OutworX readiness for Agile : Part III

As more and more software developers and managers are struggling to improve their delivery capabilities, OutworX has steadily but surely started moving towards Agile Development as a means to deliver high quality solutions in shorter time span and with ever-shrinking budgets.
Truly, transition to Agile is not an easy task. We are ensuring how to make the move without breaking anything. We at OutworX are taking every move scrupulously and diligently.

We understand that Agile development is a substantially different method of developing software, which heavily relies upon speed, smooth and frequent communication, and a desire to provide the customer with a completed solution in a shorter time line. That’s why we have, firstly, started asking our team members if they are ready for the transition. At this stage, we are looking into the possible roadblocks, and the way to remove them, and also comparing it with our old method.

Secondly, we are not in a hurry. We let the learning evolve iteratively, which means we try to learn something out of everything. This learning process doesn’t require us to be an expert, and we mainly focus towards doing a single thing and doing it completely, making it a complete software solution in itself.

We in OutworX do understand that transition is not so easy, and every transition is bound to face opposition from within and own team members, which is also a sign of solid democratic structure where people come out with their apprehensions. Keeping in mind their apprehension, we are educating them and taking time to dispel the myths about the agile development, as we’ll work with them in the future.

In this regard, we are also telling our team members the risks of not going agile. We give reference of those companies which have excelled and outsmarted their competitors by adopting agile development process.

At OutworX, the one good aspect is that most of stake-holders in our organization have shown enthusiasm towards implementing agile software development, but we are taking into confidence even the small stake holders, and help them understand that switching over to agile methodology is a matter of our survival in the outsourced product development market. Moreover, all need to understand and assimilate the process in order to get it executed fruitfully. We are making every effort to change the mindset of our team members and customers as well regarding the software delivery process.

We understand that adaptation to new methodology will take time, and gradually everything will fall into place. And to learn from all our mistakes in the early days of agile methodology, we are going to document the progress carefully so that we can have true assessment about when and where we went wrong.

In today’s fast paced IT-driven economy, if we want to be successful in software, we need to learn fast from our mistakes. What we need to understand here during the transition to the agile development process, it is better to fail or commit mistakes fast, so that the process of learning should be fast-paced, and eventually we’ll be able to speed up software development process.

Posted by Bharat Bhushan, AVP, OutworX Corporation

4 Cardinal Values of Agile Methodology: Part II

In our previous post, we have discussed about Agile Development Methodology and its increasing adoption by the software firms, which promotes high levels visibility, predictability, and quality by adapting and iterative development approach.

Continuing our discussion further, we would now discuss about the values entrenched in the Agile methodology. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development highlights 4 value statements, which we’ll explain for better understanding of the methodology.

The Agile Values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Individuals work together to build software systems, in which processes provide them guidance and tools help them improve their efficiency. But, it is the people, with right technical and behavioral skills make all the difference, because without right people all the processes and tools can’t produce results on their own.

Working software over comprehensive documentation. Agile development emphasizes documentation to build products and software, as documents support communication and collaboration, enhance knowledge transfer, preserve historical information, assist ongoing product enhancement, and fulfill regulatory and legal requirements.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Agile development is driven by customers, product managers and development team, where each has specific roles, responsibilities and responsibilities. Keeping the letter and spirit of the contract, the project team delivers value to customers.

Responding to change over following a plan. During the development lifecycle of the project, priorities are changed for a plethora of reasons such as changed understanding of the project stakeholders, changing business environment, changing and evolving new technologies and platforms, etc. In such a changing environment, there should be room for change in the project plan. And, project plan should have the flexibility and adaptability to the change.

…to be continued.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

OutworX focuses towards Agile Development Methodology: Part I

In today’s software product market, development firms are increasingly focused towards optimizing the development process of their products with unequivocal attention on innovation, quality, and cost. Firms that have the capability to speedily and economically develop products will gain unmatched advantage and edge over competitors.

Authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book “Built to Last” posed a question: “What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the other companies?" Answering to the question, they said, “Visionary companies distinguish their timeless core values and enduring purpose, which should never change, from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)."

This is what we product development firms can achieve with Agile Methodology. Defining “Agile”, Jim Highsmith says, in his book “Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products”, “is a social movement driven by both the desire to create a particular work environment and the belief that this "adaptive" environment is critical to the goal of delivering innovative products to customers.”

Why do software development firms need Agile Development Methodology?

We need Agile Development methodology, as it promotes high levels visibility, predictability, and quality by adapting an iterative development approach. The “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” declares “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

....to be continued

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

OutworX strategizes Next Generation Web 2.0 Application Development

In today’s technology driven market, Web applications are made of distributed parts instead of being just one application on a Web server at one domain. Web applications leverage external web services and APIs, and they are being bundled up into user distributable components such as widgets, gadgets, badges, etc.

