1. Achieving Project Certainty through Talent
Management - A case study
Jun 2013
Abhay Desai & Jagadeesh DV

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Table of Content
1. Abstract .............................................................................................2
2. Introduction.......................................................................................3
3. Approach ...........................................................................................4
Hybrid Model.....................................................................................5
Challenges for Implementation: ........................................................8
4. Results.............................................................................................10
5. Conclusion .......................................................................................13

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1. Abstract
A study conducted in 2005 by NASSCOM and McKinsey, found that 75% of the Indian fresh
graduate workforce is unemployable. As Human resources will have significant impact triple
constraints of Project Management, managing the same can have greater influence on the
project outcome. The case study presented here is aimed at highlighting the approach, impact
and outcome of talent management through an innovative initiative undertaken.
While it is imperative that talent acquisition and retention is needed for successful execution of a
project, the study presented here focuses on the current scenario in terms of availability and the
deployability of these talents, and innovative ways to retain them with the dual objective of
bringing out the best in them and providing value to the customers.
Use of ‘Talent management practice’ has been typically abused by narrowing down the scope to
training, rewarding and giving recognition. However, this study is aimed at bringing out the
points which are unique in nature, but which have yielded enormous business benefits.
Innovation in terms of employee engagement, transformation through acquiring new skills,
continuous idea generation process leading to inquisitiveness, are few examples to quote as
differentiators in the process of nurturing the talent with complete alignment to project execution
and deliverables.
The case study present reflects the following two aspects:
Increase in employee satisfaction Index through drop in attrition and increase in the level
of involvement and revenue to the account.
Increase in customer satisfaction index particularly in innovation and pro-activeness,
tangible benefits in terms cost reduction in application maintenance and increase in the
availability of applications

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2. Introduction
Employee motivation and involvement plays a vital role in order to ensure certainty of success
for any given project. Unfortunately, making employees self-driven and ensuring high level of
involvement remains a big challenge. In order to overcome this challenge, an innovative
approach is needed.
Invariably there are multiple factors that contribute to the employee’s hesitation to be involved
completely in the project. It is predominantly because of the aggression by the supervisor or
peers, ‘fear of rejection’ of the ideas provided by them, lack of subject matter expertise (though
needed) and a forum or a means to express and involve them. Fortunately, there is a way to
overcome this challenge.
There are various approaches and ways to motivate the employees and enable them to involve
actively in the project in order to bring out the best in them and ensure certainty of the project
deliverables to the customer. There has to be a process oriented approach rather than a
satellite practice.
The typical employee engagement initiatives practiced are as follows:
Regular team interaction and brief meetings (not a project review meeting)
Employee suggestion schemes
Employee represented consultative committees
Self-managed small teams
Re-design/enrichment of jobs
Quality circles
While all the above tracks of initiatives have their own merits, the benefits can be maximized
when multiple initiatives mentioned above are combined as part of a hybrid model. We
experienced that such Hybrid model was best suited both in project environment and in
operations mode. We have measured the impact of this Hybrid model approach on some of the
parameters like employee satisfaction index, customer satisfaction index, attrition rate, on-time
delivery of the project, customer perceived improvement on innovation factor, cost reduction in
application maintenance, improvement in system availability and additional revenue generated
by the project team.

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3. Approach
The case study conducted by Charted Management Institute, has the following findings on
employee involvement approaches.
Table 1: Employee Involvement Techniques
Sr. # Employee Involvement Approaches Companies
Adopted
(%)
1 Regular team interaction and briefing meetings (not a project review
meeting)
82
2 Employee suggestion schemes 53
3 Employee consultative committees 45
4 Self-managed small teams 25
5 Re-design/enrichment of jobs 13
6 Quality circles 11
Source: CMI study report Dec 2002
The below factors also influence the potential talent in employees:
To get a high level of employee engagement, encourage creativity and idea generation.
It is a number game. More the ideas generated, more is the probability of getting some
genuinely useful ideas. We noticed that what started as abstract ideas or incomplete
ideas got developed into highly useful solutions.
Involvement of employees is an important process during the initiation phase. It is
observed that employees may distance themselves with the changes if they are not
involved in the initiation process. If employees participate in planning, they are more
likely to embrace change, even if they have a difference of opinion initially with the idea.
It is true that ‘Seeing is Believing’ for wholehearted participation. When employees see
that what they are doing is a part of a larger solution, they give enough focus to the task
at hand keeping in mind the overall objective. It is observed that for most employees,
there is nothing more motivating than seeing and contributing in the successful
implementation of an idea generated by them. While almost all organizations have a
suggestion scheme, it is the way in which it is handled and managed that matters in
using the suggestion scheme for employee motivation.
To keep the momentum flowing and sustaining the idea generation process and active
employee involvement, different processes and trainings that are needed. For example,
business domain knowledge for developers, soft skills, basic exposure to statistical tools,
interactions with experts in the field, factory/site visits and so on, apart from the rewards
and recognition process.
Using these inputs, a Hybrid model was formulated to reap the best benefits and results of the
multiple approaches.

