Project rotation dips, domain expertise rises in IT industry………Praveena Sharma. Bangalore
Trend boosts productivity but lowers flexibility
Rotation between projects is losing steam in information technology circles. As IT companies move from technology delivery to business-driven solutions, they are rotating fewer employees between projects of different industries.
Though the trend is boosting employee productivity, companies are losing the flexibility to shift people from one vertical to another.
According to Krishnakumar Natarajan, president & CEO (IT services) at Bangalore-based IT major MindTree Consulting, customers want business expertise and so, most software companies are focussing on developing domain (industry or sector) specialisation, thereby cutting job rotation. “What we are seeing is that more people want to stick to the same domain to get a better understanding of particulars but people are still shunting between functions. Overall, there has been a marginal decline in job rotation in our organisation,” he said.
As fewer people are hopping between verticals, MindTree has been able to improve productivity, Natarajan said.
“Since they (techies) choose to remain with a certain domain, they are not learning constantly. This is improving our productivity,” he said. IT firms are caught between competency in delivering technological solutions and the current customer need for end-to-end business solutions.
A CLSA report by analysts Bhavtosh Vajpayee and Nimish Joshi said that there is emerging conflict between business-driven approach and the extant DNA of technology delivery.
As Indian firms try to compete with global software behemoths such as IBM, Accenture and EDS, they are moving towards consultative and multi-services IT deals that require deeper knowledge of the industry their customers operate in. Dr Ganesh Natarajan, the chairman of industry body Nasscom, said today, 20% of the IT jobs and contracts by Indian companies require domain specialisation. “Just a few years ago, it (deals that needed domain expertise) was zero,” he said.
As the chunk of horizontal technology in the total IT business pie shrinks, job rotation between verticals has also dropped. “Programmers like to move across projects (while) the consultative approach seeks to create specialists,” write Vajpayee and Joshi in their report.
They added that technologists increasingly believe that a consultative/sales career is the “Holy Grail, in the industry. ?Wide-ranging salary differentials between technology and consulting/sales career can create angst,” they added.
As techies gravitate towards consultative services, domain expertise through training and work on a project proves handy.