Turning the dice of innovation

The degree of benefit we derive from innovation will dependent on where we hit in the software development value chain and unearth the age out assumptions underlying it. For example the requirements management process will get streamlined if the team who does that converts the requirements to ‘objects’ by performing the object oriented analysis and gives the primary inputs to the architecture/design team at the level of activity diagrams and class diagrams so that the architecture will be robust and a service oriented one, thus easy to maintain and lower total cost of ownership for the client.

Here we are borrowing the practice of 'lean' from the manufacturing industry. Ofcourse it already exists in other forms like Agile/Scrum practices but in a different dimension. Another one is the rule of poka-yoke (forgive me for its spelling; in Japanese it means 'mistake proofing') and guitzhigembitzhu -3G (forgive me for its spelling; in Japanese it means going to the place where there is a problem and solving it then and there by asking the 5Ys, than thinking and solving from a far off table). So all these practices from Toyota Production System/manufacturing will definitely pre-empt the creep/change in requirements and scope to a significant extent.

The next thing could be the style of communication and understanding the personality types involved in various discussions at various stages of the project, since what they intend to say, what is being said, and what is being understood may not be same always. So cultural trainings to understand the context, awareness of NLP techniques and MBTI personality type will eliminate the communication issues to a significant amount; at least we will listen, empathize and build a better rapport with the client as well as our colleagues.

When we look at the construction industry (the oldest industry) right from the blueprint to execution different vendors are involved in supplying men and materials at different stages. The industry is tangible when compared to software, it might be counter intuitive now for the IT industry to adopt a similar model. Recently one of the big 4 companies had shown its intent clear, that they have sub outsourced the project to different small niche players and they took the critical part and the program management (a Chennai based firm is already doing that for the past couple of years), thus bringing high productivity and lesser cost. So in future with the emerging social technologies and virtualization, probably most of the work can be done from different corners of the world, and of course the  employees can login at their convenience hence bringing down significant cost savings on office space as well.

There are a million opportunities to increase the quality, productivity and to reduce the cost in the IT industry. Harvesting organizational learning is another great grey area which has not been taped to its potential. The question is ‘do we as an industry has an open mind’? The Indian companies needs to have people who have an open mind to connect the dots from diverse industries and a great passion for technology. Hope to see an era of people who are not specialists in anything to turn the dice of innovation!