Next generations Web applications are getting more social than they used to be. Powerful development platforms such as Ruby on Rails and cloud computing platforms Google App Engine are increasingly being used by new Web applications.

As we in OutworX moving more towards Web 2.0, building Web applications empowered with competitive features, we are focusing towards galvanizing our team members around following tips to build next generation Web 2.0 applications:

First, more and more of our team members need to understand basics of Web 2.0 and how we can it can be specifically plug into a viable business model.

We are developing our Web 2.0 competency center with team members willing to learn the new models for designing, building, hosting, and distributing Web application, coming out in the market.

More importantly, we need to understand our customers’ psyche which can be small businesses or big enterprises having specific needs, and once we understand their Web applications needs, we can offer them what they actually demand. However, we need not lose sight of the fundamentals of Web 2.0, because it’s what adds long-term value to your products.

Lastly, we need to use all the latest tools, technologies, applications, platforms in our personal and professional life to have better and deeper understanding of them, which will eventually help us understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist,OutworX Corporation

OutworX President sees Offshore Opportunities in the US recession

OutworX atmosphere is impregnated with expectations. Young Team OutworX always looks up to someone who can be a beckoning light to steer us to newer heights, uncharted zones, and unforeseen opportunities. Meet, Mr.Sanjay Govil, our newly appointed President, in a candid talk with Team NewsworX.

NewsworX: Welcome onboard and Congratulations for being the new President of OutworX. How does it feel?

S.G: My heartfelt thanks to everybody, especially to Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX, who has shown trust and faith in me. I have the great honor of stepping into the role of President of OutworX, and I make this move with deep conviction and enthusiasm. To me, OutworX has an incredibly bright future. Previously, I’ve partnered closely with many executive teams to steer strategies and directions, and today I’m looking forward to this challenge.

I firmly believe that we in OutworX have incredible assets, and our company has massive potential, drive, determination and skills, and we won’t be satisfied until the true potential of OutworX gets realized completely.

I am also convinced about our enormous potential for long-term success as a leading Outsourced Product Development & IT Services company.

NewsworX: When someone joins an organization, expectations rise high. What are your short term and long term plans and objectives for the company?

S.G:At the outset, I want to make it clear that short-term plans must be consistent with the long term objectives of a company. So far as short- term plans and objectives are concerned, I am establishing communication with our clients and the teams, trying to understand their capabilities, expectations and challenges. The longer term objective is to focus on growth both in our existing domain of Outsourced Product Development as well as the new area of IT Services. This growth will come from existing clients as well as new clients and new geographies through leveraging our proven competency in Identity & Access Management, Web 2.0 & Open source development, and Quality Assurance.

NewsworX: Give us a brief overview about the industry, keeping in mind the reported recessionary trend in the US economy? Do you see its ripple effect on the Outsourced Product Development market in India? Which are the industry verticals you are currently focusing on?
S.G: There appears to be a slowdown in the US economy, which opens up opportunities for service providers like us since even more US companies would be looking at off-shoring as a strategy to control costs. However there will be price pressures which will require service providers to tighten their belts and deliver “more for less”. But, more importantly, firms have shown faith in India, and they have announced plans to invest several billion $ in the India IT Sector over the next few years. We are in the Outsourced Product Market (OPD), and a number of study reports have reaffirmed the case of Indian supremacy in the OPD market. India accounts for almost 84 per cent of the outsourcing, with competition such as Canada, China and Vietnam way behind. A Nasscom-McKinsey report, states that the outsourced product development market pegged at $3 billion in 2004-05 is growing at 30 per cent annually to touch $8-11 billion by 2008.

NewsworX: How your customers get the benefits of offshore delivery? Could you explain your business model?

S.G:Our goal at OutworX is to work with our clients to help them deliver their products and services competitively in order to maximize their business potential. Our Outsourced Product Development and IT services allow our Clients to reduce time to market, improve the quality of their products, reduce risk of failure, improve predictability and reliability of the engineering process, while helping them lower their over-all product engineering costs.

So far as our business models are concerned our Outsourced Product Development (OPD) business has Flex Cell and Flex Factory models. Our Flex Cell model provides Clients with a team hired to meet their requirements and expectations. And Flex Factory enables clients to harness all the benefits of offshoring and outsourcing, without committing to usage of specific resources. In IT Services we offer the flexibility of “turnkey projects” and resource augmentation delivery models to our Clients.

NewsworX: Anything you would like to share with TeamOutworX? Plz…specify.

