Estimate to Complete

Have you ever come across a situation, where even in Agile-Scrum, project you want to understand,

1. What got accomplished, and what is yet to be accomplished (the size)?
2. What would it take to complete it, everything else remaining constant (Effort / Schedule)?
3. Can there be some tentative estimation about work, if we include some approximation to elaboration, technical debt and defects?

I get that in Agile-Scrum, it is the capacity and velocity that drives the work, schedule and cost; however, if we leave aside what Agile Literature details say or do not say about it, I believe internally even all of us will be interested in knowing these questions. As these are not governance, or management questions, rather these are “Self-Awareness” questions, to keep ourselves honest about our true progress.

To help myself, I created a simple tool to answer these questions, and few more. I call it as “Self-Awareness about Estimate to Complete”. If you are interested in it, please feel free to download the Excel and PDF files. The PDF details the working of this tool. The best part is it does not require any registration, and it does not transmit any of your data. Your data remains with you.

What is in it for me? Well, all I want is your feedback on accuracy of the tool. That is, if it were accurate enough for you? If you feel like, then share the deviation (not the data, only the % deviation number) between estimated and actual number; though even this is not binding.

Please feel free to reach out to me, should you come across any hurdle in using this tool. Enjoy.

Link to the tool - Excel Tool
Link to Guide - How to use it guide

Role of Delivery Excellence

Nearly every organization has “Delivery Excellence” function, in one form or the other. The similarity across most of these organizations’ is in form structure and implementation of this function, i.e. more towards delivery processes. In other words processes originated because of need of some quality standard, be it CMMi, ISO or any other.

The problem with this narrowly defined objective is, that it seeks incremental improvements, which over a period of time, reach their limit. In addition, these standards are no longer the differentiators, rather those have become thresholds for one to proclaim “me too”. As we all know, no two organizations assessed at CMMi L5 or at any other epitome of any other quality standard, operate at same level.

So, the question arises, if we all know this, then why do we define and confine ourselves to said objective for “Delivery Excellence”. May be, we are diluting the importance and meaning of the word “Excellence”.

The way I understand it, a “Delivery Excellence” function, or for that matter any “Excellence” function should be run as “Center of Excellence (CoE)”. What it essentially means, it should have a Vision, Charter, Measurements, Resources, Policies, and Deliverables. As in absence of these, those might start on a right path; however, lose the direction and hence the impact, that these otherwise would have succeeded to create.

The “Delivery Excellence” in particular, should define means to,

1. Achieve excellence in customer satisfaction, and hence, help organization in retention / gaining repeat business
2. Help organization by being a strategic partner through consulting mindset

The two point approach is simple to remember, and yet effective to propel an organization to a level of maturity, where it can really differentiate itself from the rest.
The underlying theme behind these two points is as follows;

1. Think of a customer, let that be the focal point, and drive initiatives for improvement through Voice of Customer (VoC)
2. Create excellence in pre-sales through delivery, not only through optimizations alone, rather look at new avenues to achieve those, with better quality, shorter turnaround time, better predictability, effective utilization of resources through lesser and lesser “muda”, and hence lesser cost. Less cost should be the end result (if at all), and not the only end objective
3. Look at capability maturity of knowledge workforce, how can they be better equipped to deliver, what are the new trends in technology and solutioning, which they need to undergo, how can we self-sustain the “Self-Development” instead of being forced through policies and punitive appraisal systems, how do we study and analyze the market trends and adapt to change, how do we continuously lookout for opportunities to create new markets….the list is endless

The point is, look beyond incremental efficiencies in a limited segment, rather if need be, overhaul the system to align with today’s dynamic world.
For example,

1. Understand the organization’s vision and mission and define excellence around it
2. Create new delivery / pricing models / methodologies to serve untapped market
3. Define measures to enhance the delivery capability (resources, tools, processes); do not get confined to processes alone
4. Define measures to self-sustain the ‘Self-Development’. Instead of creating expensive, hard to maintain, and prone to prejudice and leakage of sensitive data around “Capability Maturity Matrix” for roles, and resources, rather define the minimum standards the resources across roles, need to achieve at various intervals
5. Create measures to eliminate the “muda” at every step of delivery; not through extensive exclusive checks, rather through inbuilt correction mechanism. For example, CI/TDD being part of the way of development, instead of pounding code and claiming it to be “done”
6. Create measures to drive accountability across roles / functions, such that bottlenecks become visible to naked eye
7. Assessments are not punitive, rather inclusive, i.e. if someone wants to operate at a certain level, as long organization has the need, let the person excel at that level. There should not be any need for promoting and then failing a person. This way, you are helping people excel in their respective roles, and yet there are no failures, thereby increasing employee satisfaction
8. Invest in your own readiness to being Business Architect to Business Process Specialist, to Subject Matter Expert in given field(s). The people in delivery should reach out to you for guidance, advice, and help for recovery. Instead of you being the “gatekeeper” of process implementation
9. …

