BRIDGING THE EAGLE'S EYE AND WORM'S VIEW - Collabera

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Abstract Acquiring clients is the biggest challenge for most mid-tier organizations. Retaining “clients for life” through consistent delivery is imperative in this competitive environment. However business goals pursued by management are not directly linked to delivery goals focussed on continually improving engineering performance. CMMi V1.3 helps align operational delivery goals with business goals of the organization. The OPI Council (comprising of Senior Management, Marketing and Quality heads) at <strong>Collabera</strong> took this challenge of aligning the business strategy empirically to performance goals like engineering, quality and on time delivery. Analysis of revenue growth, repeat business and proposal wins showed a significant correlation between Customer Satisfaction Ratings (CSAT) and these factors. Deeper analysis showed an interesting correlation between CSAT and engineering maturity: e.g. less than 2% defect slippage to customer and on time delivery, significantly improved the CSAT ratings; Greater than 5% defect slippage and greater than 3% schedule variance led to a poor CSAT rating. These relationships, along with industry benchmarks, were leveraged to set goals for the organization. These goals were communicated to the projects and improvement initiatives were launched on this basis. With over 80% of projects showing significant improvements vis-à-vis goals, recent CSAT has shown a positive shift. Introduction “Where there is no vision people perish” goes the famous saying. Vision and goals guide an organisation on the path to excellence. These provide the goal post for individuals and teams in the organization to get a sense of accomplishment. Organizations drive improvement programs and projects to inculcate a new behaviour for achieving these goals. According to an article published in the Wall Street Journal “Where Process- Improvement Initiatives Go Wrong” (Jan 25, 2010), nearly 60% of all improvement projects failed to yield desired results. Though there could be multiple reasons, one clear reason is the way change is imbibed across an organization. A complete understanding of the end objective through a well-structured goal that cascades down will help imbibe the new culture and guarantee success. Bridging the eagle’s eye and worms view
Mature organizations follow a balanced approach in setting their goals and are not confined to the profit/revenue syndrome. They set goals that impact financials, customers, people and operations to endure and compete in the long run. Though one would expect the goals to be imbibed naturally by everyone to the benefit of the organization, a survey by Franklin Covey shows just the opposite to be true (refer to figure 1). There is a need for goals to be communicated so that the workforce is aware, clearly articulated so that they can be understood and cascaded as meaningful targets to all levels so that there is a sense of purpose and achievement for every individual who contributes to the growth of the organization. This paper explores the practice adopted in <strong>Collabera</strong> and attempts to answer the questions below • How goals are connected from the practitioner level right up to the senior management in a seamless and meaningful way • How organisational initiatives are aligned to achieve specific goals • How the benefits translate thereof A Reality Check – Management View Vs Operational View A hypothetical, yet commonly confronted scenario in real life A highly enthusiastic project manager along with her team wanted to optimise the design and code of a long running maintenance project through refactoring mechanisms. Their objective was to help the team improve maintainability and support the client with faster resolution times for the project. In the initial stages, a management review wanted the team to focus only on delivery. They believed this would get them sustained revenue and also get some additional business. The team’s justification on the need and benefits thereof couldn’t help the cause as the management couldn’t connect their initiatives to overall goals. As a result, the initiative stalled and a new initiative to improve client relationship was brought in place. The above scenario led to the following results: • The right initiative being killed as it lacked alignment • Conflicting goals led to a fall in team motivation Bridging the eagle’s eye and worms view
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Page 5 and 6: CMMI and Goal alignment SEI’s mod
Page 7 and 8: influence CSAT empirically. This wo
Page 9 and 10: prescribed for each phase. As these
Page 11 and 12: o Adopting industry practices: Scan
Page 13 and 14: • CRUX - Collabera methodology fo

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