A Perishable Thought on IT Resources

People are ‘resource’ in IT industry – and we spent such a huge time in this industry managing  the ‘resources’ -  skill grows obsolete everyday; what we have customer do not need ; what they need we do not have.  And we apply our creative minds to devise state-of-the-art solution to tackle this ‘unique’ challenge. …

Let us take a detour from IT landscape to the neighborhood fruits and vegetables markets. What do we see – piles of  Tomatoes, Mangoes and so on and on. Why don’t we zoom in to the Mangoes. Pluck them early – they are too green and sour [‘too  juniors – academic knowledge of Java’].  Then they are ‘just right’ and ‘ripe and sweet ‘ [‘Ajax, Hibernate,Spring’  peppered in the resume] .In couple of days , they are rotten [‘obsolete skills’]. And before they rot, you better use  them for making Pickles or Packaged Drinks [‘re-skill’  and ‘Up-skill’].

By the way, you can also watch the buyers. Someone going vendor to vendor to look for the ‘best price’ [‘cost conscious’ client], someone ‘smelling’  20 mangoes before picking the two [‘staff augmentation’] ; and some people [like me! ] just go to the known seller and  ask him to give ‘good ones’ [‘preferred vendor’].

So  next time we grapple with ‘resource supply and surplus’,  may be we can borrow some ideas of  perishable commodity management from our fruit-sellers!

 The author is in a leadership position in a global IT company. The opinions expressed here are purely based on  personal capacity.

My First Lesson on Management

Otto Chan was a grey-haired Chinese  immigrant programmer whom I met decades ago  in Los Angles . And I never  imagined that I would learn one of my life-long cherished  Management Lessons  over a casual water cooler conversation with him.

I was myself a developer working on  a small-scale ‘not-so-important’ project for a Mid-size organization. And Otto is part of the large ‘strategic’ project that was aimed to change the shape of the  business– remember the ‘re-engineering bug’ of Nineties!

So one day when I queried Otto on his project, his answer was : “Perhaps you do not know of Chinese Cultural Revolution”. Well – fortunately – having grown up in an Indian city with strong leftist link, I did happen to read about it –  the ill-fated top-leadership enforced high-handed ideological movement that caused major disaster and devastation to the society and economy during early seventies.

“Our project is just like that; everyone is producing status what our bosses want to hear” was Otto’s one-liner. In short: CEO had given a mandate; every layer  is ‘conforming’ to the mandate. And people like Otto – who can tell the real story – are awfully silent. So you can safely predict the fate of the engagement – Green, Green, Green – then suddenly Red and Collapse. Surely Otto’s project – after couple of years of burning millions of dollars – met the same fate.

So the golden-rule: when you hear the status of something as exactly what you like to hear, be worried– perhaps you are sitting on top the Chinese Cultural revolution and enjoying a short-lived lull before the big storm.