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Hybrid Model
The hybrid model referred earlier was chosen for the implementation in one of the relationships
in the organization. A high level view of the Hybrid modes is as shown in Figure. 1.
Figure 1: Hybrid Model
This model considered the combination of the following approaches:
Regular team interaction and brief meetings
- Monthly updates on project, operational and customer challenges, competitive
environment, initiatives and customer expectations set during the floor meetings
- Updated on the industry trends and technology trends
- Experts shared their unique and varied experiences
Employee suggestion schemes
- Invited and encouraged employees to share their ideas

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- Encouraged wide range of ideas, not limited to the pain areas, or specific to the
technology or customer. It should include the business relevance and the work
performed by the employees
- Accepted and captured every idea without any criticism
Self-managed small teams
- Formed small groups. In the case study presented here, 6 groups were formed
with each group consisting of 6 members.
- Group formed were heterogeneous for varied outlook and experience.
- While the responsibility for the team was well defined, there was no boundary for
ideation process.
- Created a competitive environment between the teams. There were various
awards for individual contribution as well as for the teams.
Quality circles
- Used statistical tools
- Focused on improvements in known challenges and as well as proactive
improvements.
- Focused on the quality of project deliverables
- Promoted job involvement
As mentioned earlier, we found that this Hybrid model was effective in both scenarios –
Operations mode and Project mode. The model provides opportunity to use as below:
Operations Mode
In operations mode, there are distinctly two different opportunities, as follows:
- When the operations management is taken over from the customer organization.
Since, people come with an open mind in this phase, a lot of questions and ideas
get generated, which provide an opportunity for improvement.
- During the steady state mode, where focus is more on improving the productivity
and increasing the availability of resources/applications. Continuous and
incremental improvement and problem management is the focus here.
Project Mode
During different phases, teams get many opportunities to generate ideas and since
diversified groups work together, different dimensions and expertise come handy
ingenerating ideas.
In both the above cases, while the end result is generation of ideas, in order to generate ideas
on a sustainable basis, following efforts havebeen taken, which enhances employee
competency and provides high level of motivation.

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Continuous competency development: Organization needs to make provision for training
aids. For example, Web Based Training, books/thought leadership papers, Class Room
Based trainings. Their expertise level was constantly measured through exit tests and
they are awarded with new competency levels each time. Study indicates that the
continuous learning keeps the person motivated.
Figure 2 depicts of the competency building model adopted.
Figure 2: Competency Building and progression model
E0, E1, E2 and E3 represent the expertise level. Once E3 and above levels are attained,
an employee achieves the Business Architect competency.
Multi dimension competency building: Normally people come with one specific area of
expertise. For example, a developer might have good technology knowledge but
invariably lags domain understanding. Similarly, people with domain knowledge in many
cases lack the technology understanding. Hence, complementing them with the missing
piece of knowledge equips them to think of the solution/idea with a broader horizon.
However, it is the organization which should identify and provide the necessary domain
or technology skill. New skills add ‘sense of achievement’ to the employee. From an IT
professional stand point of view, it also addresses the customer expectation of the
employee providing the ‘Business solution’ rather than just an IT solution.
Chosen case study pertains to an IT industry and the project group pertains to working
for a manufacturing customer. In the given situation, factory visits were made a part of
the above model in order to give hands-on / practical view of the manufacturing
processes. This was well received by the employees and helped in active participation to
enhance the project deliverables.
I know and I can
do
E2
I don’t know and I
can’t do
E0
I know but I can’t
do
E1
I know, I can do
and I can teach
E3