This may not be an exhaustive list, and should not be either, as “Excellence” does not have a defined form, and will change along with environment that we operate in. A true “Delivery Excellence” organization operates like a CoE, and compliance is not what it seeks for, rather it is given. If need be, create a separate function for compliance; if there had been some cultural challenges, until those have been overcome.

Can the role of a “Sales Excellence” be any different? Not really, the basic premise does not change. That is, you have to work to “Excel”, and not be satisfied with incremental gains, through marginal efficiencies.

Shift in reasons for software project failure?

For decades software industry has created and evolved many engineering and management methodologies / models to address the problem of project failures. Where “Failure” is defined as deviation from set project objectives.

During various studies, various causes surfaced, ranging from Engineering Practices to Project Management (as stated above). A closer look reveals that earlier engineering practices were still maturing and organizations, and practices within organizations were at various level of maturities, resulting in varied success results, within organization as well as across industry.

After decades of study, incorporation of learnings and implementation of Best Practices, things have not improved to an extent, where it can be said that an optimum state has been accomplished. Over a period of time engineering practices have matured from process, and tools and techniques perspective. Many project management standards have emerged, implemented and practiced, resulting in almost a standardization of processes across industry. Yet, the capability to deliver the projects as per project’s set objectives varied.

Indeed, progress has been made; however, it looks like industry has reached a saturation point, and organizations across industry might be experiencing diminishing returns, or at least retarded returns on investment, when it comes to further investments in improvement of project management or engineering practices.

What it means is that there is more to it, which, has either been missed out or did not get required attention; may be unknowingly. We have to identify and investigate that “more”.

The resource capability improvement, external dependencies, customer’s equal participation and element of caution between customer and vendor are the other causes that could have been the bane behind these failures.

What should be done?

Over a period of time, the operating environment has evolved (as expected) and few interesting facts have emerged;

• Customers’ getting focused on outcomes of project
• Growing intolerance to defects, change requests, schedule slippages…anything that delays the outcome or gains, and spirals up the costs
• Elements of caution between vendor and customer
• Almost everyone has access to latest tools, technology, techniques, processes and methodologies to execute a software projects, and over a period of time these have also been standardized (to a great extent)
• The field of software engineering and management has evolved and stabilized to an extent where CMMi / ISO / ITIL…have become thresholds rather than differentiators
• The projects of strategic importance usually involve multiple vendors, thereby creating dependencies and challenges of synchronization and collaboration
• With less bench strengths and ever increasing pressure on margins, bench has thinned down even further
• Ever increasing pressure on budgets for readiness, morale etc.

With these challenges, the question arises, “What is that needs to change, either with customer or vendor, such that challenges can be addressed effectively?”

Very briefly,
Resource capability – self accountability and innovation culture - A maturity model driven through self-accountability, driven through innovation culture, is something that will propel personal development and shall also fuel organization’s growth. In a working environment it will be difficult to separate both, as those are interdependent for it to survive.

The point is, readiness can be enforced; however, development is self-driven. You do not require a “ready” workforce, rather you need a “developed” workforce, as only that workforce can drive the “right” work.

Acknowledge dependencies – you may plan for, can’t eradicate - In a project where multiple stakeholders are interacting and contributing towards success of project, it is normal to have dependencies. These dependencies play a crucial role in determining the success of the project. Invariably, many projects get delayed, or marred beyond recovery because of these dependencies
It would be an interesting study to know how many times vendors or internal IT teams failed to meet timelines, effort and / or cost estimates because of internal reason and those had no bearing either on customer or external dependencies or their active participation.

