Tuesday, March 29, 2011
A Project Classic - Keep your 'eyes on the prize'
Reminded this evening by Michael McCabe of Fergus O'Connell's most excellent presentation of the project management solution; "How To Run Successful Projects - The Silver Bullet". The book and Fergus's training courses have deeply influenced many in high-tech in Ireland (link)
Governance Themes in Sourcing
What is the fact basis and following implications of claims that the IT industry has shifted from being people-dependent to process-dependent? (Oshri et al., 2007) One of the more significant implications is the claim that “knowledge management becomes part of the process.” (Oshri et al., 2007)
The idea that business operations should depend heavily upon ‘knowledge management’ appears at first to be vague, nebulous. What is knowledge and its relationship with skill, experience, expertise, know-how? How can knowledge be managed? Can knowledge be captured absolutely, transferred and shared unambiguously, valued, codified, commoditised, sold?
Oshri et al., (2007) don’t engage in understanding and theorising knowledge or knowledge management, instead they shift focus slightly towards the apparently less problematic idea of ‘expertise’. They characterise the desire to manage knowledge in terms of expertise as a personal characteristic, a characteristic that is evident as a resource both of the person and of the organisation.
TCS's GDM is a project oriented view of the outsourcing business world. It requires a minimum 6 person management team, with three or more others (HR, QA). The GDM presents a set of recommended structures, processes, values and other mechanisms to shape or manage social processes surrounding knowledge and expertise development. Ultimately the GDM appears to be an organisational model, a simplified synopsis of TCS's own organisational structure and operational capabilities that contribute to its success as a kind of 'organisation of organisations'. The idea of an organisation of organisations captures TCS's situation where it manages multiple outsourcing relationships with many client firms. The first practice "implement an organizational structure that is a mirror image of the client's structure" imposes organisational flexibility upon TCS. The second, "implement a knowledge transfer methodology follows. Transfer commences between client staff and TCS onsite staff and continues from TCS onsite to TCS offsite (and remote) staff. Once 'internalised within TCS the GDM mandates codification, sharing, and reuse. Importantly though this is practice-centric human system rather than a static codification. They link projects with organisational capability as evidenced through personal development, career profiles and project records. The whole GDM as a process is reinforced by organisation-wide cultural conditioning, explicit 'values' to invest in continuous learning and knowledge sharing. While TCS's view of the work world is project centric, due to the continuous commencement and conclusions of project 'relationships', its success is dependent on its capability to share, bridge, and use learning 'across relationships'. The tetrad of interactions between TCS's four key capabilities (project management, quality assurance, digitisation, and centers of excellence) is central to the resilience of knowledge within TCS, despite the strangeness of TCS adopting the same multi-various organisational forms of its clients organisations.
It might be said that TCS is a purely knowledge organisation, one that is imminently adaptible yet consistent because of its reliance on the 'global delivery model’ (GDM).
References
Oshri, I., Kotlarsky, J. & Willcocks, L. P. (2007) Managing Dispersed Expertise in IT Offshore Outsourcing: Lessons from Tata Consultancy Services. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6.
The idea that business operations should depend heavily upon ‘knowledge management’ appears at first to be vague, nebulous. What is knowledge and its relationship with skill, experience, expertise, know-how? How can knowledge be managed? Can knowledge be captured absolutely, transferred and shared unambiguously, valued, codified, commoditised, sold?
Oshri et al., (2007) don’t engage in understanding and theorising knowledge or knowledge management, instead they shift focus slightly towards the apparently less problematic idea of ‘expertise’. They characterise the desire to manage knowledge in terms of expertise as a personal characteristic, a characteristic that is evident as a resource both of the person and of the organisation.
“Expertise is a specific type of knowledge. It is dynamic, it evolves, and it consists of embodied knowledge and skills possessed by individuals. For our purposes, it refers to ‘knowing in practice.’” (Oshri et al.:54, 2007)In this case study they present Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) ‘global delivery model’ (GDM) as a system of knowledge management, a system for managing dispersed expertise between pairs of organisations and multiple sites of labour (on-site, off-site, offshore). However while the article is located conceptually within knowledge management the global delivery model, its practices and dynamics address governance.
TCS's GDM is a project oriented view of the outsourcing business world. It requires a minimum 6 person management team, with three or more others (HR, QA). The GDM presents a set of recommended structures, processes, values and other mechanisms to shape or manage social processes surrounding knowledge and expertise development. Ultimately the GDM appears to be an organisational model, a simplified synopsis of TCS's own organisational structure and operational capabilities that contribute to its success as a kind of 'organisation of organisations'. The idea of an organisation of organisations captures TCS's situation where it manages multiple outsourcing relationships with many client firms. The first practice "implement an organizational structure that is a mirror image of the client's structure" imposes organisational flexibility upon TCS. The second, "implement a knowledge transfer methodology follows. Transfer commences between client staff and TCS onsite staff and continues from TCS onsite to TCS offsite (and remote) staff. Once 'internalised within TCS the GDM mandates codification, sharing, and reuse. Importantly though this is practice-centric human system rather than a static codification. They link projects with organisational capability as evidenced through personal development, career profiles and project records. The whole GDM as a process is reinforced by organisation-wide cultural conditioning, explicit 'values' to invest in continuous learning and knowledge sharing. While TCS's view of the work world is project centric, due to the continuous commencement and conclusions of project 'relationships', its success is dependent on its capability to share, bridge, and use learning 'across relationships'. The tetrad of interactions between TCS's four key capabilities (project management, quality assurance, digitisation, and centers of excellence) is central to the resilience of knowledge within TCS, despite the strangeness of TCS adopting the same multi-various organisational forms of its clients organisations.
It might be said that TCS is a purely knowledge organisation, one that is imminently adaptible yet consistent because of its reliance on the 'global delivery model’ (GDM).
References
Oshri, I., Kotlarsky, J. & Willcocks, L. P. (2007) Managing Dispersed Expertise in IT Offshore Outsourcing: Lessons from Tata Consultancy Services. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6.
IBM's Seven Keys of Success
IBM's own transformation as a competent and reliable global sourcing partner (supplier) involved refining and emphasising its internal 'project' perspective on high-tech production. They recognised that successful projects were the key to IBM's continued success. IBM had a catalogue the practices and techniques observed to be effective on the many hundreds of internal projects, both successful and unsuccessful projects, and practices or techniques that aided and impeded success.
"If you want to alter the course of your project's history, you must communicate at the executive level." IBM white paper, 2004IBM's Project Management Centre of Excellence was promoted and eventually ingrained its approaches as core corporate value. They adapted the project perspective and refined it into a system for corporate delivery; governance for suites and programmes of projects. In essence this is a 'project of projects' approach and is applied across the entire organisation. A traffic light system monitors both direct and indirect controls. Direct controls are the typical outputs of any project: a schedule, scope, and performance against both. Indirect controls address the project's context, its environment and politics: overall benefits, stakeholders' involvement, risk mitigation, and delivery of benefits.
(figure 1. IBM 7 Keys HUD)
The model generally runs on a monthly cycle. These shared and relatively simple measures apply to all projects in the organisation (globally). The data is simple enough to be meaningful, aggregated and comparable across projects. The dynamics of the model are similar (if not identical) to the 'Deming cycle'; plan, do, check, act. In IBM's case for each project; 1) assess the state of the 7 keys over the period (1 month), 2) plan adjustments and change, 3) act and implement, 4) resulting in new status of the 7 keys.
Further reading
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Exercise: Introducing Outsourcing to an 'Industry'
Prepare a Response
As a consultant specialising in sourcing and outsourcing consider how you would respond to the statement, question and situation presented below...
Please post your comments in the comment form below.
Statement
Outsourcing is such a bad idea. The supplier simply wants to make profit. The buyer will make loads of mistakes and get shafted. So don’t do it. Its just a bandwagon!Question
Formal criteria for selecting external suppliers are used in about one third of outsourcing decisions. Should formal criteria be used?Situation
We are all members of the Management team in a large company employing 900 people here in Ireland. There are 18 people employed in the HR Department. Our Chief Executive has been to lunch with a friend who runs another large company employing 1,100 people. The friend has just made a decision to outsource his HR function (including payroll). There are two possibilities for outsourcing – one is with a company here in Ireland and the other is with a company based in Bermuda. The Chief Executive is keen on the idea and has nominated two people to “fulfill his wishes”. Let’s discuss the approach / issues involved here.Acknowledgements: Questions/statements posed by Michael McCabe (mvmconsult.com)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Case: Bank of Ireland Outsourcing 2000-2011
Irish banks have, in the past, outsourced considerable operational activities to third-party providers. Bank of Ireland's multi-year deal with HP followed by the switch to IBM exemplifies one particular case of the benefits and risks of adopting a deep outsourcing strategy in a digital 'information' industry.
(24 February 2003: article-link) BOI license desktop and server software from Microsoft.
(4 April 2003: article-link) BOI announce 7 year deal with HP for IT services worth ~500M, over 500 bank employees to be transferred to HP.
(2 July 2003: article-link) BOI announce multi-million deal for banking software products.