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Employees were encouraged to study and circulate one ‘Domain terminology’ per day.
This responsibility was given to every team member on a rotation basis, and each team
member was to circulate the word for a week. In the process, entire team became more
acquainted with the various domain terminologies and its usage which helped in
understanding the customer requirements better than before. More importantly, the
customer was delighted to see an IT professional talking and understanding the domain
specific topics. Since the customer was delighted and appreciated the team member, it
further helped the team to get further motivated.
Team members were asked to read the identified books that covered domain knowledge
and were asked to circulate the book review. Such book reviews expected at regular
intervals (once every fortnight), not only helped the associates to acquire knowledge, but
also provided ideas for best practices and widened their subject expertise. Moreover,
application of such acquired knowledge helped in customer appreciation and employee
recognition as the most knowledgeable team member, which again motivated the team
and created a healthy competitive environment.
There were team awards for the highest number of ideas, award for the highest number
of ideas by an individual, award for the most valuable idea, award for the idea that
generated the highest revenue, award for the most innovative idea, award for the idea
that brought down the complexity in any process or application.
Challenges for Implementation:
There are certain challenges one usually would encounter on the implementation and
sustenance period. Some of the challenges and approach adopted to overcome is illustrated
below:
1. While small group (in our case it was 6 persons in a group) is very effective in generating
ideas, there would be different level of maturity and varied levels of behavioral
aggressions can lead to non contribution by some team members. The same has to be
addressed by having an unnamed moderator for each team.
2. After couple of weeks or at some point of time, it is observed that team will run of ideas
in spite of training in new areas / topics, etc. It was found that during such situations,
open discussions with customer for a collaborative effort to identify new areas provide
added opportunities for generating new ideas.
3. While competitiveness between the teams is a motivational factor, need to facilitate that
it remains a healthy competition. One of the approaches used was change the mix of the
team at periodic intervals including the change in team for small groups.
4. While the process started with capturing, monitoring and closing the ideas in an Excel
based approach; the competency building exercise was also tracked independently. As
the process progressed, it was noticed that a tool based approach was more effective

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and easy to deploy with larger group of organization. Accordingly, a web based tool
(Intranet) was adopted for the same.
5. Factory visit as part of domain competency helped in building the skill more with a
practical approach. However, it was a challenge for an IT organization to organize such
visit on regular basis. Networking and leveraging the group resources helped over here.
6. Considering the success of this initiative is largely dependent on customer acceptance
and active involvement, we demonstrated the concept through a pilot approach in a
project before rolling it across.

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4. Results
The end results of the entire approach are as follows:
Increase in employee satisfaction Index through drop in attrition andincrease in the level
of involvement and revenue to the account.
Increase in customer satisfaction index particularly in innovation and pro-activeness,
tangible benefits in terms cost reduction in application maintenance and increase
availability of applications
A. Employee satisfaction index
There was a marked improvement in employee satisfaction index (ESI) by 200bps (Basis
Points) over the year, after implementing this initiative.
B. Attrition rate
Figure 3: Attrition Rate of the case study account
While the IT attrition rate however around 11%, one can notice above that the attrition rate is
much below the industry average as well.
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
Q1 FY11 Q3 FY12 Q4 FY12 Q1 FY13 Q3 FY13
Attrition %

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C. Additional revenue to account
The average revenue generated through this initiative was approximately $ 5500 per quarter on
a team size of 30 employees. The variations in the revenues are mainly because of
opportunities in different phases of project and priority assigned by the customer will vary.
Further, in the Figure 4 below, last 3 quarter average has improved to $ 7000 per quarter and it
is likely to improve further with increased number of new opportunities being opened with in flow
of additional ideas.
Figure 4: Revenue from the initiative per quarter for a project team size of 30
D. Delivery Performance
Defect free delivery: Defect free deliveries improved from average of 90% in FY 12
to 98% in FY13 (FY = Financial year)
On time Delivery (OTD): On time delivery performance improved from average of
87% to 97% in FY13 (FY = Financial Year)
E. Increased employee involvement
On an average 25 ideas were selected by the customer every 6 months, with approximately 60 hours of
involvement per associate per quarter.
F. Customer Satisfaction Index – Innovation and pro-activeness parameter
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
Q2FY12 Q3 FY12 Q4FY12 Q1 FY13 Q2 FY13 Q3 FY13 Q4 FY13
Revenue $

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Attributes FY 2012 FY 2013
Demonstrating innovation Good Very Good
Experience and knowledge in your industry Very Good Very Good
Demonstrating thought leadership Fair Excellent
Provides Value for Money Good Very Good
Ranking scale Excellent
Very Good
Good
Fair
Poor
Figure 5: Survey feedback from Customer Chief Information Officer (CIO)
From the figure 5 above, it can be noticed that there is a significant improvement in perception of
customer on the parameters pertaining to innovation, thought leadership (pro-activeness) and value for
money. The Hybrid model adaptation helped in significant improvement in overall customer satisfaction.
G. Tangible benefits
The tangible benefits are as follows:
Man days saved in a single application which can be translated to significant cost
reduction. Saving achieved: 20 person days per quarter
Uptime of applications (availability) –Improved from 99.75% to 99.98%

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5. Conclusion
Parameters like increased customer satisfaction, reduced attrition rate, improved employee
satisfaction, improved On Time Deliver (OTD), improved quality of deliverables (Defect free
deliveries) indicates the excellence in project execution. As seen in the results section, in the
given project where Hybrid Model was adopted, has shown considerable improvement on said
parameters.
This indicates a “Certainty” in the project execution with promoting innovation in the form of
talent management.