S.G: In order for us to be successful in our business, we need to make our clients succeed in their business, which can only happen through constantly delivering high quality products and services, on-time and at competitive prices. Finally, my profound thanks to Team OutworX for showing faith and trust in me.
Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

4 Fundamental Principles For Building Alumni Value Proposition

Taking cue from my previous post, I would like to extend the concept of Alumni Value Proposition (AVP) a little further. There is a framework for building AVP, which is simply based on four fundamental principles:

• Hire the best into the organization
• Let them build the organization
• Proudly Brand what they build
• Alumni constitute our extended organization

Hire the Best. Since people like to associate with likeminded people, if organization has good people then it will attract other good people. Anybody who gets selected to join such an organization considers it a privilege that he/she is getting the opportunity to work with other good people who would make a huge difference in his/her life.
Correspondingly it becomes organization’s responsibility to follow very high hiring standards to avoid dilution in the quality of its people, and secondly ensure that word gets around loudly that this organization is built with good people thus ensuring that good applicants pool continues to grow exponentially.

Built by the Best. Once organization has hired the best employees, it should let these employees take complete ownership of building the organization, and also have them take pride that their contributions is what makes this organization great.

• Let employees define the criteria for selecting right people for this organization and how to bring them onboard.
• Let employees take charge of inducting and mentoring new people into the organization.
  Let employees build a continuously learning organization by defining a culture of complete knowledge capture and sharing across the organization. Requiring everybody to document their learnings from projects and other activities they undertake – developing a strong habit and capabilities in employees to communicate well – extensively using tools like Blogs for external and internal publishing of contents.
• Let employees recognize what they are best at and then take pride in training others in the organization to be good at that.
• Let employees be the navigators who understand the tides of industry and the world around the organization, and then counsel others in the organization to mould their careers to be successful in rapidly changing tides.

Branding. As the organization does these great things it is equally important that it gets the word out. It should be proud of what it built and we must let others know how good it is from inside. Employees and Alumni are the true carriers of brand message. They should be encouraged to use blogs, message boards, trade magazines, conferences etc. to spread organization’s brand message.

Treat Alumni as part of extended organization. Alumni are a great asset for any company as they take companies message in their new companies. If that message is strong then it greatly benefits the company in attracting more good people. Organization must strive to stay connected with its Alumni and simultaneously create strong reasons for alumni to stay connected with it. To facilitate this it must use tools like Alumni website and newsletters.

Building Alumni Value Proposition based on this framework is our joint responsibility and our primary mission for 2008.

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

Mission 2008: Alumni Value Proposition

Companies that create a strong Alumni Value Proposition for their employees successfully attract and retain best people. Aah!? You might wonder. Employee retention and Alumni in same sentence, isn’t that an oxymoron?

Ok, let me try to explain why I made above statement with couple of examples. McKinsey and Solomon Brothers are two companies that are considered most coveted companies (in their respective domains) by every jobseeker. Although if you talk to any employee at any level in these companies, he would tell you that his jobs is extremely demanding, he works almost 16 to 20+ hours a day 7 days a week, often for lower pay than his counterparts in other companies.
So if it is not the money, and if it is not work-family life balance, then what attracts jobseekers to these companies that they always consider them as dream companies to work for.

After speaking with a few senior people at McKinsey and other organizations I realized that it is the Alumni Value Proposition (AVP). When a company tries to create AVP it is no different from what good universities do to attract best students and give to its students when they become Alumni.

So is there a framework for building AVP?

It starts with building a comprehensive process for selecting the best, because first pillar of building AVP is to have best people in the organization. And if you have good people, they connect with former colleagues, locally and globally, build a positive environment about the organization, attract smart people, and, eventually, inspire them to join and build the organization. Also, these very people help peers in career building by counseling and mentoring them properly and adequately.
But, what if these very good people opt to move on to some other organizations. You would be pleasantly surprised to know that it is Alumni who eventually become a great asset for the country.

How? Let’s find out.

It is alumni that take companies message to their new companies, and if that message is strong then it greatly benefits the company in attracting more good people. In today’s fiercely competitive knowledge-driven market, only those companies can thrive which believe in and create AVP. To stay connected with their Alumni, companies need to leverage tool such as Alumni network website and newsletters that enable them to

• Connect with former colleagues, locally and globally
• Communicate and expand social network via live and online events
• Collaborate on special projects or pilots, find a job, a candidate, a supplier, or generate new business contacts

Further, companies need to work on Knowledge Creation, which has been widely recognized as strategically important for organizational learning and innovation, requiring employees to document their learning from projects and other activities they undertake – developing a strong habit and capabilities in employees to communicate well , using tools like Blogs, social community sites, external and internal publishing of contents, etc.
Teamwork plays an important role in AVP, where people own responsibility collectively. It is teamwork that motivates employees to take pride in mentorship and coaching other employees (old or new).

To add grist to the mill, companies let employees take ownership in building the organization, let have them take pride that their contributions is what makes this organization.
Don’t you think that their contributions to recruiting process play a big role in bringing the best into the company.