(3 November 2010: article-link) BOI announce 5 year deal with IBM for IT services worth ~500M,
(24 February 2003: article-link) BOI license desktop and server software from Microsoft.
(4 April 2003: article-link) BOI announce 7 year deal with HP for IT services worth ~500M, over 500 bank employees to be transferred to HP.
(2 July 2003: article-link) BOI announce multi-million deal for banking software products.
(3 November 2010: article-link) BOI announce 5 year deal with IBM for IT services worth ~500M,
Monday, February 14, 2011
Goals of the MGS blog
Our goals are to equip ourselves and anyone following with the tools to:
- Describe typical organizational activities and products amenable to sourcing beyond the traditional boundaries of organizations. State the common modes of sourcing high-tech products and services.
- Highlight, summarize and justify the advantages and disadvantages of different sourcing modes.
- Relate historical trends in global sourcing to current topics and explain how local conditions have evolved. Illustrate the application of the various sourcing modes in example industries.
- Illustrate the relationship between technology trends and the emergence of expanding arrays of options around sourcing of product components and services. Analyse global sourcing discourse and break them down to identify the interests involved.
- Juxtapose the strategic decisions available to business between in-house and outsourced delivery. Propose remedial measures addressing organizational and technological issues relating to global sourcing. Suggest concepts and frameworks for interpreting and deciding sourcing cases.
- Identify emerging trends in sourcing relationships that are likely to be important in the future and contrast them against the current situations. Extrapolate and justify the implications of changing sourcing arrangements on complex inter-organizational relationships.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
IBM virtual team in Belarus, China, India, Latvia and the U.S. to create JavaBeans (1997)
Source: The Edge: Work-Group Computing Report (archive at findarticles.com).
begin quotation...
February 18, 1997, Tuesday
IBM Goes On 24-Hour-A-Day Cycle To Speed Java Application Development LENGTH: 798 words DATELINE: SOMERS, NY Highly Skilled Software Developers in Belarus, China, India, Latvia and the U.S. in Virtual Team to Create JavaBeans
It's 7 p.m. in Beijing. At China's renowned Tsinghua University, a team of highly skilled programmers are putting the finishing touches on software written in Java, the hot Internet programming technology. They will end the day by sending their work electronically to an IBM programming facility in Seattle for further development during the U.S. work day. This scenario will soon be repeated daily in Belarus, India, and Latvia, where some of the world's top programmers are involved in an IBM initiative to develop Java components, literally around the clock. IBM will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years to incorporate Java technology into its enterprise products. The goal is to help customers more effectively harness the power of the Internet and network computing to conduct electronic business. Twenty-four-hour-a-day virtual development teams tap the resources of top high-tech organizations in emerging markets to speed the development of JavaBeans(TM) for IBM's award-winning VisualAge(TM) application development environment. "Java holds the promise of applications that can be written once and run in any operating environment," said Steve Mills, general manager, IBM Software Solutions Division. "A seamless, networked computing environment, where even mission-critical applications can be moved around the organization, helps customers do business on the Web by increasing speed and efficiency." Around-the-Clock Development IBM is pioneering the innovative 24-hour-a-day development cycle of Java.
end quote.
begin quotation...
February 18, 1997, Tuesday
IBM Goes On 24-Hour-A-Day Cycle To Speed Java Application Development LENGTH: 798 words DATELINE: SOMERS, NY Highly Skilled Software Developers in Belarus, China, India, Latvia and the U.S. in Virtual Team to Create JavaBeans
It's 7 p.m. in Beijing. At China's renowned Tsinghua University, a team of highly skilled programmers are putting the finishing touches on software written in Java, the hot Internet programming technology. They will end the day by sending their work electronically to an IBM programming facility in Seattle for further development during the U.S. work day. This scenario will soon be repeated daily in Belarus, India, and Latvia, where some of the world's top programmers are involved in an IBM initiative to develop Java components, literally around the clock. IBM will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years to incorporate Java technology into its enterprise products. The goal is to help customers more effectively harness the power of the Internet and network computing to conduct electronic business. Twenty-four-hour-a-day virtual development teams tap the resources of top high-tech organizations in emerging markets to speed the development of JavaBeans(TM) for IBM's award-winning VisualAge(TM) application development environment. "Java holds the promise of applications that can be written once and run in any operating environment," said Steve Mills, general manager, IBM Software Solutions Division. "A seamless, networked computing environment, where even mission-critical applications can be moved around the organization, helps customers do business on the Web by increasing speed and efficiency." Around-the-Clock Development IBM is pioneering the innovative 24-hour-a-day development cycle of Java.
end quote.
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