It is also interesting to note that despite of having various project execution methodologies projects still slip in want of dependencies. In this case the emphasis is more on external dependencies as internal dependencies can still be influenced or worked upon

Customer centricity, with customers’ self-realization - It is evident from above listed tasks or activities that a vendor is actually supplying functional, technical, program, and project management skills necessary to successfully convert the customer requirements into technical requirements and implementation of the same. However, at no point, all of that can be achieved without customer’s active participation.

May be it is little contentious; however, it has been observed that when a customer goes for a custom built car, cloth, house, ornaments, bike, furniture…etc., their participation is more and to an extent voluntary. Now, when it comes to software development, the participation reduces drastically. May be it is there in pockets, but then there are stories of success in pockets too. Again, may be it can’t be generalized; however, wherever there had been active participation from customers, the probability of failure had greatly been reduced, if not eliminated completely.

The point is, if active participation works in customer’s favor, why is it such a neglected area in software development?

Element of caution between customer and vendor – The fact of the matter is one may apply penalties on delays, quality, or pass on newly identified requirements as elaboration of requirements, at the end, it is going to hurt customer too. The reason being, vendor cannot resolve either customer’s internal or external dependencies beyond his control. These can only be resolved through customer’s active participation.

The quality is viewed in terms of deviation from functional and non-functional requirements of a project. In this case, if customer participation is lagging or is not sufficient, it is obvious that it will hurt the project objectives. It is true penalties may keep vendor honest to its terms; however, what provisions do customer have to keep maintain the same honesty? No, there is no need for such punitive clauses or provisions at both the ends, rather it is the thinking of shared accountability that will bring in results

To explore more on this, you may follow this link.

How good a person is, if he has failed to create a redundancy for himself?

How does ‘making oneself redundant’ sound? It is not a new concept or thought, in fact, it had been prevailing for ages. I was first introduced to this about a decade and a half back, by my then manager. He told me that ‘You have to make yourself redundant, and that is the key to success’.

For me it was a profound statement, and I followed his advice; however, did I get the desired success? Well, it all depends on, how one defines the ‘Success’. Though, personally, I still believe in it, and abide by it.

The reason for my belief is that it is the only way to develop oneself, and others, such that it results in a maturing and possibly growing organization. To me, it is a reflection of,

• one’s self confidence, and his / her level in Meslow’s hierarchy of needs,
• degree of political environment in an organization,
• fairness in their appraisal criteria, and other HR practices,
• evaluation and the value of their award and recognition practices,
• the maturity of people that you hire and work with,
• the practices of employee engagement (local vs global), and
• the general health of working environment, over a period of time.

It might have not been the exhaustive list; however, it does provide sufficient information on the importance of it.
It is obvious that if people are struggling for their existence in company, the people in organization are stuck at first level of hierarchy of needs. Under such circumstances, where is the time to innovate, learn and think of broaden the foot print of the organization? The reason being, most of the time goes in maintaining the status quo, and refraining from trying out anything new, because of fear of failure and associated repercussions.

It stagnates everyone, the people at all levels, and resultantly the ‘Organization’. No one wants to innovate, everyone goes for incremental wins, which are safe to bet on, everyone gets in their shell for self-defense and being risk averse, learning takes back seat…Interestingly, even people being at the same level for years together, do not result in any efficiencies or organizational maturity. As the entire energy was getting consumed in maintaining the status quo, and fighting the battle of day to day survival. There is absolutely no time for self-reflection, learning, innovation, trying out new methods, tools, techniques or markets, making others learn from their own mistakes…all of this, just do not exist.

Who to blame for this fiasco? Why does this situation arise at the first place? What can be done to change?

Personally, I believe this situation arises, because a person might have either become so attached to the position, which he did not dare to relinquish. This does not mean a person is not capable, rather a person might have had some personal likings and inclinations, skewing the decision making, or it could also be true that a person is capable for the current role; however, does not have the capabilities to progress beyond. Either way, it would lead to above mentioned situation, sooner or later.

The degree of spread will depend on the position of the person, and the thinking of people hired, and people already in the system. It also depends upon the HR policies and organization culture and tolerance; however, those realizations either come in late, or are not effective. Once this gets established, it becomes the de-facto culture of the organization.

Even after all of this, it does not mean the organization gets rendered dysfunctional at once. No, as there will always be people in the system, who work and develop themselves. Though their tenure in organization will be short, and resultantly the state of being dysfunctional happens over a prolonged period. Once this is reached, bringing it back to nimble, agile, and learning organization will require some earth shattering changes, which can give the required thrust to come out of the state of suspended inertia.

So, what is the solution? It is very simple, keep watching the learning, maturity, agility, nimbleness, and more importantly the progression in organization. Do not ignore the feedback or ‘cooler talks’ from grass roots; invariably those would lead you to the actual problem source. Promote a culture of being redundant in current role, and learn and grow horizontally or vertically. This will weed out the people who want to remain in suspended inertia, and will encourage people to hire resources, who also believe in this thinking of ‘learning’.

The stated problem of stagnancy, and suspended inertia are the results of convoluted internal policies, politics, and strongly barricaded organization, which, though may want to grow, but cannot grow; unless, acted upon externally, or it creates some artificial measures to grow.

Sustaining Differentiation

The preferred competitive approach by most of the organizations seems to be in form of having differentiation, especially, if the volumes are missing. Which is good, and it further gets refined by having a “focused” differentiation, as suggested by Porter. This text book approach is good, and organizations have succeeded by following these approaches. So, there is no question on the relevancy of these even today. The question is, how do they sustain the differentiation, as in today’s dynamic and fats paced world, and differentiation, or edge is short lived.

Another point to be noted is, we are having so many startups in e-commerce space, such that it is becoming difficult to keep track of many of those. It is true that strategy depends on attractiveness of the market, but it also depends on the organizations strengths. With so many players, established, and new entrants, with cut throat competition, how does one create brand awareness / recognition, and differentiation to get market share from existing players, or sustain the market share that someone already enjoys?

In knowledge industry, it is given that the biggest asset of an organization is human capital. The question is how to sustain that advantage and at the same time also enhance it further. In IT industry, firms have created this advantage by making those predictable through standardization of processes. Yet, the capabilities of two organizations is not same. Why is it so that every organization, following CMMi or any other quality methodology, even after being assessed at the same level, end up with different capabilities? It is obvious that there is some gap somewhere.

The way I see it, people define processes with a mindset of perfection. That is, if someone follows that process, it is ensured that resultant outcome / product is not flawed. This invariably results in extensive checks and balances to minimize on exceptions. The intent is good; however, in order to minimize on exceptions, invariably some exceptions get considered as norms, resulting in overload on the system.

For example, in process centric software development system, we will have, checklists to define standards and guidelines, processes pertaining to buddy reviews / test, technical quality assurance reviews / test, development lead reviews / tests, and then battery of other reviews and tests. The point is, every review and test cycle will ideally result in more conformed product; however, it has an associated cost of identification and rework, not to mention the time required to do those costly checks, and rework.

If we were to create a differentiation, we need to think in terms of not creating a “muda”. It will be good to have the resources, capable to construct is right the first time itself. That is, resources having the required skills, and knowledge, understand the standards and guidelines and other code metrics that will be expected at the time of completion, unit test those at their level, ensure those pass through integration points, and once checked-in, ensure compliance from ‘Definition of Done’ perspective. This will ensure, minimal defects, if any, and hence, less cost owing to rework and extensive external reviews and tests.

However, that is only one part of the entire lifecycle. For an IT services company, the touch point starts from pre-sales and may go beyond deployment to maintenance and support. Though, preparation even priori to first touch point, goes back even much earlier. That is, preparation in terms of capability, capacity, portfolio of solutions, offerings etc. All this adds up for differentiation, and must be evaluated and addressed.

In fact, all of this has to happen continuously, on a periodic, as well as on event basis. That is, systematically, drawing out the Capabilities, Processes and Value Streams for an organization, such that all new advancements either in tool, technology or resources capabilities are incorporated to sustain and further sharpen the differentiation. The point is, it can’t be one-time activity, and requires recalibration, to adjust to environment around us. We live in a dynamic world, and so should our internal measures, i.e. instead of those being static, aloof from current realty, make use of advancements for our own benefits. Needless to say the standalone views of capabilities, processes or value streams will not shed more insights, rather cross cutting views will reveal more insights, on bottlenecks as well as opportunities.

The conflict between intent and doing arises, when we stop thinking of improvement, and get satisfied with current state. So, from an IT services company’s perspective, we need to systematically identify the challenges from pre-sales through support. The challenges identification should not confine to internal inefficiencies, rather should also include change in market attractiveness, our own strengths, including environmental scan various market forces.

