Implementing quality for global technology delivery companies

Implementing quality for global technology delivery companies

-          Partha S. Chatterjee             

Thanks to the wonder of technology and internet, world has truly become small. Technology has addressed a myriad of problems and pushed human efficiency and productivity. It has connected humans across the world, created social media as a powerful tool to share information, debate and support and oppose causes. In short, we have become a global village with free flow of information.

With the spread of communication and advancement of technology, technology projects have been delivered with teams distributed across the world. That led to offshoring or the practice of basing some of a company's processes or services overseas, so as to take advantage of lower costs. As telecom cost has declined, technology skills improved and cost was reasonable, it gained ground. Lot of the technology companies set up global offices and started implementing projects using distributed teams.

In short, technology has touched every sphere of life from the corporates to the consumers. Having top quality in the technology solutions is of paramount importance.

Current crisis of quality

As offshoring and global delivery took off, professionals in emerging countries have flocked to technology and have jumped on the bandwagon. It has led many of the global technology companies to grow at an incredible pace. It has created a new set of problems:

1)      Quality of resources

a.       Quality of resources has taken a hit. People are coming literally with degres from private collges which are granting degrees with no quality control. Pool of qualified people has not kept pace. It has led to fraud and poor quality. People are faking resumes or even hiding their level of expertise in interviews. Proper resources must be hired with vetting of skills and education; otherwise, the foundation itself is weak.

2)      Inefficient delivery processes

a.       Delivery process has become really complex. Time-consuming off-hour interaction with team and oversight are required. On site client leaders question the heavy hand-holding at odd hours and wonder aloud whether the on paper cost savings are worth it given the heavy impact on lives and employee happiness.

3)      Lack of quality business knowledge

a.       Requirements gathering has been made purposefully complex so that it is almost spoon-fed to the developers. It has led businesses to wonder – why not do it ourselves?

b.      Lack of domain knowledge has made detailed requirements necessary where even basic tenets of the business domain need to be explained.

Proposed solutions

Commoditization of IT services has to be stopped. Qualified people with validated skills and proper consulting acumen need to be recruited. A complete overhaul of how technology services are provided is needed.

1)      Hiring, training and promoting right resources

a.       Resources are the main asset of a technology consulting company. Right resources must be hired. There should be a stringent hiring process from written test to phone interviews to in-person interviews.

b.      Written test should be administered by properly vetted professional sites, ensuring the actual applicant is taking the test. Education and professional qualification must be verified. There must a list of properly accredited universities in foreign lands.

c.       In-person interviews must cover technical, business and behavioral. It is not just about hiring a technical resource but a well-rounded individual, with strong ability to understand the business domain and fit into the company culture and deliver as part of a team.  We are not looking at just an individual contributor but an important cog in the delivery machine.

2)      Efficient delivery process enforcing quality

a.       Delivery process in a globally distributed model has become way too complex. If the process becomes too time consuming for the client sitting in a western country, then, the actual cost goes up tremendously if you include the inconvenience of odd hours, increased time spent answering mundane questions, the fear of not having full control of the delivery and hence, the uncertainty regarding quality.

b.      Process must be smoothened by having regular interaction and checkoffs by on-site clients. Thus, the possibility of going too far down the wrong path must be reduced. Issues and clarifications must be properly logged and checked with the SME’s. Often, the answers heard by the delivery team are not what they were meant to be.

c.       There must be quality control with signoffs for each phase including requirement, design, development, testing and implementation. Intent of the process should be not to add more bureaucracy but to add meaningful tasks to improve quality and reduce risk.

3)      Emphasizing top quality in business domain knowledge

a.       It is critical to see the technology projects as not a coding project but a project to deliver real-life business solutions leveraging technology. The driver is the business need; the scope and business requirements should guide the project. The project is not to just codeine programming language completely watered down pseudo-code level instructions from business. Intent should be to gather reasonable requirements with meaningful details which the technical team have to understand and make realistic technical design. Business knowledge is paramount and should not be minimized while selecting resources and defining delivery approach.

b.      Understanding of the business requirements, realizing the business painpoints, having a grasp of how the technical solutions will impact the daily business process are all key factors in designing the right solution. There is absolutely no point in designing a solution which will make the user’s life a night mare and/or create many bottlenecks and issues with how the actual business process will work.

c.       These issues directly impact the quality of the delivery and hence, the overall acceptance of the project. If the solution is too complex or takes too much timeor is prone to errors, the users will simply not use the tool and thus, in effect, makes the project a total failure.

d.      Proper business training must be imparted to team members. Brown bag lunches with live demo of how the process work now and what are the pitfalls and pain points must be clearly communicated to them. The team members must wear the shoes of the users and live and breathe the process so that they are clear about how the tool would be used. Quality is of paramount interest and you cannot have quality without understanding what a good business process is in the context of the business domain.

Conclusion

Global technology consulting companies are at cross-roads. Users are frustrated with long hours, inflexible solutions, poor quality and many more. Only way, a global distributed solution delivery can work if they can ensure top quality in people, process and business knowledge. That change cannot be only lip service but it must be well-documented as matter of principle and process in everything the company does. I can assure you once the company convinces itself and its employees, the value will also, be very apparent to its customers and hence, help it grow.

Technology innovation is growing at a fast pace; more importantly, technology is being adopted by companies and consumers at a mind-boggling pace. It is part of everyday life. If technology is not developed and deployed right, it can have nightmarish consequences and can literally put the world at risk. This issue of quality in technology delivery companies adopting the globally distributed model must be tackled head on and our sincere hope is it will receive the attention it truly deserves.

We know the problem, we have a solution and it is up to these global technology companies to have the resolve to implement it.