Soft Skill

Overselling and under-delivering

Anand Chatterjee explores the reasons why it so difficult to manage client expectations in the software services industry

Is “overselling and under-delivering” becoming a norm for the IT software industry today? This question would have diametrically divergent views depending on which side of the table you are sitting. Whereas clients would seem to nod their head in unison, but ask any IT software firm they would deny it vehemently. Being a part of the IT industry for quite some time now and however skeptical I may be of the clients, I have some reasons to partially agree with the strong statement made above. However, I believe much of the malaise can be attributed to the internal dynamics of the IT software industry.

The industry is replete with Death March projects. Some industry statistics suggest that almost 60-70 percent of software projects experience cost and time slippages. This is making fixed costs projects more popular with the clients as they are no longer willing to bear the brunt of the software vendor’s overzealous marketing and sales tactics. Time and material projects are a rarity today.

Intangible deliverables

The very name ‘software’ suggests that much of the attributes of the deliverables of the software industry is intangible and often difficult to quantify with numbers. Robustness, scalable, flexible are terms which are used with penchant in this industry. Often when an RFP (Request for Proposal) is prepared by the customer these loosely defined terms are frequently used to play safe, thinking they can be later used to squeeze the software vendors, but they don’t realize that they often backfire resulting in the bleeding project costs on both sides. The requirements of an IT solution is not adequately covered and open ended requirements are preferred thinking that these can be used to cover up any changes in requirements later on.

Project slippage

The IT software market is increasingly becoming commoditized. On the other hand, appreciating Indian rupee is putting pressure on the margins. This is often resulting in myopic attitudes by the sales and marketing team to bag new clients and customers. Often there is very little communication between the sales team and the delivery team and any threatening objections to the proposal by the delivery team is quelled at the very onset. Thereafter, once the project has been bagged, all responsibility falls on the delivery team to meet project deadlines and delivery costs. The sales team basks in glory and the delivery team sweats. If there is a slippage in delivery the whole blame falls on the project delivery team and little is done to bring the sales team under scanner for their shoddy estimates of the project delivery costs.

Another important factor which contributes to the project slippage is our resistance to say ‘no’ to our clients and also to raise our voice against unreasonable demands made by them. My experience tells me that whenever consultants from other countries are brought into projects, specially those dealing with Indian clients, they are trained to tone down their free and frank feedback. This is because we Indians are extremely poor in saying ‘no’ and also we don’t like to hear ‘no’ for an answer.

Lack of documentation

I have rarely seen a project which has very detailed documentation of the project’s various phases. We don’t like to do documentation, as cutting time on documentation can save costs. That is probably reflected in the documents we prepare as a part of our deliverable and also as a part of the internal monitoring process.

Often client requirements are poorly captured during the initial study of any IT project. This makes any project extremely vulnerable during the later part of the project lifecycle when clients start getting a feel of the IT solution. As the system starts taking shape clients feel them as inadequate in meeting or supporting their business requirements. Improper documentation of client’s requirements turns out to be the bane of most projects when customers start coming up with new or changed requirements. The delivery team is no longer able to defend by claiming them to be new or change requests. These can often be billed by the project team to the client and hence they may be delivered properly. Often a buffer is built in the proposals submitted by IT software companies taking care of such exigencies but with increasing competition these buffers are shrinking and no longer ensure the project’s profitability.

Poor quality of delivery

There are other reasons for poor quality of delivery by software companies. The quality of consultants is much to be blamed for this. Most IT companies are increasingly recruiting freshers to reduce costs and train them on projects. Thus consultants are being trained on clients’ expenses. However unethical it might seem but it is the hard reality. Inadequate scrutiny during the selection process often results in unscrupulous candidates being selected. Such is the pressure of recruitment that previously rejected candidates are offered jobs later on to meet the requirements of a depleting workforce.

Some of the projects are taken by companies just to gain a foothold in a particular domain or geographical area. In such projects profit is not the main object but without such profits in place, the delivery quality suffers subsequently.

Increasing offshore components of projects is also one of the reasons of why client requirements are not captured adequately. Regular client and end-user interaction is an important component in client satisfaction.

There are innumerable reasons why the quality of IT software projects is increasingly degrading. As software companies grow in size and try to get into more value added services rather than run of the mill maintenance and upgrade projects, more importance will be given to the quality of the services. They can little afford to play truant with their reputation as such myopic short-term strategy might well be the last nail on the coffin. But all is not lost; there are examples of IT software companies bearing the loss of such engagements to maintain client satisfaction and to protect themselves from an irreversible damage in this extremely competitive market.

Anand Chatterjee is an alumnus of IIM, Calcutta. He is presently working as a Consultant with a software MNC, and was earlier with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tata Research Development and Design Centre and GECIS (now Genpact).
Email: anandc2002@email.iimcal.ac.in
The views expressed in the article are that of the author and do not represent the views of his organization.