Of course, one person, or function can’t achieve all of it. Instead, it should be a combined effort, and should get sponsored and governed at corporate level. In addition, all of this will not yield the desired results, if the workforce does not have the buy-in, and do not possess the required capability. Process can help you in providing the prediction, but can hold you away from innovation (because of hierarchies). Tools can help you reduce the time, or being more compliant to the desired outcome; however, may require additional investment in procurement, and readiness etc. The point, is there is no straight path or processes to achieve it, rather it has to traverse through intervened analysis, implementations and feedback.

Change as Transformation

It is a topic, which like many other management topics, has been discussed at length, and has been in existence for decades, and yet it is the most favored topic for any training. May be it is so, as it involves human emotions and behaviors, and thereby bringing in the uncertainty.

Though Prosci has advocated a well thought out model of ADKAR, i.e. Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement, yet people and organizations fail on their change management journey.

If we were to interpret ADKAR, it could be as follows;

1)     Awareness – It could be interpreted as one being aware of the ‘Need for change’, or ‘Why is change required’. It addresses only part of the information, as one also need to know, how to make or convert that ‘need’ into organizational vision.

 

Whether it is the CEO (read it as “Figure Head”) of the company, or any other person or group pf people, having respect and attention of the resources, and who they look up to, for any organizational matter, message that information. The critical point is, they provide clarity on change, such that people are able to reflect the vision with clarity, and also able to resonate with organizational vision.

 

As John Kotter says, the sense of urgency along with sense of vison, is what determines the success or failure of a change. So, we should never let it die, and the communication has to be continuous to keep people true to stated vision with unrelenting commitment / momentum.

 

2)     DESIRE – How to create willingness for change? Appreciating the need for change, and creating willingness for change are two different things. As it is very seldom that a change is beneficial to all. Had that been the case, we wouldn’t have had any problem in implementing a change. The fact is, it is harsh on some, and requires others to relinquish their comfort zone. It is tough, as the law of physics says, it requires a greater push to move anything from state of inertia, as compared to something already in motion.

 

One might say, even ‘Fear of job losses’, or any negative consequence can also be the reason for willingness to change. However, would that be self-sustaining? I fear not. A negative consequence can certainly exert the required force to change the state of inertia; however, it will have a better adoption and effectiveness, if change is linked to vision.

 

It is only vision, which has the power to propel a change to succeed, even if it has certain elements, which impact a select group of individuals negatively. The vision provides the required direction for everyone to follow, and be part of the change, to achieve what lies ahead, at the end of the journey.

 

This is further influenced through communication and as John Kotter mentioned, through creating guiding coalitions, such that we do not lose intensity to change, and at the same time remove obstacles to clear the path for change; be it persuasion, guidance, support or if required, through authority.

 

3)     Knowledge / Ability – How to make one relevant in given context? That is, how can one perform in the changed environment, and what does it take to enable a person to be productive, contributing and hence being relevant post change.

 

It is about training, re-skilling…in nutshell making the required information and skills available for the “participants of change” to facilitate change.

 

Personally, I consider these two as one, as the intent of knowledge is to make one being able to perform in chosen field, i.e. make a person relevant. A knowledge gain without being relevant is a sign of insufficient knowledge gain, or in other words, if put to use, will result in failure.

 

The mode to let one acquire those skills / knowledge could be training, workshops, mentoring, coaching etc. However, the important aspect is as one needs direction with vision, one also needs short-term triumphs / victories to reassure the sustenance of initiative and progression on right path.

 

What it means, one has to plan for workforce training / re-skilling and also ensure means to check progress and completion, through short term gains / tollgates.

 

4)     Though ADKAR may or may not reflect anything on this; however, short terms wins (as John Kotter says) are of paramount importance to keep everyone true to vision / objective, and see the progress and make course corrections (if any).

 

One has to have an execution plan with short term wins / tollgates, leading to fulfillment of overall objective. As they say, one that can’t be measured, can’t be improved. Therefore, one has to place checkpoints to measure on ground gained as compared to target and make course corrections, if required.

 

5)     Reinforcement – It is a reassurance on committed path, as well as John Kotter says, anchoring of changes in corporate culture. The steps that we have to take, to make it ‘way of working’ within organization and sustain it.

