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Why
techies need to ‘think’ business
In the
West, apart from speaking about coding intricacies, technologists are
expected to be involved in thinking about the business problems at hand.
Indian companies are now realising the need to hire and train project
managers and architects who can talk the business talk, says Mohan Babu
During the
past few months, articles on Indians and Indian software companies have
increasingly been appearing in the mainstream American media. Whether it is
talk about BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) or shipping low-cost work,
India is getting a lot of favourable mention in the press. Forbes, the
revered business magazine, recently carried an interesting article titled,
‘India or Bust’, so did InfoWorld, with its article titled ‘BPO bound for
Bombay’. Interestingly, most of these articles talk of India as an
“efficient low cost” centre, not merely a “low cost” IT service provider.
However, one factor consistently mentioned in many of the articles is the
lack of top-notch project managers and architects, people who can direct the
work of dozens of software engineers to meet budgets and deadlines.
I can
empathise with the lack of project managers that Indian high-tech firms
face. This is probably because of the intense technology focus in most
Indian software companies. For instance, right from the time I graduated and
joined a software company in India, I was trained to think and act as a
“techie”, which is fine if all I was required to do was to code in a
computer language, as many other technologists working for software product
companies do. However, since the bulk of Indian software exports comes from
the services side, i.e. the applications systems development, it is
important to start focusing on the business too. In the West, apart from
speaking about the coding intricacies, technologists are expected to be
involved in thinking about the business problem at hand.
Most of my
peers who have worked on assignments at client locations abroad will be able
to empathise with the significance of business-knowledge. This holds
especially true for most of us in the field of software application
development arena.
Until
recently, Indian IT houses prided themselves in their technical prowess,
little realising that technology alone was not going to provide core
competency to their end clients. What the clients really need is a
technology solution to their business problems. Indian IT houses are finally
starting to realise the importance of business processes along with an
appreciation of the role of technology in the smooth flow of information. At
the end of the day, technology is merely the enabler, the glue that binds
disparate business systems, providing for a smooth interchange between the
different functional areas of business.
Case in
point: When I first started working with a telecommunications giant in
Colorado Springs, I hardly knew anything about telephony or
telecommunications. On starting my assignment, I not only had to learn the
nitty-gritty of the (IT) systems in use but also become familiar with the
jargon and acronyms involved in the “telecom provisioning” industry. The
system, a complex database, captured the logical circuitry in a format that
would enable provisioning engineers, our users, to do their job. They
queried the database to look up details of circuitry that enabled them to
lay the huge “network pipes” end-to-end for their customers. During the
period that I spent at the client, my team worked on a number of projects to optimise the database, add new product lines (like HDSL, DSL, etc.) and even
Web-enabled the system, none of which would have been possible without a
thorough understanding of the business at hand. Similar stories are repeated
in hundreds of thousands of businesses in functions ranging from medical
systems, insurance, banking to traffic management and even spacecraft launch
management. Technologists who have an appreciation of the nuances of the
unique business problem facing a particular industry have an edge over their
peers who merely bring in their technical expertise.
During the
past decades, Indian companies were content to be body shoppers supplying
Cobol, C, C++, Java, Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft professionals, basically coders
who could be used by any organisation. Most of the time, the middle man,
i.e. the integrator or solutions provider, would assemble teams of
programmers, analysts, team-leads and project managers and solve the
business problems of the client, in the process, pocketing a big portion of
the proceeds. As Indian companies take on bigger chunks of projects, moving
up the value chain, they are realising the need to hire, train, motivate and
retain project managers and architects people who can talk the business talk
and ensure that the techies they are leading solve the required business
problems.
India has
exported hundreds of thousands of techies to the US, UK and other western
countries over the past decade or so, most of them with a solid technical
background. Many have opted to become permanent residents of the US or UK
and other countries, but still have strong ties with India. They probably
started their careers working for Indian software houses and Indian work and
corporate culture is not foreign to them. Along with an exposure to the
workings of complex IT systems, many of them have had an opportunity to
build strong business knowledge, managing and leading teams working on
complex systems, solving the needs of their business users. They have also
been moving up the corporate ladders. They are as comfortable working with
their Indian peers as they are with their native hosts. Having made their
share of cultural faux paus, they are comfortable in a cross-cultural
environment. Just the kind of people that Indian IT industry needs in its
endeavour to move up the value chain.
For the right
price they can be hired and motivated to work for Indian technology houses
wishing to execute large projects for global clients. I am happy in my job
and enjoy what I do. However, at the risk of sounding crassly commercial,
even I am available for hire to the right bidder. Any takers?
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