Branding is one exercise that companies need to do constantly to deliver the message clearly, confirm the organization’s credibility, connect with your target prospects, motivate the audience, and, most importantly, create a positive environment for the company across the industry. Apart from PR activities including media coverage, seminars, webinars, etc, employees and alumni are the carriers of brand message.

And, now, let me conclude that building Alumni Value Proposition based on this framework is our Mission 2008. On the sheer strength of AVP, I look forward to the future with a goal of attracting the best people, creating a niche for OutworX. Alumni represent the company, peers will look up to you for career counseling, and alumni will help establish the future strength of our company. The journey has begun…

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

Does OutworX have Profile,Community & Widget on Facebook ?

We all know about Facebook, which is a media, community and application platform that offers a thriving ecosystem, scalable growth, and word-of-mouth marketing. Originally kicked off as a destination for students to connect with one another through social networks, the site has expanded to include companies, professional networks and geographic regions. As per one rough estimate, over half of Facebook’s 43 million users visit every day, spend an average of 20 minutes on the site, and view over 54 billion total page views per month. Now, it is impossible to ignore the growing size and scope of Facebook.

Also, the company announced a set of APIs to make integration and support with third-party services even easier for consumers. The Application Platform gives a web team the capability to swiftly deploy a widget.

In addition, Facebook provides you with targeted advertising option to market effectively, where you can provide messages segmented by location, gender, and or preferences.

If you want to know more about Facebook, click here .

If you want to develop a Facebook platform application, click here .

Participate in Poll

Now, we request Team OutworX to participate in the poll, and let us have your mandate on the following points:

• What should be Outworx Facebook Strategy?
• Does OutworX have its profile on Facebook?
• Can we kick off a Community on Facebook?
• Shall we deploy a widget/application on Facebook’s Application Platform?
• Can you suggest a widget/application to be deployed on the API?

Send in your mandate at oxblog@outworx.com

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation.

“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

It was an odd night on October 2nd, and I woke up at an ungodly hour of 3:30 AM. After making a cup of tea, listening to BBC TV, I pondered what made me wake up at this moment. I looked at the date, I have just completed my first 6 months in the OutworX family.
The last 3 weeks were hectic, and throughout the appraisal process I came to know most of you better than ever before, yet there is still to know lot more. My thoughts wondered a bit more and I remembered Paul Gaugin’s eternal question – “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

Pondering on the answers, I thought, that answer to the first question is we at OutworX are as diverse as our vast nation, with our own culture, ideas and ambitions, which I had felt during those few hours I spent with all of you during the Appraisal process. However, despite my consistent effort, I couldn’t get any convincing answers to the last 2 questions. I thought, if we need to grow, we better do something to at least seek the answers to those 2.

So, here we are with our own blog wherein we will seek the answers in a joint forum which will eventually give us clarity of thought and goals ahead. Sharing of ideas and thoughts is the best way to learn ourselves and also to let the world know about us. More you express, the more clarity we will get on those 2 answers, which will be a key to our success; at least, it will put us on the right path-a path where we want to go in near future.

The next 6 months I dedicate to 2 important themes about which I will write in my next post. And, those 2 themes are –

a) Excellence in ‘EXECUTION’
b) Communication and Sharing.

I have just chosen the themes, but it is you who will help me paint my canvas.

Now, I welcome all of you to the world of blogosphere, take up your pen and paint- brush and start expressing yourself.

Posted by Goutam Bakshi, VP (Engineering & Technology), OutworX Corporation

OutworX Launched OX Blog

I am truly pleased and, at the same time, overwhelmed to officially announce OX Blog, the corporate blog of OutworX. With a view to improve employee relations, customer relations, and to perk up business processes, we have launched our corporate blog, as blogs have become one of the most economic, efficient and effective platform for both internal and external communications.

OX Blog is our sincere effort to establish a direct relationship with our customers and our employees that build trust and loyalty organically, demonstrate our corporate openness, show our product development expertise and technology capabilities, make obvious our thought leadership, and amplify our corporate message across the industry. And, more importantly, with our corporate blog we are ready to engage in dialogue our clients and market, as well.

In today’s Web 2.0 driven environment, web strategists are relying more and more on blogs and social media platforms for better and real-time interactions with their clients and employees, we too,with OX Blog, are geared up to harness very tangible benefits in the form of customer information and lead generation, increased sales, new business opportunities, higher organic search engine rankings , and in general extra buzz about the company on-line.

In order to accomplish this, creating and maintaining a corporate blog proves to be a very demanding task for your corporate blog evangelist, who is going to have a very tough job in hand, requiring corporate approval for most of the blog initiatives and activities. So the blog journey has flagged off, now enjoy reading, responding, and commenting.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation