No business discussion is possible these days without bringing India and China into the discussion in terms of effect of or on one of the two countries. Latest increase in coverage of the business happenings in India and China confirms the viewpoint. Yesterday's story was amazing! India successfully launched 10 satellites with one rocket. One one side it proves the technical provess of the country, on the other side it is interesting to find out that 8 of the 10 satellites launched belonged to countries like Canada, Japan, Germany etc. And India changed $6 million for one, that is $48 million straight!
It is not a new news that launching sattelites is becoming a lucrative market. But there are very few countries who have the launching capability. India has the cost advantages on its side as it has ample supply of "cheap labor" which can successfully design and launch satellites. Isn't the last statement self-contradictory? Cheap labor and satellite design seems like opposite ends of a pole. What's bringing them together in case of India? Looks like soon the discussions on blogs will replace "cheap labor" with "highly educated work force". It will be interesting to see how the story unfolds after the already proven trackrecords in IT, Space Technology, and Bio-Technology. What's next?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Leadership, Strategy and Change Management
Keep watching this blog for entries on Leadership, Strategy and Change Management. Leadership is one area which is highly talked about in today's corporate world but very little understood. Right strategy and effective change management are the key to 'enabling' leadership.
When a stock goes up...the 22 rule
As an investor what should you do when a stock goes up by 8-10% of its value? Look at the timing. If it happened 4 days before a major announcement is expected, buy it. Watch it for 2 days(inclusive of the day you bought the stock), if the value still goes up, hold it, if the value goes down even by 2%, sell it.
How do I know? I really dont know. Please do not share this rule with anyone else.
Disclaimer: Use the information on this blog at your own risk.
How do I know? I really dont know. Please do not share this rule with anyone else.
Disclaimer: Use the information on this blog at your own risk.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Quick Response IT - frustrated Business and IT managers are you listening?
Quick Response Information Technology, yes! that's it! That is the solution to the problems currently faced by Business and IT managers all over the world. Let me elaborate on the concept before I go bragging about it :)
I was going through Zara's case, yes the fashion apparel company, learning how its supply chain works at the lightning speed bringing new fashion to the market in less than 10 days! Zara uses Lean and JIT concepts to manage its supplychain starting right from its design process. And then it struck to me that this concept is so much applicable to IT function of an organization too.
Imagine you have 10 project managers working on 3 projects each. Each team these project managers have have some shared resources, say the Business Analysts and the Architects. Since in majority of the big corporations IT organizations dont do a good job of 'line balancing' which people on shoop floor does, atleast since the TOC became popular, these business analysts and architects become 'bottlenecks'. Does that sounds familiar? On top of that these bottlenecks deal with changin priorities and the end result is a total mess. Business managers complain that IT is not delivering what was promised on time and IT managers complain about changing priorities and insufficient resources at their disposal. This situation along with the game of fingerpointing continues for years. Is there no hope?
Quick Response IT (QRIT) has just that to offer. Using Lean concepts IT managers can create balanced lines of resources to work on projects. Business managers need to put 10 projects on the plate in place of 30. With the right implementation this arrangement will be cranking much more projects than what is possible through the regular arrangements.
Putting this in terms of numbers makes it even more interesting. For majority of IT projects, say business expects $100,000 of savings per month. Delaying such a project by 6 months has impacted the company's bottomline by $600,000 straight, simple concept of opportunity cost. So speed is really very very important, YES! EVEN FOR IT PROJECTS :) So imagine what QRIT could do for you? I understand, you may be skeptical a little bit... let me assure you, it will work. It is counter-intuitive but it is true, IT operations and not much different from floor operations, fundamentally. Have you started thinking about your first 'monument' already?
I was going through Zara's case, yes the fashion apparel company, learning how its supply chain works at the lightning speed bringing new fashion to the market in less than 10 days! Zara uses Lean and JIT concepts to manage its supplychain starting right from its design process. And then it struck to me that this concept is so much applicable to IT function of an organization too.
Imagine you have 10 project managers working on 3 projects each. Each team these project managers have have some shared resources, say the Business Analysts and the Architects. Since in majority of the big corporations IT organizations dont do a good job of 'line balancing' which people on shoop floor does, atleast since the TOC became popular, these business analysts and architects become 'bottlenecks'. Does that sounds familiar? On top of that these bottlenecks deal with changin priorities and the end result is a total mess. Business managers complain that IT is not delivering what was promised on time and IT managers complain about changing priorities and insufficient resources at their disposal. This situation along with the game of fingerpointing continues for years. Is there no hope?
Quick Response IT (QRIT) has just that to offer. Using Lean concepts IT managers can create balanced lines of resources to work on projects. Business managers need to put 10 projects on the plate in place of 30. With the right implementation this arrangement will be cranking much more projects than what is possible through the regular arrangements.
Putting this in terms of numbers makes it even more interesting. For majority of IT projects, say business expects $100,000 of savings per month. Delaying such a project by 6 months has impacted the company's bottomline by $600,000 straight, simple concept of opportunity cost. So speed is really very very important, YES! EVEN FOR IT PROJECTS :) So imagine what QRIT could do for you? I understand, you may be skeptical a little bit... let me assure you, it will work. It is counter-intuitive but it is true, IT operations and not much different from floor operations, fundamentally. Have you started thinking about your first 'monument' already?
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