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The folks who came from the consulting world were happier working with dynamic specifications and resources and their development counterparts were more content if specifications were cryogenically cooled and there was constancy of resources.

The former had a decisional style based on the here, now and today. The latter disliked all forms transitional.

The consulting folks were process led but collectively did not care about process formalism as we see in standards like ISO or assessments like SEI CMM. For instance, they were sticklers for time, their meetings were structured, they followed methodologies and closed each session with clear action points and these were followed up. But most had no idea of what software quality was all about. The folks who came from the other world knew all about software quality processes but in a personal sense, it did not jump out of them when they stood in front of an audience.

The fusion of the two was key to our differentiation. The fusion was the essence of our brand. We realized that this was going to be the tough part, would take its own time and that there was work ahead of us. Our problem was made more difficult by the fact that we were people from nine different national origins. How on earth were we going to manage the fusion? How were we going to create the alignment?

In order to create alignment, we said to ourselves that we had to learn to "manage" our multi-cultural situation. We were spending a lot of time asking ourselves how to do it. In a fortuitous meeting with Professor Jukka Laitamakki of Fordham University, New York, and Professor Vipin Chandra of MIT, we learned that our approach to the situation was totally wrong.

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Subroto Bagchi is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer for MindTree Consulting (P) Ltd. The "Making of the MindTree" is told in the first person by Subroto Bagchi. In condensed form, it was published by Business World, filmed by InfiniTV, and aired on CNBC, IT Hour. Websites: www.mindtree.com & www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi