Thursday, August 8, 2013

Future of IT as a department in an Organization

It would be a great mistake, if one can’t understand and prepare for the changes that are happening in the Information Technology part of the business and corporate world. These changes are happening in such a phase that is leading to a fundamental shift in direction of the way the job functions in an IT department is constructed, staffed and operated today. All these changes if not most of them are non-reversible in nature; means the shift is permanent and is not a temporary phenomenon. The technological advances combined with social responsiveness fuel these changes with a greater acceptance. Enterprises and organizations as always follow the individual consumers in realizing and adapting to these changes.

If an organization believes these changes are removing the traditional way of working and map it the elimination of the jobs would end up in a dead end. The reality is these shift demands new skills and new set of workforce economics. Here the cost is directly proportional to the talent density than the physical count of the employees.

As a two part series, let me articulate the changes and their effect on their traditional outlook of IT as a business unit.


  • Platform architecture: One of the most significant trends that might impact an IT business unit is that the age of “viewing everything through an application lens is coming to an end.” Instead, platform architectures will be selected primarily to cope with soaring volumes of data and the complexity of data management, not for their ability to support applications. The tried and true relational database will not go away, but it will soon start to make way for other types of databases – streaming databases, for instance – that mark a significant departure from what IT departments and business users have relied on for decades.
  • Cloud Computing: The focus will shift from simple infrastructure solutions to developing cloud strategies that deliver increased functionality and flexibility using a mix of public and private cloud-based application and platform services. While many challenges remain, cloud is nonetheless poised to change the face of enterprise computing. The adaptation to cloud from the application hosting perspective changes the traditional IT of running ‘on-premises’ to ‘on-demand’ mode; a completely different set off skill sets are required to manage and reap the cost benefits of the cloud infrastructure & applications. 
  • Data Security: The fortress mentality, in which all IT has to be architected to be foolproof, is giving way to a security architecture that responds proportionately to threats when and where they happen.” As a result, the role of people in data security will decline, replaced by automated capabilities that detect, assess, and respond immediately. The IT becomes a hosted environment; a variety of automated, industry-tested applications will take over your ‘organization specific’ security, both at the infrastructure and application levels. Organizations have to be practical and evolve to the maturity of understanding the new-age threats and manage the changes in adopting and implementing the standards.
  • Analytics: Companies that continue to view analytics, as a simple extension of business intelligence will be “severely underestimating analytics’ potential to move the needles on the business.” Among other failings, traditional BI does not take advantage of the wealth of unstructured data that is now available. IT leaders will need to work closely with business leaders to identify where analytics can be leveraged effectively, as well as the proper mix of services required to optimize analytics capabilities across the enterprise. The organizations have to turn their focus from a traditional transactional reporting to a world of agile, real real time and enable predictive analysis.
  • Architecture: Information technology is evolving from a world that is server-centric to one that is service-centric. Companies are quickly moving away from monolithic systems that were wedded to one or more servers toward finer-grained, reusable services distributed inside and outside the enterprise. The goal: to decouple infrastructure, systems, applications, and business processes from one another. This approach is well have it’s best benefits, if the analytics is taken into consideration as explained in the previous step.
  • User Experience: Today, business process design is driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction. Tomorrow it will be driven by the need to create superior user experiences that help to boost customer satisfaction. Great user experiences will require more layered approaches than what is typical today. As such, application design will be a multidisciplinary exercise: Typically handled today by IT architects and business owners, tomorrow it will involve optimization from the perspective of the process actor, with the emphasis on simplicity and on removing inefficiencies. The power of the mobile devices and the experience of the consumers with them will drive the expectations and will dictate the successful applications with satisfied users.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

