The Hindu Business Line : Do IT services really solve business problems? BOOKS2BYTE

To those who find the IT (information technology) services industry a mystery, here is help from Was Rahman and Priya Kurien: Blind Men & the Elephant (www.sagepublications.com).

IT services generally include: services such as ‘installing and maintaining hardware and software, customising and integrating packages, and developing and maintaining custom-built applications’; and also ‘a plethora of consulting and advisory services that either help businesses understand how to use IT to achieve business goals or are more technically focused on evaluating and selecting particular technologies and products’.

Without IT services, IT would only be a set of technologies, waiting for someone to apply them to solve problems, explain the authors. “With IT services, IT has the potential to change the world, and frequently does.”

Yet, “for all the trillions spent in its short history, the path of its progress is littered with cases where vast amounts of money have been wasted by not finishing projects, not delivering what was required or simply delivering poor-quality systems that don’t work.” Sympathetic thought, that should be, for the many who have been at the receiving end of IT services!

“Even when work is completed as expected, one of the biggest quandaries for the IT industry and its customers has been their longstanding inability to systematically measure and quantifiably demonstrate benefits that IT delivers to those who pay for it,” fret Rahman and Kurien.

IT services are supposed to address business problems. But that focus may just be at the starting point of a transaction, when a customer approaches the IT services industry for help. “By the time the transaction is complete, the original business problem has often ceased to be uppermost in their minds, overtaken by other factors such as timescales, budgets or bugs.”

To many it should be shocking to learn that “the IT services industry has not yet found the appetite or mechanism to charge customers based on how well the problem has actually been solved.” How do they charge, then, instead? Based on a set of derived results to evidence that the contractual duties have been performed properly.

As a result, the IT services firm is measured and held accountable to parameters “such as whether the work was done on time, whether it was on budget and whether all the bugs have been removed.” What about whether the work has solved the business problem, leading to corresponding improvement in business results? Not particularly relevant, distressingly.

Highly relevant read, especially because the book is boldly irreverent of the industry.

To blog or not to blog

“Not everything that you think should be said. And not everything that you say should be written. And not everything that is written should be printed.”

Menachem Mendel (1787-1859) said, “Not everything that you think should be said. And not everything that you say should be written. And not everything that is written should be printed.” With this, among a few other quotes, begins Blog Schmog by Robert W. Bly ( www.landmarkonthenet.com).

He looks at the world of blogs as a sceptic and doubter. “Bloggers believe that blogs are all-encompassing, and that anything they say in their blog is somehow transmitted throughout the blogosphere and, by extension, throughout the entire world… even though the majority of people on the planet don’t even have Internet access,” writes Bly, wryly. There are some good blogs, he concedes, however. “But the medium as a whole suffers from a lower standard of quality than other media it competes with.”

You may wonder if you should start a blog? It depends, says Bly. “There are certain types of businesses that can benefit from a blog, if not by driving direct sales, then at least through buzz and PR,” he adds. Examples of such businesses are those that deal with intellectual capital (consultancy); customers who are information seekers (hobbyists); controversial topics (outsourcing); self-employment; and technology.

A blog can be fun and exciting to start, but it demands attention, says the author. “Even a few weeks’ absence can cause readers to believe you have abandoned your blog, decimating the readership you worked so hard to build. The blog may take only an hour or two a week to write. But if you are a blogger, it consumes a greater share of your mind.”

So, blog if you want to, Bly counsels. “If you don’t like blogs, don’t bother… Best of luck to you in the blogosphere – and outside it!”

Down-to-earth.

Be quite still and solitary

Do you know where the real work of Silicon Valley occurs? In the mind, observes Bronson.

For a stroll down the Silicon Valley, go with The Nudist on the Late Shift by Po Bronson ( www.crosswordbookstores.com). “Every generation that came before us had to make a choi ce in life between pursuing a steady career and pursuing wild adventures. In Silicon Valley, that trade-off has been recircuited.” Young people have no longer to choose, says Bronson. “It’s a two-for-one deal: the career path has become an adventure into the unknown. More happens here and so quickly, satisfying anybody’s craving for newness. In six months you might get a job, be laid off, start a company, sell it, become a consultant, and then, who knows?”

Do you know where the real work of Silicon Valley occurs? In the mind, observes Bronson. “The minds of workers sitting in their cubicles, staring at screens, pondering their challenges. That’s where innovation occurs. That’s where the buzz is.”

He cites a quote from Kafka, thus: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet…”

Good escape.

Tailpiece

“We encourage teamwork except in one activity.”

“What’s that?”

“Deleting spam mails.”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in