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 As
the Indian IT industry matures and gains global acceptance, academic
institutions need to be geared to produce ‘technocrats’
and not ‘technocoolies’ says Prashant Govil
As the Indian IT industry evolves from a “body-shopping”
mode to a “value-adding business-partner” mode, it is
imperative for our engineering colleges to generate more than “programmer
bodies.” They need to produce “IT consultants” capable
of not only providing support and maintenance of IT applications
to customers but actual business value-add in terms of better designed
systems, error-free production environments, end-to-end solution
delivery and IT strategy consulting.
“Bread and butter” revenues for IT
companies will still continue to come through the basic outsourcing
services route for some years to come, albeit anti-outsourcing pressures
as well as price pressures are making this business more “commodotised”
day by day. Whether the service is provided out of India or Ireland
or whether by a TCS or a Wipro will in time become inconsequential.
Only those organisations (and as a result only those countries),
will survive which can show demonstrable talent in not only providing
basic outsourcing services but also evolve to become “business
partners” with the customer.
Experience has also shown that in developing
software/ information technology solutions, the programming or in
popular terms the “coding” effort is often not more than
15 percent of the entire project effort, right from understanding
the requirements for the solution, designing the system to managing
the project team. So the question is: Should you fill your project
team with “fresh-out-of-college” engineering graduates
for a task which comprises only 10 percent to 20 percent of the
entire project effort ? There are a host of skills from client liaisoning
to software analysis and design to software testing, which require
certain “soft skills” and business intelligence that can
be provided only by fundamental management education.
Moreover, other than the actual software development
/software project management a whole gamut of individual skill sets
is required now by Indian IT companies in order to survive in today’s
“commodotised” IT services marketplace. Skills such as
precision sales and marketing campaigning, strategic product deployment,
multi-country team management requires a class of people who fit
the “MBA” bill.
It goes without saying that our academic institutions/engineering
colleges as they exist today are not geared to fulfill this demand
for “technocrats” in the coming years. To ensure we are
not left behind in the IT services race, both engineering and management
schools have to work together to provide the right kind of training
to our biggest assets i.e. the large number of engineering graduates/postgraduates
produced by the country every year.
Other then technology, engineering graduates
need to be acquainted with the finer aspects of project management,
analysis and design, interpersonal skills, global etiquette and
international sales/marketing. This can be handled through the traditional
MBA route after engineering (the concept of the IT/Systems MBA as
it exists today), or by upgrading technical computer science engineering
to provide these skills from an information technology perspective.
The difference between a “techno coolie”
and a “technocrat,” will lie in our ability to analyse
a situation/problem and offer a logical solution. Business intelligence
skills are essential for our next crop of IT professionals to enable
the industry to establish its global footprint.
The views expressed are personal. The author
is a Business Analyst with Tata Consultancy Services. He is a Systems
MBA from IIM-Kozhikode. E-mail:prashant.govil@tcs.com
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