 

It may require changes in processes, policies, procedures, readiness modules, recruitment, appraisals…whatever it is, it has to sustain, and make people ready to work within changed environment, without any additional effort; rather that should become the natural way of working.

 

Therefore, we have to think about change in those terms, i.e. how to make it, way of working.

ADKAR model is good to adopt, if someone is new to change management, or is unable to put structure around change. However, the success of initiative lies in aspects, as detailed by John Kotter in his work ‘Accelerate’. I have quoted few aspects of it above, i.e. having a sense of urgency, creating a vision, having guiding coalitions, creating short term wins, not declaring the victory too soon, and finally, a structure in parallel to hierarchical structure to support innovation and change.

Few other aspects, which I believe are deprived of attention, but can marred the impact of a change are;

1)     Keeping the discussions and participation at top layer; ignoring the grass-root

2)     Piling on a single individual or group for successful change

3)     Failing to acknowledge the cultural aspects (wherever applicable)

4)     Not being able to visualize, plan or execute to convert ‘Change’ into ‘Transformation’

5)     Adjusting the ‘Change’ to avoid hard discussions with power centers within an organization, or accepting less than 100% as success

 

"Impact" that never existed

More and more organization have been moving away from bell curve, and may be rightly so. The new HR guidelines and policies are attaching importance to ‘impact’ creation, rather than list of activities, being carried out over appraisal period. It all sounds great; however, is it so easy evaluate the people for impact, and to define impact?

The first hurdle is in terms of defining the ‘impact’. At what level, what gets considered as impact. How one will define the impact at role level, and yet able to differentiate the performance to two individuals? In some systems, the impact is also defined in terms on initiatives that are being takes / carried out by an individual. But, can the number of initiatives be the criterion for impact?
Similarly, what is the boundary of impact? That is, not everyone can have initiative at organization level to showcase a wider impact, then can ‘unavailability’ of an opportunity be considered as ‘less’ impact? People will carry out initiatives and ‘Business as Usual’ at different levels, then what is the measurement system to evaluate the compare two impacts; as ultimately in any system, where opportunities are constrained, one will be forced to compare?

The complexity does not end here, rather it extends itself in terms of visibility. That is, how visible / obscure your contributions and impact have been? It could be the case that what you have done is truly impactful; however, it has not been publicized enough for you to get credit for the same. So, comes another attribute in arsenal, i.e. how marketable you are? Whether you are taking pains to market yourself? Or, is it the other way round, i.e. market yourself, and the impact will automatically follow?

Further, whether those impacts are visible in same financial / appraisal year itself, or they are running across year boundaries? The chances are if those are running into multiple years, the ‘impact’ will vanish, unless, you are the one on ‘marketable’ side. If you are the one (marketable), then chances are that you will reap the benefits of the same across multiple years.
A little further development of this topic will reveal that one can’t define or standardize impact. With this ambiguity, any impact will be debatable, and the credit will depend on many external factors, which are not intrinsic to impact per se.

We can have many illustrations to expose the fragility of this evaluation system.

1. Suppose one has created a methodology / process, which would ultimately result in efficiencies / gains in future; however, for that appraisal cycle, will that be impactful?
2. One has been involved in Leadership sponsored program, though there had been not output / outcome for that financial year, will the person get his activities counted as ‘impact’?
3. The person corrected a flaw such that it made the organization compliant; however, did not touch many persons, hence the visibility is limited; will the person be getting the right ‘impact’ for his career for the ‘impact’ that he has created?
4. The person had the ‘Change’ implemented successfully; however, person had to ‘steam roll’ the changes, as gathering buy-in was taking time because people wanted to let the ambiguity be there in system, as the new changes would have taken those away. Will the ‘impact’ be positive or negative?
5. The person has generated efficiencies, though small in nature, and limited to part of an organization; however, generated without any leadership sponsorship. This vis-à-vis an impact on similar scale, but having leadership sponsorship. Will two have the same impact?

The list goes on…So, I’m not sure, if this system is better or beneficial as compared to old ‘Bell Curve’ based. I’m not saying that ‘Bell Curve’ was better, rather, all I’m trying to state that the reasons for which it (Bell Curve) was dumped, had not been addressed fully.