My Presentation at UNIFIL

Two weeks after the go-live of Umoja project, I was given an opportunity to present to the UNIFIL management, section chiefs and key users at the ramp up closure event. I had only two days and had to present the components related to user management and related topics. I decided to take the presentation into two segments one being the state of the union after the two weeks and segwayed to the main discussion point. I took a lot of time to take away the technical complexity of the topic and to provide a bigger brush stroke of the topic. I decided then to take the presentation to a different level and make the audience get involved with the topic. 
I was a bit nervous as the presentation room was shifted to a real & big meeting room that was equipped with a good set of presentation equipments. The day before I had to stay late night to make sure my Macbook pro works with the system. I was very thankful to my colleagues Jamal and his teammate for helping me late in the day despite their fasting. I had to make certain adjustments in the presentation to fit into the resolution of the big screen and two monitors on the sides. I also had to take my presentation on a memory stick if in case I'd some issues with the connectivity during the presentation time.
The day started well and the main discussion points were taken in the first session. As expected they over ran the schedule and that might have encroached into the later presentations. We took a break for 10 minutes and that gave me enough time to set up my MacBook and bring up the presentation on the screen. I had a rough idea of my narratives, but was confident to deliver. As the meeting started, I started with a small story to bring the group into the context of the content. I was very well aware that the first few minutes would be crucial to get their interest in what I'm going to say, keeping in mind the standard deviation of the exposure the my topic with the audience. I took the narrative as a story.
Other than a little hiccup at the initial stages with the mic, everything went well. Within few minutes, I was getting more and more confident, as I can see the faces of the audience bright and involved. I was able to  freely look into all directions during the delivery. I think it took around 31 minutes and when I wanted to finish, I thought of relating myself once again. I decided to say that my experience of changes in perception about UNIFIL from when I landed and till date and relate it to their experience with the new application. I finished with a big 'Thank You'; as I look around and waited, there was a bit of silence; then a burst of applause.
I felt very happy as everyone in the audience came to be, hugged and told me that the awed by the presentation and the clarity of the topics discussed. They were extremely generous to praise me all the way. 
The only thing I did not plan was to record the presentation; I had to reconstruct it later as there was a lot of interest generated by word of mouth. Here it is and let's see how you feel about it. Click on the image below:
Presentation at UNIFIL

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Role of IT team in UMOJA implementation

SAP is an application that took both business and IT world by surprise during late 90s and early 2000’s. The time was too short for these silos in an organization to own this and manage it. However the big six auditing firms quickly recognize the importance of this application and the impact that this was going to make during the Y2K issue was threading big corporations; forcing them to look for a sustainable alternative. They branded the IT solution a reengineering agent and started selling it to the CIOs and CFOs. Even though this happened decades ago, the mystery still remains, especially when it comes to the SAP implementation project. One factor that needs to be considered in this context is that SAP is an application similar to Microsoft office, but needs to be configured and enhanced to I fit to run your business better. There exists responsibility on all parts of the organization to carry it through equally and unequivocally.
In a typical situation, the business and IT usually end up having this conversation & mindset.
BUSINESS to IT: “I want this, this and this from our SAP systems. Go away and make it happen then tell me when it’s live. PS -- I’m not available to spec it out … I’m too busy to test … oh and it’s not coming out of my budget. And I need it tomorrow.”
IT to BUSINESS: “Sounds great, but you must have me confused for a mind reader. Am I supposed to have a crystal ball that magically predicts your needs and anticipates every issue before the solution goes live? Seriously, I just need to know where to start. My team and I are too busy to troubleshoot this entire project from scratch, only to find out you wanted something different. If you want me to take responsibility for its success, you need to give me the process requirements and insights we need to succeed.”

Does this sound familiar? While the dialogue above has been exaggerated slightly for dramatic effect, the basic scenario it describes is consistently played out at countless companies struggling to establish ownership and best practices for their SAP systems and including our own UN!

The problem here is there’s no clearly defined ownership. But what’s the solution? In order to get there, let’s take a look at the backstory. How’d we get to this point in the first place? We need to understand the perception and the actions following that

Many businesspeople make the mistake of considering SAP applications strictly as an IT domain, consisting of various programming tasks. (When those tasks aren’t automatically completed without their oversight, they think of IT as an obstacle to SAP success.)

IT people, on the other hand, don’t understand why the business departments won’t give them the information they need to make the organization’s SAP systems function efficiently and effectively. They see the businesspeople as the obstacle to SAP success.

The Solution:

The truth is somewhere in between. When it comes to optimizing our SAP systems, ownership should come from the top down. This means the DMS and the business experts should drive the entire implementation and optimization process through clear and comprehensive communication of all business requirements and parameters. When the business side of the organization owns the data and transactions, it has a vested and actively maintained interest in how the system processes fulfill their business requirements, including: master data, applications, transactions and reporting.

