Chirag Kasbekar

Project management is the lifeblood that keeps Tata Consultancy Services in the pink of health, and the company's clients satisfied

In the wild, every once in a while a new genetic strategy — a new species — comes along to create and occupy an opening in the ecosystem, a novel niche. The first colonisers of this niche are the pioneers. Among organisations, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is one such pioneer. Its niche, the global market for the offshore delivery of IT services, is an expansive corner in a world that offers three major opportunities to organisations built to exploit them.

Nearly everyone has heard of two: the explosion in the global demand for IT services, and the power of companies to source these services from anywhere in the world. Barely enough is heard about the third. This is the story of that little-known dimension.

As the speed of change accelerated, customers became more demanding and competitive pressures increased, companies providing IT services felt the need to be constantly on the move. Not only did the number of projects they undertook rise, but each also faced shorter time frames, lower costs and much more challenging quality expectations.

A new discipline emerged that promised to deal with these pressures effectively: professional project management.

This opened up a new possibility. An organisation engineered to manage projects could absorb entire projects and programmes from other companies and manage them better and cheaper than the companies themselves. TCS was well placed to develop the type of organisation needed to exploit this need. "Project management is the blood flowing through TCS, regulating its health," says Krishnan Ramanujam, director (SBI group projects). "It's what ensures that TCS meets its cost, delivery time and quality commitments. Whether things will pan out according to plan is highly uncertain. The key, therefore, is managing risk. This is what TCS excels in day in and day out."

This ability is critical for the large and complex projects TCS takes on. The assignmen Mr Ramanujam heads, the State Bank of India's core banking project, is the biggest of its kind in the world. "The mother of all core banking projects," he calls it. "TCS is a pioneer in mega projects of this kind. Project management is critical to these projects."

Scale and complexity can multiply uncertainty and an incapability to deal with risk can prove debilitating. The key to reducing surprises is the institutionalisation of successful processes and strategies. A mature organisation knows through experience how to react in most types of situations and can usually anticipate them before they happen; it has an institutional memory. Lessons learned by individuals are stored in some durable form outside their minds so that others elsewhere and at other times can access them.

This is how it is in nature: even when the individual body finally decomposes, the code survives into successive generations. And that's how it is at TCS. "If tomorrow a truck runs over me, someone else can take over," says Mr Ramanujam. This is because a mature organisation such as TCS is process-driven. Its scripts are so good it doesn't much matter who does the acting.

So, how mature are TCS's processes? The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, has developed models to gauge the maturity of software development organisations. Among these are the Capabilities Maturity Model (CMM) and the People Capabilities Maturity Model (PCMM). TCS, with 16 delivery centres rated at CMM level 5, and the first company in the world to have centres assessed at the People-CMM V2 level 4, both being the highest levels possible, rates very high on both.

In fact, TCS is often a few steps ahead of these standards and has actually contributed to their development. When external assessors arrived to see if TCS's centres could be rated at level 3 of the PCMM, they found that many of the company's homegrown practices already complied with the requirements of level 4 (version 2), a model that had only just been drafted!

TCS has now combined its own vast store of home-grown processes with the best aspects of global standards, such as the SCMM, the PCMM, Six Sigma, ISO 9001 and the Tata Business Excellence Model, to develop its own proprietary quality model, the Integrated Quality Management System or iQMS. This archetype, TCS hopes, will soon become an industry standard.

iQMS is central to project management at TCS; it comprises a major chunk of its DNA. This system provides guidelines for the conduct of every project and the means for monitoring it. Together with the various software development methodologies laid out by TCS's software engineering process groups, iQMS lays out a comprehensive road map for each project.

"We are well trained in these processes," says Neena Lobo, senior delivery manager (eBusiness). "Without knowing them we wouldn't know how to do our jobs. With them, there is no way we can get lost."

This is because it leaves as little as possible to the judgement of individuals. "About 90 per cent of all the procedures to be followed are specified in the written guidelines," says Mr Ramanujam. "There is too much risk in using people's judgement." Nevertheless, it is impossible to make everything explicit.

"A lot still depends on the individual qualities of the manager," explains Ms Lobo. "She or he has to be able to judge, for example, if a customer's requirement is optimal or whether a better alternative can be suggested to them. Besides, one of the major responsibilities of a project manager is managing and motivating people."

One danger with a high level of institutionalisation is resistance from employees. There seems to be surprisingly little of it at TCS. "Initially, there may be some complaining, but over time people become converts. No one really thinks of it as drudgery," says Mr Ramanujam.

There are at least two reasons why processes don't come in the way of work. First, enough time — around 20 per cent on every project — is kept
aside for them. Second, in smaller projects, where there is less and simpler work, processes are kept to a minimum.

Another danger with high levels of codification is institutional inertia. At TCS, therefore, flexibility is built into the system and, through constant revision of guidelines based on the real experience of project teams, so is learning. "Improvement is a constant process. That will never stop," says Ms Lobo. "Earlier we used to blindly follow the process; now we keep questioning it to see if it can be done better."

In any self-regulating entity governing mechanisms are necessary. All along the life of each TCS project are a host of agencies ensuring all processes and standards are being followed and projects are moving along as planned. Progress in all processes is measurable and the metrics can be monitored through TCS's knowledge management system. "As a manager I get a complete view of the status of each project through iQMS," says Ms Lobo. "I immediately know whether a project is running as planned."

Reaching this level of maturity has not been easy. "It means a cultural change," says Lobo. "Earlier, if a customer gave us 80 per cent positive feedback, we'd be happy. Now even if it is 90 per cent positive, we analyse the data to see if this represents a downward trend and how we can make him or her 100 per cent happy."

Having reached this level, TCS faces new challenges as it evolves. "As TCS moves into new industries and domains, the challenge will be to reinvent ourselves to be able to adapt to these new areas," says Mr Ramanujam.

As it claims new territory, as it expands its niche, TCS will have to reengineer the code — the 'genes' — that govern its projects. It seems well placed to do that.

Uploaded on June 15, 2005