I’m sure, you would not have 1-5, A-D or any other means of rating the people in new system; however, in background some mechanism of comparing and ‘categorizing’ people, would have been in place. Can we really do away with that comparison, and categorization?

In a world, where everything and everyone is bound by constraints, as resources / opportunities are limited, one cannot avoid comparison. It is as simple as one child and one elder person vying for a bottle of water in a middle of desert. Had there been no constraints, each would have got the water, it is the scarcity (read is as ‘constraint’), which has driven us for ‘evaluation’ / ‘comparison’ of needs.

This comparison or categorization, in the absence of fair system, i.e. where one can either have objective evaluation, or have checks in place to ensure fairness in evaluation, will result in tilting of balance in favor of practices, which are not conducive either for promotion of talent and true impact, or evaluation system, which is free of favoritism. The things get worsen even further when all of these practices promote discussions on ‘transactions’ rather than overall impact.

In the process, the ‘impact’ goes into oblivion, and what remains is the result of large egos, and system to support the same. This makes me wonder, if organizations are really interested in going for performance based system, where is the need to create all of this ambiguity, rather go for open and discussion based evaluation system. As long as we keep introducing ambiguity in our evaluation system, and will divide the rewards in quotas to avoid free and fair discussions, we will always end up in situations of “Impact, that doesn’t exist”.

Strategy - in its simplest form

It is my belief that almost everything that we touch, hear, or interact with, is context driven. The “Strategy” isn’t an exception either.

Normally, whenever this topic comes up for discussion, or even the word “Strategy” is whispered, people get little conscious, and they are either afraid to share their thoughts, or are hesitant, while sharing their thoughts.

This single word can create so much of anxiety, and I can think of only two reasons for it; first, people have misconstrued the meaning of it, or get bogged down with the association of this word to corporate boardroom, or epitomes of governmental agencies. Second, in their minds, they associate it with Porter, BCG-Growth, GE-McKinsey, PEST, SWOT, Competitor analysis or some other models.

Are these models the strategy? Is it really applicable only in corporate boardrooms?

My understanding, may be little over simplistic; however, when I consider “Strategy”, the words that zoom across my mind are, options / alternates / choices, assessment / evaluation, goals, plans, execution, problem statement, solution and activities.

It is obvious that when someone or a group of people formulate a “Strategy”, it is for a cause, i.e. they have a problem / riddle to solve, to achieve the desired goal / outcome. What it means, there is a goal / outcome, which can be measured, and against which a progress can be monitored.

It is obvious that in order to formulate a path to achieve the desired goal / outcome, one has to consider and evaluate options available, and then make a choice for optimum option, aligning with desired goal. How can one evaluate those conditions / options, depends on the nature of problem statement, and you may end up in utilizing one of “Strategic Management” tools / models, as mentioned above, or some other data / tools, which suit the need of evaluation.

Though one point is obvious that tools / models in themselves are not strategy, rather those facilitate the decision making. Or, in other words, narrowing down on available options, to form a preferred choice.

Depending on the level of decision making, i.e. the level at which the overall strategy has been defined, corporates would see the need to create sub, or functional strategies, complementing the overall strategy. Again, one may, or may not require functional strategies, or even use of mentioned model to form a strategy, as it all depends on the context and the need.

Now, in order to convert the strategy into reality, one also needs to convert this in executable / implementable plan, and execute it. Needless, to say that actual will have variation to plan, and will require monitoring, and adjustment either to the plan, or strategy itself. The changes to strategy could be on account of impediments / limitations that one come across, while executing, or those could also be due to changing environmental conditions, necessitating change in strategy. That is, it required governance of variation, and adjustment to provide revised / corrected direction.

One school of thought separates planning and execution (especially, the execution) from strategy; however, in reality it is hard to separate both because of inter dependencies. As the unfocused execution results in sub-optimal performance, similarly, only strategy formulation, with no practical implementation would not result in any improvement in current state. That is why, the other school of thought considers execution an integral part of strategy, and rightly so.

If you look at the historical work around strategy, there were elements of positional (differentiation, pricing etc.), creation of new markets, or disrupting the existing to create a new...etc. The today’s dynamic world, with startups springing every day, in every field, with easy access to technology and recent disruptions in technology, one may wonder, whether there is a scope for long-term strategies that one used to see in past, or in specific industries?

It is true that these advancements and disruptions have created an environment, where long-term visions, and long drawn strategies no longer work, or at least are not that effective. As those need to adapt to continuously changing landscape, and associated conditions, to remain relevant, leave aside being effective.

I would not say that those organizations or entities operate with no strategy, as it will be hard to imagine an entity operating aimlessly, with no expected goal / outcome insight. Rather, I’d consider it a case where strategy lifespan is very short, and it changes / adapts itself to changing conditions, and landscape. One may say that those resemble to tactics rather than strategy (because of lifespan of the strategy); however, the primary difference between the two will be in form of accomplishing things within available means / resources, or devising the means and activities to established goals.

Though I do not rule out that it could be a combination of both. But then it will not be appropriate to trivialize the tactics too.

Tabs - a fad?

Laptops, smartphones, tablets, better of all three….what is next? Who is the audience for tabs, and what is the need that this device serves?

To answer this, I believe moving a step back, and assessing “how in today's fast moving world the lifestyle has also been changing (even) at faster pace / interval, as compare to may be what it had been a decade back. Not long back, we had portable cassette players, CD players, mps3 players, iPod, smartphones with superlative audio quality...what it essentially means the innovation is driven through need, or influences the need to cannibalize the existing product”, would really help.

It is not a new phenomenon; however, may be we never paid / attached so much thought to it either. What it also means is that a company’s success or float can’t be dependent on existing product / service, rather it has to keep evolving, else be ready to face the extinction (the marketing is full of these idioms and illustrations). The things change, if you have the monopoly, or have created a monopoly kind of situation; otherwise, the strong forces of market are so ruthless that they show no mercy to the laggards.

Another known fact, conceding a ground to opponent, rest assured that it be fought tooth and nail, when it comes to regaining the lost ground.

With this backdrop, I personally feel tabs are for the people who like to surf, read, and need reasonable computing power to accomplish these and other computing needs. These are not technology savvy people (Ok; may be most of them), rather they are consumers, and demand experience. That is experience of elegance, branding, and usage at the same time. For them these are not three attributes or needs, rather it is only one need, “experience”. Well, may be that is why iPad was a runaway success, and leaving all others to catch-up with it.

So, what is in store post tab? Will it be a death of PC / laptop?

I personally believe that eventually, more or less, market would consolidate into smartphones and laptops (lighter, smarter and more powerful). The reason behind this understanding is the “smartness” of smartphones and the tasks that these devices have been carrying out. With powerful cameras, video conferences, mail, quality audio system, connectivity options, printing, gaming, ever increasing computing and storage power and of course, the basic functionality of calling, it is having all the “services” that you need from a device you want to keep “handy”, is portable and help you keep “connected”. With its pinch and gesture driven movement, it is easier to read (relatively) too, albeit maybe not for a longer period of time.

On the other hand when it comes to actual development, testing and release of applications / software, people need mobility and high computing devices with lot of connectivity options, which enables them to work for relatively longer hours with less strain. That is where you need laptops, as it provides exactly the same. Of course, the needs around long battery hours, and light weight are yet to be tackled effectively; nonetheless, the progressive products are inching closer to desired levels. Again, you will have categories within laptops; however, the basic traits will not change, i.e. need for power computing, extended working hours, bigger screen etc.

So, what is tab’s work? It is a product, which has traits of smartphone and “basic” laptop, to provide users a mobile experience. However, can those be used for serious software development, or can those be used as a replacement for your phone? Those had been and will always be “add-on”; if those survive the revolution in smartphones.

It always beats me as why do you need an 800$ device to read books? The reason being, all other needs can easily be (at some place even better) be served by your smartphone. This is not a device, which can replace your laptop either. Then why do you need it?

May be it is a device, which was a stop gap arrangement until your smartphones could serve those needs. I believe the time has come, where the “premium” tag to this category is no longer justifiable. At best it could serve as replacement for netbooks. That is, convenience / volume category, and not as “niche” market.

The reason behind my understanding is very simple, smartphone with an option of “physically expandable” screen is tablet. This trait is well known, and I’m sure many companies would have been researching to provide this flexibility with no compromise in “experience”. It is a matter of time, when we have that feature in smartphones, and at that time it would be the end of tablets, or at least those would recede into “netbooks”.

Of course, all of this with affordability, as you do not want to create another “satellite phone” kind of case study.