Where is IT’s role then? IT should be an enabler for the processes above. While ownership of the overall SAP systems belongs to the businesspeople, IT should be responsible for the infrastructure and architecture of the system. This means taking the requirements and data supplied by the business side and translating them into functional solutions that fulfill the company’s needs. IT also holds a great value addition to the process by keeping the application on the cusp of the technology curve and makes it adoptable to any new technological adoptions

One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make when it comes to their SAP systems is to treat them like a function of the IT department. It’s a fact: you can’t spell “profit” without IT. Of course, when implementing any IT business solution, you incur the overhead and business costs of supporting and maintaining your new system. And in practice I’ve seen the technical staff understand and adopt to business functions more comfortably than the other way.

When it comes to SAP implementation and optimization, you need to assess the costs of maintaining and supporting your new IT solution in terms of what it means for your business.

As a general rule, it helps to remember SAP (and IT in general) should be a function of your business, not the other way around. Only then will you realize the full value of your SAP system. The better the SAP implementation and optimization processes are at supporting and enhancing your business, the more value and ROI you reap.

Friday, July 19, 2013

 UNIFIL: My thoughts on Go-Live


On July 1, 2013 Umoja went live; a bust of euphoria and happiness all over; I was observing that silently and wondering the whole process. I've been in similar situations; at least a dozen SAP implementations of similar nature (global rollouts) and this one seems to be a bit different. The go-live seems to be perceived that it went too well than it was in reality. I as cautious and at the same time trying to write down the key success factors for such perception.

First, the must need for any huge re-engineering projects, the UNIFIL top management had a great involvement and took a great deal of interest in transforming the commitment to every member of the team.
Second, the IT infrastructure was well built, managed and had a robust support infrastructure and knowledgable staff. Even though the support structure was not there for the SAP implementation; the commitment of the IT team in building the iNeed infrastructure, created the perception of the continued support structure and made the users confident and comfortable
Third, the training that the deployment team gave to the local process experts and end users to get familiarized with the live system.

This can be articulated as a base for the support system in three phases before, during and after SAP implementation. My take on the success of SAP project is not only how well we design and build the solution, but on the support structure we architecture and deploy!      

Ensuring the long-term success of your SAP implementation requires careful planning, preparation and support. From the moment we decided to integrate SAP into our business to long after your new business management software system goes live, having a team of experts (like me!!), is the key to sustaining success and getting back to business as usual.         

One of the biggest mistakes most organizations make when it comes to SAP support is to expect a standard distribution curve with just one spike when you first go live or put a significant piece of new functionality live (like Umoja Extension . They assume they can simply manage those increased support requirements and then stabilize from there. That assumption usually results in the removal of post-go-live SAP support at the exact moment when it is most essential.

The reality is every SAP implementation consists of TWO support requirement spikes and, without fail, the second is nearly always bigger than the first.

The reason is simple: at the moment your new platform goes live staff members are performing with a safety net of extended support coverage in place. They are following a script, learning the interface and starting to gain confidence. In effect, they are moving through the first stages of the learning process:

1.    Unconscious Incompetence -- They don’t know what they don’t know. At this stage of the learning process, your employees may not even recognize the benefits of your new SAP platform. They are a blank slate ready and waiting for input.

2.   Conscious Incompetence -- This is the stage at which users begin to understand exactly how much they don’t understand about Umoja and how that knowledge will benefit them in their roles. Mistakes here are common and, ultimately, helpful in furthering the learning experience.

As go-live Umoja support scales down and users start to gain more confidence in their ability to navigate the new system successfully, they move from the second, to the third and ultimately fourth stage of the learning process. This usually results in the second spike in SAP support requirements because your employees are moving away from the script and they have the confidence to explore capabilities and ask more complex questions.

3.   Conscious Competence -- By now, users have started to form a solid understanding of how SAP works with and for our business. They have begun to form the skills they need to take full advantage of the new features and functions at their disposal.

4.   Unconscious Competence -- At this point, the necessary skills have been developed to the point where they are becoming second nature.

While every SAP implementation is different and requires specialized support strategies, recognizing these phases exist allows you to better prepare and budget for them.

When reducing the Umoja support coverage, it is also critical we make it event-driven rather than time-driven. For instance, some business processes only happen once a month, so you need at least 60 days before you can accurately predict user behavior and overall system stability.

We should not make the mistake of eliminating or scaling back your support resources just because implementation is complete. In fact, in order to ensure complete Go-Live Satisfaction, it’s a good idea to increase the availability of those resources post-implementation.



