Lean can mean more business for IT services firms: Singham

Posted: Thursday, Jan 11, 2007 at 0310 hrs IST
Updated: Thursday, Jan 11, 2007 at 0310 hrs IST

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Pune, Jan 10 : The traditional approach to software development and delivering IT services is not keeping pace with the needs of business. The current model of growth for IT services companies by hiring massive numbers is not sustainable, says Neville Roy Singham, founder and chairman of ThoughtWorks. Lean is the way to go as far as IT industry is concerned and there is still a lot of innovation left in IT. ThoughtWorks has been evangelising the ‘Agile’ software development. This approach to software delivery enables higher quality solutions quickly, using premium developer skills with less bugs and greater project visibility.

“There is significant reduction in the time to market cost and defects and the total cost of development and delivery was 30% less than with traditional approach,” says Singham. The industry argument is that the Agile method is suitable for only 5% of the projects that are technically complex but Singham believes that it can take care of 40 to 50% of the IT projects. But large IT services companies do not want this shift because their profits tend to come with the number of employees and innovation goes against the grain. “We get 30% of our revenues from failed outsourcing projects and project recovery and rescue,” says Singham, indicating the failure rates with the traditional development models. ThoughtWorks, a $100-million global software and technology services firm, opened its second development centre in India at Pune. Dharmarajan Sitaraman, MD, ThoughtWorks Technologies India, said that the company had invested $2.5 million and the Pune facility would house 175 people. The first centre was set up in Bangalore in 2001 where the team strength is 190. ThoughtWorks India also provides advice and consulting on adoption of Agile methods to Indian IT companies and captives of overseas firms.

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