The Onsite Account

Strategies are important for any progressive organisation. But even good strategies fail. And more often than not they fail on account of people not interpreting strategies or concepts correctly. Organisations, therefore, need alignment. Swapna Kishore and Rajesh Naik weave an interesting story of such an alignment at a Banglore-based IT company, Ferret, narrated by senior Project Manager Sunny Chinnappa. We witness Ferret attempting to overcome challenges to ensure that its structure, systems and practices are in place and in sync with the vision of PTI, a US-based customer which acquired Ferret.
 
The authors are engineers from IIT and you can add the IIM tag to that and stir it up with work experience in IT and consulting firms. That makes for impeccable credentials to attempt a book such as Aligning Ferret (Postscript Impressions) and the fact that this is their sixth book helps. The ease with which they bring in concepts such as Lead-lag effect, Balanced Scorecard, MBQM, CMM is commendable. They entice the reader as the plot thickens and one merrily goes along with Sunny and his colleagues in getting familiar with these concepts. This is certainly a high point of the book. The parallel plot that deals with Sunny’s pregnant wife, his sister and his nephew provides relief whenever the plot gets too heavy.
 
The book has lot of interesting nuggets. Take the one on cross cultural differences best reflected in use of the expression: ‘Okay’. While Indians use it freely to mean that they have heard and understood what’s been said — their foreign counterparts take it to be a commitment to what’s been proposed!
 
Folks working in the IT sector and even project management will find Aligning Ferret relevant. The fact that each chapter is followed by consolidation exercises challenges the ‘novel’ tag that the book otherwise attracts and deserves.

A version of this review was published in the Businessworld issue dated 03 August 2009