 |
Mr. Abhay Gupte, MD, EDS India Operations "If you can explicate a technology to your mom, then it is supposed to have attained the highest form of simplicity." Famously called "The Mom's test" was the kernel around which the talk on Nov. 24, 2004, by one of the eminent personalities of IT industry revolved. The speaker was Mr. Abhay Gupte, MD, EDS India Operations and the topic "Management challenges in IT". Mr. Gupte spoke about different kinds of challenges and the management of them prevalent even in a company like EDS, which ranked 87 in Fortune 500 companies. He said IT industry is typically characterized by numerous trends, which are fast changing. He identified challenges from four integral parts of IT industry - Business, Clients, Employees and Environment. Challenges from business arena are emerging mainly because of the very paradigm shift of the business practices. There has been a shift to "Buy v/s Build" practice from "Build v/s Buy". The effect being, the business processes are no more just transactional and many are fast becoming strategic. The challenges lie in managing the strategic process, which calls for managing time critical activities such as speed and delivery commitments and the multi sourcing of deliverables. Managing employees is no easy task when they are complaining about no time for development of skills and when they are confused about choosing between technical and business career paths. IT industry calls for diversity in people's skills and technologies to adapt. There has been constant decrease in the need for technical skills over an employee's growth period. The need for business skills has arrived to sustain and grow in the competitive industry. Mr. Gupte could identify that many IT companies are facing challenges emerging out of the above said factors. Mr. Gupte's next stop was clients. Clients are constantly posing challenges in terms of demanding for a product to pass the "The Mom's Test". It has never been easy to integrate multiple devices and the back & front office processes. Mr Gupte's message was to take on the challenges by evaluating and mitigating risks. He emphasized on the need for leading people to grow them as "thought leaders". Attracting the best talent is any easy task but the key lies in retaining them. Mr. Gupte's ended his talk by revealing his mantra to face the challenges - "Measure... Monitor... Manage". Click here to post your views/ comments/ experince on this... Contributed by - |
 |
|
|