 |
|
Interview: Sara Jacobs, Director of Web Application Engineering - Time Inc. Interactive |
|
 |
|
What do you see as the next stop for the concept of offshore outsourcing? Well, it is no secret that business leaders today are under tremendous pressure to "do more with less" and to drive efficiencies that reduce costs with real impact to the bottom line. While, historically, business leaders looked to offshore outsourcing to achieve primarily cost savings, we have all seen over the last several years, some companies continue to expand their footprint offshore while others are contracting their programs and sometimes even bringing entire departments back in-house. While there are a myriad of reasons and business conditions that can lead to this contraction, I believe that many of those who are expanding or succeeding in their programs know that to reap the true benefits of offshore outsourcing, the motivating factors for doing so have to go well beyond just cost of labor arbitrage. And offshore outsourcing suppliers know this all too well and it is those who educate the prospective buyer and "sell the right story" that help to set the stage for mutual success. So I think the next stop is really going to be an era of learning from the past and a mind-shift in the industry from short-term cost motivators to more strategic value-added business solutions that will manifest mostly in the inner-workings between sourcer and buyer. We will see them more closely aligned through a convergence of motivations and more of a partnership-like, or better yet, symbiotic relationship. In fact, a good example of this convergence of motivations in practice can be seen through my own vested interest in the lives, careers, and retention of the MindTree minds on my team. It is performance management season here and just the other day I was asking my MindTree engagement manager what role I can possibly play in the career development of both my onsite and offshore team members because I recognize that the temperament and tenure of the team is important to my business. Another example is MindTree's willingness to grow their practice areas to satisfy our changing needs. They have adopted emerging technologies relative to my business and are building real bench-strength in those practices as our business demands it. This allows us to send more critical and challenging work offshore and keep our overall development model more fluid. We are literally growing together. Tell us the 5 critical attributes to be able to harvest the same benefits that you, as a professional manager, have been able to harvest for your organization? What would you say are the top strategic issues that companies such as yours must de-risk while benefiting from global development? Tell us about your frustrations in dealing with the average software engineer from India. Well, the first thing I would like to mention is that they are not that drastically different than frustrations I typically encounter with the average software engineer in the United States; however, I tend to be very aggressive with my plans and expectations, so by nature I am consistently pushing my team for more (more delivery, quality, planning, benchmarks and measurements, etc.). With the average software engineer from India, if I had to pick something it would be that I seldom hear "no" or get pushed back on my requests. So I do sometimes find it challenging to gauge if I am pushing too hard or my expectations are unrealistic in a given situation and this is important to me because it can have impact directly on their work-life balance and ability to deliver. So in these instances, I need to self-manage a little more than I do normally to keep my expectations in-check. To do this, I ask a series of probing questions that I call "extracting the no" which is an exercise in drilling deep enough into the details of the plans for executing the tasks to determine if what I have requested is feasible or not within the constraints. Through this, I am able to gauge if we are all comfortable with goal and the resources we have to achieve it or that we need to take a step back and reevaluate. Tell us about your three most memorable experiences while dealing with the not-do-average? Well, I can honestly say that all my dealings with MindTree are the not-do-average kind. If I had to put it into words, every time I ask for something, I get 110% back. So I am constantly having memorable experiences of this kind every day. One that particularly comes to mind is when I received a recent aggregated report out of performance metrics from my offshore development manager. While I knew that I was getting excellent results from the team, the numbers were just staggering. They showed that my MindTree minds delivered on time, every time. Now this was just confirmation of what I already knew, but to see the reports and the volume of work associated with this level of delivery all aggregated into a digestible view was so amazing that I shared it with my entire department. Another instance that comes to mind was a last minute request that I made for some video of the team offshore. I truly thought that someone would just walk around with a camcorder and get some brief shots of the team saying hello, but what I received was far better. It was an amazing montage of the entire team that gave us a terrific feel of what it was like to work at MindTree and most importantly it gave faces to the names we have all been working with for some time now. It was amazing to hear my internal customers point to the screen and exclaim, "That's our guy!" Lastly, I would be remiss if I failed to mention my recent site visit to Bangalore and the hospitality extended to us while there. It was anything but average..it was amazing. We met with several key leaders of MindTree and engaged with them in extremely useful sessions of how we can continue to take our relationship to the next level. We learned more about MindTree and its people, values and culture, spent time with the team and heard from them, and saw a little bit of India, a fascinating country and culture. To say it was memorable is an understatement. |
