Thought Garage

These are some of the most wonderful words ever said about the profession of Software Development. (I made some text in bold just to highlight)

Software is invisible to most of the world. Although individuals, organizations, and nations rely on a multitude of software-intensive systems every day, most software lives in the interstitial spaces of society, hidden from view except insofar as it does something tangible or useful.

Despite its transparency, as Bjarne Stroustrup has observed, “our civilization runs on software.” It is therefore a tremendous privilege as well as a deep responsibility to be a software developer. It is a privilege because what we do collectively as an industry has changed and will continue to change the world. It is a responsibility because the world in turn relies on the products of our labor in so many ways. In the context of that labor, software is perhaps the ultimate building material: it springs from pure thought and is intrinsically malleable, yet it can be made manifest in our hardware systems, limited only by our vision (and certain immutable laws of physics and software). As software professionals, we seek to develop and deploy useful systems of quality in a manner that reduces the distance from vision to execution. That the fruits of our labor are transparent to the world is as it should be: users want results and value, not more technology. For this reason, the primary challenge of every software development team is to engineer the illusion of simplicity in the face of essential complexity.

Handbook of Software Architecture – Grady Booch

The following Video by Grady Booch & co discusses the above quote while explaining the essence of software development in the context of Engineering.

Isn’t it fair to say the characteristic of profound understanding is the expression of simplicity and elegance. Well, Grady Booch exemplifies that when it comes to Software development.

There was so much pressure on Indian IT Services firms for a long time to enter product space and they refused and insisted that Services is the key. After all, their strength and  innovation is in creating market driven and efficient service delivery models. 

They not only succeeded with flying colors in delivering services, they influenced the entire world to turn to services. So in more than one way, there were right on about services. 

Some key milestones that indicate the strong inclination towards services just the way Indian IT Services headed all along:

• IBM once synonymous with PC sells its iconic PC Business and rebrand itself as IT services (or emphatically Smart Solutions for the planet)
• HP buys EDS and says it is critical to enter Services business as profits drop in all other directions.
• Dell buys Perot Systems, seen as following HP.
• Xerox, the iconic innovator buys Affiliated Computer Services, citing exactly the same reason of survival due to dropping profits every where.

Now, will Indian IT Services companies get the true credit they deserve in the market place?

Notable thoughts Monday Morning Edition, few thoughts that caught my attention over the weekend surfing.

Taxes: How low (or high) can they go?
There was a fascinating (to us, anyhow) table in a recent issue of the Journal of Financial Planning. It showed the top marginal tax rates for married couples from 1913 through 2003. Those, you’ll recall, are the highest rates at which income over a certain amount is taxed. The rates ranged from a low of 7 percent (on income over $500,000) in 1913 to 94 percent (on income over $200,000) in the war year of 1944.

Undergraduate programming
From CrossTalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering: “It is our view that Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. We consider that the general adoption of Java as a first programming language is in part responsible for this decline.”

India’s first mobile soap – Times of India
Digital technology has changed the economics of India’s Rs 440 billion ($11 billion) entertainment industry and entrepreneur Rajat Barjatya, the scion of one of Bollywood’s biggest film banners, is set to tap it in a big way. Rajat, the younger brother of Sooraj Barjatya who owns Rajshri Productions, is coming up with the first ever serial for mobile phone users in India.

Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship
Many entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about entrepreneurship, so here are ten of the most common and the realities that bust them:

Will India Become the New Vanguard of the Open Source Movement? – Knowledge@Wharton (subscription)
The question that Sun’s award raises is whether India can become the new vanguard of the open source movement and, if so, whether that is a desirable goal.

Quite an interesting aspect of offshore outsourcing, that outsourcing may become just as natural choice as expanding business into emerging markets like China and India.  The article also discusses how traditional cheap sweatshops have become strategic partners leveraging the models that they invented for themselves.

Two-thirds of companies on the InformationWeek 500 list of business technology innovators say they do offshore IT outsourcing, up from 43% in 2004. Consulting firm NeoIT estimates that 75% of the world’s 2,000 largest companies are engaged in offshore outsourcing, with 20% of their IT budgets spent on offshore contracts; it predicts that could rise to as much as 40% of budgets in the coming years.

Cost cutting is usually the main driver, but as companies rely ever more on foreign markets for revenue growth, they’re rethinking where they want their employees, including those in IT. For Genworth’s McKay, it makes sense that globalization of the IT workforce follows globalization of the business: About 30% of the company’s revenue now comes from outside the United States, and that’s projected to grow to 50% by 2010. About one-fourth of InformationWeek 500 companies say they’re expanding their IT operations in China, India, or another part of Asia.

The Second Decade Of Offshore Outsourcing: Where We’re Headed — IT Offshore Outsourcing

TCS released results of a survey conducted by Dynamic Markets on behalf of TCS recently. Folks from TCS suddenly think that they uncovered something new. I am not sure I understood the revelation part of their press release.

1 in 3 companies’ IT projects fail to perform against expectations. Yet despite these worrying levels of failure to deliver, 43% of organizations say that their business managers and the Board accept problems as the norm. This attitude is especially common in Europe (44%) and Asia-Pac (48%). (Source)

Consider the snip, I understand, released in 1995 revealing something about IT Project failures.

According to the Standish Group … … only about one-sixth of all projects were completed on time and within budget, nearly one third of all projects were canceled outright, and well over half were considered "challenged." Of the challenged or canceled projects, the average project was 189 percent over budget, 222 percent behind schedule, and contained only 61 percent of the originally specified features.

Major Causes of Software Project Failures – Jul 98

How TCS Stacks up?

Delivered on time:
Industry survey: 37%; TCS: 97%, customers give it an 87% rating.

Quality meets expectations:
Industry survey: 42%; TCS: 97% without severity level 1 or 2 defects, customers give it an 86% rating.

Budget compliance:
Industry survey: 11% average variation; TCS: 0.05% average variation (Source)

Not surprisingly, TCS claims that it performs monumentally better than its counter parts. It would be interesting if TCS release more information on IT firms that these businesses have been dealing with and some numbers for other top 10 firms as well to validate the unique distinction of TCS. Without those numbers, % comparisons could be totally misleading.

Some thing incredible about Japan

Japan stands out in many aspects for its quality. Does ‘Made in Japan’ say something? As per the report 71% of Japanese IT managers say that their Business Managers and Board of Directors tend to accept the problem as a norm and necessary evil. What? And 81% say that their IT Projects are continued to be funded.

This is quite incredible. Having worked with one of the top 3 out sourcing IT companies for about 7 years, I guess there is something fishy about this report. I never heard of a Japanese client manager considering not-on-time delivery or budget over run a norm and necessary evil. Ask any body that is working or worked on a IT project for Japanese client. Our teams have been literally killed even for a delay of one day.

97% on-time-delivery record of TCS, too good to be true. Hope it is true.