My next section of this blog is how core IT staff can support SAP applications...expect soon



Saturday, June 29, 2013

To Maintain the User ->Company details:
You go to the company address maintenance via transaction SUCOMP. You can assign the company address in user maintenance using the relevant pushbuttons.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

How to suppress the POST button on a FI transaction

Copy the Sample Function Module(SAMPLE_INTERFACE_00001140) to 'ZSAMPLE_INTERFACE_00001140' and put the below code:-

IF sy-tcode = 'FV50'.
t_exctab-okcod = 'BU'. " do not allow to post
APPEND t_exctab.
ENDIF.
(If you want to disable this post option for multiple transactions, just maintain them in a custom table. Instead of IF Sy-tcode = 'FV50' just read from this custom table.)


Go to transaction FIBF and then Goto Settings->Products ->of a Customer. Press Execute.
Click on New Entries and create a new product ZPOST, give a proper description , Select the check box and save.

Go back to the FIBF first screen. Go to Settings->P/S Modules->of a customer
Click on the new entries Enter the event as 00001140, Product as ZPOST and Function Module as ZSAMPLE_INTERFACE_00001140. Save.

Now when you execute FV50, you will not see POST option on the application tool bar as well as from the Menu.

Thursday, April 4, 2013


What is the UDID?

Each iPhone or iPod Touch has a Unique Device Identifier (UDID), which is a sequence of 40 letters and numbers that is specific to your device. It’s like a serial number but much harder to guess. It will look something like this:2b6f0cc904d137be2e1730235f5664094b831186.

Why do we need the UDID?

Your iPhone can only install programs that are approved by Apple. Applications in the App Store have been approved by Apple for general distribution, but beta customers get to try the app before it’s in the store. We register your UDID with Apple so they can approve our application especially for your iPhone.

How do I get my UDID?

You can copy/paste your UDID from iTunes or email it directly from your device by using a free app from the App Store.

Email Using the Free App

Install and run Ad Hoc Helper. It will create an email with your UDID. Send it to nobody@example.com.

Copy/Paste from iTunes

1. Launch iTunes and connect your iPhone.
2. In the right pane, locate the information about your iPhone, including its name, capacity, software version, serial number, and phone number.

 3. Reveal the Identifier by clicking on Serial Number:.
4. Copy the Identifier to your clipboard by choosing Edit → Copy.
5. Paste the Identifier into an email to nobody@example.com (You should be able to paste into your mail program or web browser by selecting Edit → Paste).

Friday, February 22, 2013


Outsourcing: Obliterate the blame


Shiva Kumar
Feb 2013

Outsourcing is the real manta in today’s business world not to mention its relevance in our organization. Even though it looks alike a very simple process, that has a very interesting evolution in the last decade. I closely watched how this metamorphosis process and was very keen in understanding the fundamental driver to this approach. The businesses due to the globalization of products and services, were purely focussed on maximizing the profits eventually had to venture this road during their journey in the recent years. 
When you see the merits of this process, we can easily articulate a list. However in the changing scale of economics, the merits are no longer merit anymore. On the contrary they are proving to be more drags on the business and the organizations embracing them. 



