In the IT Services world the new manifestation of slavery seems to be client-service provider relationships. But who plays the master: order-giver is often a contention, but never a doubt on who is a slave:order-taker…
It seems that generally the offshore service provider team is the slave: order taker, but the masters: order-giver can be many. Why is the IT offshore service provider takes that place is due to fact that this is where the real work gets done. Then there are different masters: order-givers as they mistakenly believe they have got Gods gift of mankind of intellect, budgets, and/or I-Know-all: ego that drives them to always give orders. Let us look at the Order giver: players/teams in the engagement to understand this better:
Client at Onshore: They have the budgets to pay for the services and the budget themselves are provided by business. This often gives them the benefit of always playing the masters: Order giver role.
Client at offshore: This entity is relevant usually when client has captive centre near offshore service provider. They usually don’t have budgets and/or arguably the intellect/skills too, but get the deemed merit to give orders without knowing what it means.. Examples of such captive centres in high-tech: Cisco, EMC, Vmware, etc.
Service Provider at Onshore: They have proximity to budget provider and often work with the clients business stakeholders and get a unique position to know all, but arguably the intellect to know how to get things done. Sometimes this onshore service providers are either body shopped by pure play vendors in India: TCS, Wipro, Infosys, etc. and/or hired in local markets to serve their political/government constituencies. Usually, these players are ment to be order-takers but often not doers and therefore love to become order-givers.
The order-takers does not need so much description as these are the doers and make things happen. They have the intellect/skills that make sure the value for the budgets gets delivered. Often there is a misconception of their intellect: lack of intellect to understand business requirements, do not have discipline and structure to execute the orders and/or ability to deliver value for the provisioned budget. These are the Service Provider at Offshore.
The number and location of order givers may vary, but the order taker is mostly service provider at offshore. The more the number of order givers the more complex the IT Services engagement. Lets look at this continuum to understand the engagement complexity based on who the players are:
How will the challenges in different stakeholders present in the team? What are the dynamics of the engagement? What are the characteristics that make the engagement complex? In subsequent blogs we can see further details.
It seems that generally the offshore service provider team is the slave: order taker, but the masters: order-giver can be many. Why is the IT offshore service provider takes that place is due to fact that this is where the real work gets done. Then there are different masters: order-givers as they mistakenly believe they have got Gods gift of mankind of intellect, budgets, and/or I-Know-all: ego that drives them to always give orders. Let us look at the Order giver: players/teams in the engagement to understand this better:
Client at Onshore: They have the budgets to pay for the services and the budget themselves are provided by business. This often gives them the benefit of always playing the masters: Order giver role.
Client at offshore: This entity is relevant usually when client has captive centre near offshore service provider. They usually don’t have budgets and/or arguably the intellect/skills too, but get the deemed merit to give orders without knowing what it means.. Examples of such captive centres in high-tech: Cisco, EMC, Vmware, etc.
Service Provider at Onshore: They have proximity to budget provider and often work with the clients business stakeholders and get a unique position to know all, but arguably the intellect to know how to get things done. Sometimes this onshore service providers are either body shopped by pure play vendors in India: TCS, Wipro, Infosys, etc. and/or hired in local markets to serve their political/government constituencies. Usually, these players are ment to be order-takers but often not doers and therefore love to become order-givers.
The order-takers does not need so much description as these are the doers and make things happen. They have the intellect/skills that make sure the value for the budgets gets delivered. Often there is a misconception of their intellect: lack of intellect to understand business requirements, do not have discipline and structure to execute the orders and/or ability to deliver value for the provisioned budget. These are the Service Provider at Offshore.
The number and location of order givers may vary, but the order taker is mostly service provider at offshore. The more the number of order givers the more complex the IT Services engagement. Lets look at this continuum to understand the engagement complexity based on who the players are:
How will the challenges in different stakeholders present in the team? What are the dynamics of the engagement? What are the characteristics that make the engagement complex? In subsequent blogs we can see further details.
