Srinath Chandrasekharan, CSM

Senior Manager - Consulting

HCL Technologies

The IT Landscape

The Challenges

Our Approach

Learning's

$ 6.2 Billion

Spread Across 31 countries

Multiple Domains

Service mix includes

BPO

Engineering services and R & D

Enterprise Applications

Infrastructure Services

Custom Applications

1 Lakh +

employees

1000 + active

projects

Other large IT players

Infosys

TCS

Wipro

CTS

+ many medium and small companies…

Most projects won through competitive

bidding.. Margin’s play a major role….

CMMI was a USP

as customers looked for predictable, repeatable process.

Spread across domains and technologies, this was a task huge task…

All companies aspired for various levels…

…. 5 was great, lower ones were acceptable…

Heavy documentation needed lot of checks…

Documentation became the focus and evidence was largely document based… compliance to processes became the focus instead of innovation

Were more ‘Command and Control’….

following the rule was common …

deviations needed to be ‘approved’…..QA group

was the gatekeeper

specialization was considered good in

processes, technologies, domains…

creating smaller , specialized groups within the

large organizations…..led to creation of silos

For many client’s going agile means…..

Not giving the requirement in full, yet expecting

a functionally working feature….

Changing the requirements within sprints..

Not having to commit to the teams in terms of

time…..

Avoided heavy and bureaucratic change

management processes

Estimation became a problem..

How do you estimate when you don’t know what

to develop…. Yet you need this for winning the

bid…..

No industry published data to fall back on… SP

are relative and many people don’t understand

it…

What’s the best methodology…

People used to spoon feeding…

Every step and outcome listed in CMMI…but Agile

prescribes an open culture ……

What’s Scrum ? DSM ? Reviews? Sprints ?

Should I have a standard Agile process across all

projects ? If yes, is it Agile ? If not, how do I

compare?

Some clients don’t care about them…

So do we ask the teams not to waste time on

them and use it more productively ?

Even if we collected for the other projects

nothing can be analyzed for a comparison

No baseline report…

Can’t get data for RFP’s

Can’t compare which methodology will provide

better results…..

Formed CoE

All got trained on CSM

Created some process material around Agile

(predominantly Scrum)

Created training material similar to CSM

Assessed / worked with projects implementing

scrum

Studied other Agile methods and created

processes, so as to increase our basket of

offerings….

Forums for addressing questions..CoP

Started getting involved right from the RFP

stage… so as to understand clients maturity

and expectations from Agile.. And if needed

correct them…

Assessed projects for applicability of Agile

Training for client business / IT teams

Session for sales team….very important..

Sessions for Senior Management….

Self learning modules on the Learning

Management System….

Gathered experiences from different projects on FPP

Evolved a guideline on fixed price contracts for Agile

Educated Senior Management

Created a structured process around Scrum

and some XP practices

Structured training program

Leveraged existing QA group to continuously

check projects for consistent implementation

and regular feedback

Getting involved with teams for 2-3 sprints

Focused sessions with teams on estimation,

story writing etc.

Made a set of metrics as core, ensured that

these are gathered by all teams for every

sprint…

Published a report which said how are

projects doing.. Without comparing them

Used CSAT as a common measure, across

Agile and Non-Agile projects as well.

Collected qualitative data (team stress,

weekend working, client pressure, etc.) to

support the other data.

Proactively take Senior Management along at

all times. Agile should be well thought out

instead of being knee- jerk

CoE was focused a lot on projects and delivery

teams, left senior management interaction to

project teams.

Sales teams / senior management involvement

was as and when needed, so there was no single

approach to Agile.

Cultural change needed was slow to take off.

Top-down and bottom-up working together

While teams were becoming Agile, management

was not.

Metrics from traditional methodologies were still

expected from teams, resulting in pressure on

teams.

Support for teams was problematic, in many

areas.

Get a delivery sponsor who can speak for you

at various forums

Important to spread awareness and intricacies of

Agile.

Get buy in from delivery teams for activities

done by CoE and not be seen as an ‘outsider’.

Focus on tooling and skills ….along with

processes

While Scrum was becoming popular, XP practices

were largely ignored.

Some practices were questioned for cost

effectiveness (Pair Programing, TDD).

Leveraging projects experience was not well

established.

c.srinath@hcl.com

Srinath_cs@yahoo.com