IT Operations Consulting
- 1. Unpredictable efforts makes project cost out of control Things were looking fine earlier so why is the project not complete on schedule? Everything looked ok when we were ready for delivery, how come so many issues reported by customer? There are so many people who are underutilized but the project teams keep complaining about shortage of people. Too many unplanned exits impacting the schedule/ quality of current projects and also sudden loss of key resources Sales team complains about operations while the operations team blames sales team for poor customer satisfaction Unpredictable efforts makes of control Everything looked ok when we were ready for delivery, how come so many issues reported by customer? Too many unplanned exits impacting the schedule/ quality of current projects and also sudden loss of key Even after giving our best, the customer thinks we are not serious enough If we were able to recruit the right resources, the situation would have been different How is it that our competitors are able to quote so less for the same work? Are they doing it at loss just to win the customer? If any of the above is true for you And if you believe ‘external’ consultant cannot help, let us meet Even after giving our best, the customer thinks we are not serious enough How is it that our competitors are able to quote so less for the same work? Are they doing it at loss just to win the customer? If any of the above is true for you And if you believe that an ‘external’ consultant cannot let us meet and talk.
- 2. Engagement Methodology Step Description Duration Typical Output 1 Meeting to specify problem and identify symptoms 1 hr Proposal for consulting engagement 2 Engagement to study the details by gathering data and meeting with various stakeholders 1-4 weeks List of recommendations ( and proposal for implementation of some or all of the recommendations) 3 Implementation phase 1- 6 months Solution of the problem identified • Step 1 is to identify the potential problem and to look for any scope in improvement • Step 2 will generally be a fixed bid engagement and the tasks involved would be o Quantifying the problem e.g. if the problem is high attrition rate what are the %age of staff leaving per quarter? o Decide on target value for the above identified metric. E.g. attrition should be reduced to 2% per quarter. o Gather information from various data available as well as by meeting different stake holders, e.g. HR, department head, etc. o Conduct any surveys if needed o Sharing the draft recommendation report for discussion and feedback o Submission of final report along with proposal for implementation, if applicable • Step 3 will depend on the kind of recommendations in the previous step. o Typically costing model will be result based e.g. proportional to the improvement in attrition rate. o There may be no fixed cost in this step and the only expense would be from the savings/benefits that the organization has already achieved.
- 3. Some sample cases with significant benefits Problem: An Indian customer’s regular complain to its vendor was regarding unacceptable delay in submitting the quotation after the finalized user requirements were given to them Observation: The reason for the delay from the vendor team was due to time taken in understanding the requirement documents given to them and in delays from customer in providing clarifications. The customer were not willing to share any details of the requirements till the users signed off on the requirement Solution: By convincing customer to share in advance, the draft requirements which were still under discussion by users, was helpful in high level understanding of the requirements and any possible clarifications could happen in parallel when users were still debating among themselves on requirements. The clarifications sought by vendor also prompted users to think on additional possible scenarios and requirements were clearer when final version was shared. The Turn Around Time from “final” requirements to submission of quotation reduced from average of 6-8 weeks to less than 2 weeks Problem: For an Indian Insurance company as customer, no matter how much buffer the estimation team keeps, the actual duration always exceeded the estimate and the customer used to complain about high proposed cost. Observation: On analysis it was found that most of the delay in the original schedule was either due to delay in sign-off on initial requirements or the delay due to non availability of users in UAT phase. Solution: By setting a deadline on requirements phase and by introducing a cap on the UAT duration, any additional efforts to be charged separately on actual, the proposed cost for the projects was reasonable and the new proposed model acceptable to customer Problem: Unavailability of Interview panel to take interviews as most panelists were too busy in their projects Observation: This situation occurred only for certain positions and not for all recruitment positions. In one of those cases the number of qualified panelist in the company were limited and they refused to volunteer for interviews or used to cancel interviews due to scheduling conflicts with their customer calls while in other such case interviews were frequently rescheduled due to scheduling conflicts with other unplanned tasks e.g. unexpected meetings Solution: In first case HR negotiated the panelists for fixed number of interview slots and scheduled interviews only during those slots. The panelists ensured their availability by not scheduling any other meetings/calls with customer during those slots as the interviews were scheduled in advance even though the candidates for interviews were identified later by HR. In second case, just by having a “stand-by” panelist for each schedule, prevented rescheduling or cancelation to large extent. Overall Turn Around Time from receiving the CVs to issuing offer letter improved from 2 months to 3 weeks.
- 4. Problem: One department in a large IT company was facing challenge in recruiting people fast enough for a certain skill so that they can fulfill all the demand for an overseas customer Observation: The main reason for not able to recruit enough candidates was the unavailability of panel to conduct enough interviews while main reason for delay in on-boarding of new joiners to overseas project was the visa issue. Solution: The panelists were enabled to take telephonic interviews from home after working hours. The probability of candidate being available for interview also increased during out of office hours. The qualified persons from existing projects were identified for overseas projects and their visa processing initiated much earlier before the new joiners were available to replace them quickly in the existing projects Problem: An Indonesian customer used to report a lot of issues in their UAT on the first day even after the offshore team of the vendor confirmed by testing all business requirements Observation: After Pareto analysis on the issues reported during UAT, it was clear that the requirements given by the customer were not detailed enough and also has ambiguous leading to multiple interpretations. Also the changes made in the interfacing systems caused the tests in UAT cycle to fail. Solution: By asking customer to share all the UAT test cases/scenarios in advance, ensuring that all UAT test cases are tested by offshore team before delivering to the customer and also continuous communication with customer on changes made in interfacing systems ensured that the number of issues reported in UAT reduced by 70-80% Problem: Even when the utilization data for one of the delivery unit was very low in the quarter, all the projects which were behind the schedule during that period reported shortage of people as the main reason. Observation: Three top reasons why people were not utilized in the projects even when available were a) lack of visibility to the project leads about availability of resources as release dates from other projects were not planned or published in advance. b) Even when the resources were available, it was not feasible to quickly onboard them to project due to insufficient project documentation and hence infeasible learning curve/induction time. c) The persons available were at different physical location and working remotely was perceived as a challenge again due to insufficient project documentation Solution: Standardizing the project documentation and inclusion of release dates in global MIS reports improved the utilization. Actual improvement due to this could not be measured as the overall utilization is impacted by many other factors also and varies from month to month.