What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing in it simple form can be defined it is the provision of a service, resource or product from outside the organization. This method came to practice as quick and ways process of staff augmentation tied with cost reduction - a common process in modern economy - for many larger organizations. What for a previous generation of our senior managers was a tactical option, is now an essential component of the business strategy in our core effectiveness and efficiency exercise.
Evolution of Outsourcing
Until few years ago, the managers, like me in regarded and used outside contractors and short term consultants to overcome the temporary constraints on resources. In my last decade long of working in this organization, I’ve consistently used hiring consultants from outside purely as a part of the staff augmentation and to support our initiatives and work, which are completely decided and driven by us. This was purely a tactical decision and was considered as a project with a unique mandate and clear start and end dates.
This was the same in the private sector as well till end of 90’s. The beginning of the new millennium and the harsher financial realities brought in many new vocabulary in to the business.  They were downsizing, agile workforce, offshoring and delayering, etc. The departments were told not to increase their workforce at the same time to focus on the core competency. This meant clearly not to take on new ones.  By taking this way of outworking, the organizations started to relay on their external partners increasingly than before. The advancement in the computing technologies combined with the word wide web, paved multiple ways to define and build a viable delivery model that can run from any part of the world.
Why outsource?
One of the main objective of the outsourcing is the cost arbitrage, however there are more than one significant reasons for this.
Cost: It is very easy to understand in the laypersons terms that the major advantage of doing this is the cost arbitrage. Geoffrey Moore, a famous management consultant in his book ‘Dealing with Darwin’ had demonstrated this by dividing the organizational activities to core and context. His argument was the organization should focus on the core activities whereas everything else is context and can be moved outside the organization, to leverage the cost benefits of doing so.
Time: Many organizations realized that reducing the tome to go-to market is very critical for their success. The outsourcing keeps the core company small, agile and at the same time focussing on the core activities that might reduce the time to go to market with new products and services.
Skill set: Due to the variety of skill sets that are required in the organization, some of the special skill sets are hard to develop & maintain and as well have a dedicated resource. The in-house resource can be better used, if they can be directed towards the core areas of business.
Management’s psychology: The very nature of moving the work outside the organization, it provides a perception of reduced risk to the management. Risk averse organizations will more likely to see this as a great benefit. The organizations with a stronger staff associations and unions, management benefits greatly with the contractual obligation with an outside partner.
Behind the Outsource
Even though the obvious reasons of the benefits of the outsourcing is compelling for the organizations to adopt, it does work only in certain areas to the benefit. In most o the cases, the benefit is not realized or in the contrary may cost the organization more than insourcing. One of the compelling reason is that the ability and maturity of the organization to identify the core and non-core activities. The non-core activities are the ones that might be yielding a diminishing value over time for the organization to invest on staffing perspective. Moreover the cost of insourcing vs outsourcing is also calculated on cost per resource which does not take the total cost of resource, while is always considered and represented as the obvious cost of the resource, which is most of the time is the standard cost of the post.
One of the main reason of the outsourcing is that it gives the organizations to tag certain tasks as non-core and move the cost under their own recurring operating cost to the non-recurring operating cost.  Most if not all organizations are very well aware of the fact that the non-recurring operating cost is not a true statement. As an industrial engineer and very conversant in standard cost calculation, I’d like to bring to our attention the very interesting phenomenon of hidden cost of outsourcing
Hidden Costs
After a decade of outsourcing of the jobs low cost countries such and India and China, many studies were conducted and have published reports on the hidden costs, which are mostly ignored by the organizations that venture into the outsourcing. Some of them are 
  • Internal resources to select and manage the outsourced partners
  • Quality related costs
  • Costs related to resolving cultural and communication
If these costs are includes and accounted for the comparison, the outsourcing may not be a good choice as against out-locating the operations may yield a greater and effective benefits for the organization.
Responsibility & blame
