on this strength where a BA needs to provide reports as needed by business.

Making IT a Rat RACE

in 2006 I was part of a team presenting proposal to new customer , after presentation and few questions customer asked whether we can committ that same resource will be handling his project for first 3 years ( which was the initial time frame of entire contract) , delivery manager answered very tactfully that Indian IT scene is very dynamic and growing at fast pace so people here move up in 3 years from one role to other hence it will not be possible to committ . That was the case few years back , conmpanies were offering promotions and hikes without giving much consideration to qualification , age or relevant experience . The main reason was growing size of teams and hence some one had to be given management job to handle others .

2007 onwards Infosys and other companies had grown upto one lakh and now it was not possible to keep the same rate of promotion going on so they used a new policy of mandatory certification every year to slow down promotions , recently they added another policy initiative called iRACE ( Infosys roles and career) which is bound to prolong the time in which an average employee is promoted , it may also deepen the hierarchy from previous grade system ( A to E) to new number system ( 1 to 8 ) with addition of some more roles like "Project lead" or "technical leads" which were not there initially.

Even though this is a standard practice with international service and product organization companies like SAP, Google , IBM to promote people after they have spent sufficient time in team and organization , at times it takes a decade to become a project manager . But this was more because of flatter structure followed by these organizations .
The kind of initiative proposed by Infosys may not go down well with employees specially in a situation where for almost 2 years they have been working without incerements and pormotions, some of the rival firms have taken a upside appoach with declaring new increments and promotions to compensate .

Can IT be your quantum leap : Coming Soon