The one of the reasons that the organizations have clear cut silos of function is to assign and delegate a specific set of functions and responsibility to a group. This is the natural evolution of humankind that follows the pattern of group dynamics. This is the underlying management psychology, that drives structures organizations to work as a well oiled machinery. It not only streamlines the execution of non-core functions, but also assign an entity for assigning responsibility and blame. This becomes part of the non-core activities more then the core activities for the very reason for the accountability on the cost to run those activities are always highlighted.
For example, the Information & technology division for an organization that is involved in designing and developing programs to improve the livelihood of women and children of the under developed and developing countries may be a non-core activity. Eventually, the nature of IT has changed from support role to the enabler role, which is hardly noticeable. When the core activities of the organization does not get and feel the enablement role of this division, the only reason to have the group is to held them responsible and accountable. You guessed it right, it is mostly blame!
Organizational Psychology: Obliterate the blame
When risk shy and monolithically organization it makes more sense for the outsourcing from the cost perspective. The outsourcing partners are well aware of this psychology and factor into their cost the price to take over the blame. The most unobserved part of this whole process is the missed opportunity of the innovation and process improvement, which are possible with no additional cost. 
By outsourcing, the blame is obliterated between the demand generator and the service provider. The Senior management is very happy to carry out their core functions, and wherever not possible, they have an option to deal with the partner on the agreed service levels.(SLAs). The partner gets a steady stream of revenue to keep his books look good with the skill set they have and have to listen to the blame. The most ignored and important thing is that the lost opportunity to continuously innovate and provide opportunities for the core activities to build upon them. This was realized by many organizations and proved by numerous case studies that went full blown offshoring and outsourcing functions do no good to the organization in the long run.
Alternatives: To look within
When the cost of your operation is growing, and we are experiencing a tough inflow of contributions, we can’t offered to stay the same. We need to innovate the process to make the process efficient to keep up the compassionate work what we do around the world.  Fortunately we are not alone. There are many private and public sector organizations that are in the same situation as we have today. Some of the best options we have right now to learn from the peers, learn and adopt the successful recipes to our organization. In the current economic conditions, the companies like Amazon, Apple and Netflix have excelled and we have something to learn from. These organizations have a balanced approach to their outsourcing and insourcing moreover created a very healthy organizational culture that creates an habitat for innovation and growth. All of them own thing in common is the freedom and responsibility that is encouraged and embolden within the employees. Let’s see some of the key elements that we can observe, leant and adapt.
Culture
Most of the successful organizations that make great products and deliver good services do not do them by accident. It is all pointing to the culture that the organization build and grow within before even they start serving their consumers. They value their employees as their first stake holders and provides them with the rich environment to grow and flourish.  There are seven core values that were repeatedly cited in major management studies as the foundation for their success, which will enhance the organization to be cost-effectively in-source and at the same time be delivering the best products & services.
1. Values that we should value
We as other organizations have a very clear Vision and Mission statements. Further we should also articulated the values that we value. In practice we don’t remember or follow it through as it is very hard to measure and value them. We need to articulate and start valuing based on the behaviors and skills in our colleagues.  We should embody the following values as the core values and enforce them.
  • Judgement: The staff member are expected to make wise decisions (business, technical & creative) despite ambiguity; To solve the root cause of the issue as against treating the symptoms; able to think strategically what the staff member trying to do and what he/she does not trying to do; To smartly differentiate between what needs to be done now and what can be done later
  • Communication: To be concise and articulate speech and writing
  • Impact: To be able to accomplish amazing amount of important work and demonstrate consistently strong performance so that colleagues could relay  on.
  • Curiosity: Learn rapidly and eagerly and broadly knowledgeable in business, technology and policies. 
  • Innovation: To be able to re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems; Challenge prevailing assumptions when warranted, and suggest better approaches
  • Courage: To say what you think even if it is controversial. Ability to take smart risks. 
  • Passion: Inspire others with your thirst of excellence and celebrate your wins.
  • Honesty: Non political even when you are disagreeing with others.
  • Selflessness: Ego-less in searching for the best ideas.

II High Performance
A great workplace is nothing but having a stunning colleagues. The workplace health is not just measured by the team parties, free lunches, divisional retreats or employee benefits. It is some of these things and other things, if they are efficient at attracting and retaining stunning employees. The science and math is very simple: the more talent we have the more we can accomplish. Internal “gut-throat” and “swim or sink” behavior should not be tolerated and should be discouraged. Loyalty may be good, but not always. Hard work should not be just the measurement of the hours the staff member puts in, rather it should be the measurement of accomplishing great work. Sustained A-level performance, despite minimal effort, should be rewarded. Diversified styles should be allowed as long as they are aligned to the values mentioned before.
The organizational work can be split into procedural work and creative & inventive work and the staff members always have a mix of them. The general expectation to be in procedural work the expectation should be 2X better than the average. In creative and inventive work, the best are 10X better than the average. Care should be taken to implement this process as the high performance expectation might pose as a threat to the job stability and security.
III Freedom and responsibility
The organization has to focus on developing responsible people to get the most out of their contribution. A responsible staff is the one self motivating, self aware self disciplined, self learning and acts with compassion. The responsible people thrive on freedom and are worthy of freedom. The organization should focus on a model to increase employee freedom every day rather than limit it. This will continue attract and nourish innovative people and the organization has a better chance of success in meeting its objectives. Unfortunately as the organizations grow, they tend to curtail freedom and become bureaucratic. The science behind is very simple.
Desire for bigger positive impact by the organizations creates growth; Growth creates complexity; Growth often shrinks the talent density.  When the growth exceeds the minimal talent density, the business become too complex to run informally with the available staff; To manage the chaos, process and procedures are introduced. No one loves process, but feels good compared to the pain of chaos. The organization starts adopting “time to grow up” mantra. This process focus in turn brings down the talent density and forces the people with talent out of the organization.
Process brings seductively strong near-term outcome as the managers start falling in love with it. However a small change due to the market shift can make their division or department tough to adopt and organizations generally grinds painfully to irrelevance. The outsourcing will start looking a better option.
The organization has a very clear choices before when it is imminently facing this situation, to avoid chaos:
Use process and procedures to drive effective execution of current model, but cripple creativity, flexibility and loose ability to thrive when the market and economics of operation changes. Alternatively as you grow with even more higher performance people with freedom & responsibility and not with rules. 
The key objective is to increase the talent density faster than the organizational growth and complexity and at the same time to consciously try to minimize complexity growth. With the right people, we can shift from the culture of process adherence to a culture of creativity, self discipline, freedom and responsibility.
IV Context and not control
The best managers know how to get great outcomes from their team by setting appropriate context rather than by trying to control their people. They provide the insight and understanding to enable sound decisions. The context that every manager should embrace are Strategy, assumptions, metrics, clearly defined roles and transparency around decision-making. The control which they should avoid is topdown decision making, management approval & planning and process values more then the results. One of the key metric that we are doing and should be doing is the link the individual’s goal to align with the organizational goal.
The key to the manager is when one of your talented people does something dumb, don’t blame them; instead ask themselves what context they failed to set. At the same time, for the managers who are tempted to use “control” hey should be asking themselves what context they could be setting instead.
The benefit of focussing on context is that the high performing employees will do better work if they understand the context better.  Having frequent departmental meetings, open discussion of strategies and results are some of the direction towards investing on context.
However in some cases control can be a tool over context, such as working on emergency, and working with a new hire. The one another case where control will be preferred if you have wrong person for the role-which should be only temporarily.
V Highly aligned loosely coupled departments
The organizational structure is the foundational component to the process of getting amazing results. There could be three distinct traits of organizational formation 
  1. Tightly coupled Monolithic, where the senior management reviews nearly every tactics, lots of cross departmental buy-in meetings, focusing overly on keeping the internal groups happy as the external stakeholders, Mavericks get exhausted trying to innovate, Highly coordinated through centralization, but very slow and the slowness increases with the size of the division.   
  2. Independent Silos, where each group execute their objectives with very little coordination, Alienation and suspicion between departments, may provide a deceptive perception of high results, but in reality produces low results to the organization due to lack of coordination.
  3. Highly aligned and loosely coupled: Highly aligned, where the strategies are clear, broadly understood, interaction between the team focussing on strategy and not tactical, requires a large participation from the top management to be transparent and articulate and perceptive. Loosely coupled where minimal cross functional meetings other than get aligned on straggles & goals. Trust between the groups on the tactical level without previewing and approving one another, managers reaching out proactively and perspective as appropriate, conducting occasional postmortems on tactics necessary to increase alignment.
The third option works great if you have high performance people and good context. The key objective of the our organization is to be big, fast and flexible. This way we can get the things done in-house with amazing results.
VI Personal Development
There meed to be two simple factors that need to be established to justify the post within the organization
  1. The Job has to be big enough: The job assignment should always be big enough so that it keeps the high performance people focussed and keep delivering results at the same time feel the accomplishment. For example we might have an incredible manager of something, but we don’t need a director of it because job is not enough. If the incredible manager left, replace with a manager and not a director.
  2. The employee must be a superstar in current role: This shows that the employee is consistently performing well and a go to person for his peers. This demands a promotion as he can fit on to the next big job.
The organization should aim the personnel development by giving their staff by surrounding them with stunning colleagues. Encourage them by providing them with opportunity to work on big challenges. Mediocre colleagues or unchallenging work is what kills of a person’s skills. However focussing on the career planning such as rotation, mentor assignment The organization should encourage staff to manage their own career growth. High performance people are generally self improving through experience, observation, introspection, reading and discussion. It is well ingrained in our society that the economic security is based on the people’s skills and reputation. The organization had to merely support the self improvements by providing the environment by surrounding them with great talent.
Final Points
As an organization we are in the crossroads with tough choices to make. The organization is growing and we are entering in to new areas of programs, initiatives and delivery by fostering innovation and creativity. The changing technological landscape and the economic factors will weigh in on organization to continue the growth and be sustainable, to improve internal efficiency and effectiveness of the programs. The natural inclination is to cut cost may be looking in to the option of outsourcing or offshoring. However many used cased and business studies had proved that that may not be the option for a long term strategic solution. However I tried to quote based on the best run companies where insourcing with proper direction would prove to be more beneficial. With stunning colleagues with compassionate objective, we can deliver amazing results that can’t be matched by any outsourcing partner.