Recently I have been reading The World Is Flat by Thomas Freidman, an account of the continual trend of globalization and what this means for countries, companies and individuals alike. In it he postulates that globalization is resulting in the leveling of the competitive playing field such that a vastly greater quantity and range of work can be and is being done by far more people all over the world. In particular, the book focuses on the challenges faced by the west from seeing so many of what were previously seen as high skilled jobs (too high skilled to be lost) being outsourced or offshored to low cost centres such as India and China; jobs such as accounting, medical diagnostics and IT related services.
One of the most natural reactions to this trend would be to put up barriers to stem the tide of jobs being lost overseas, much as has been attempted previously for agricultural and manufacturing jobs, and also some service sector jobs. Especially as these high skilled jobs are the ones that were supposed to protect us from the loss of the lower skilled jobs. Furthermore, the speed at which developing countries are catching up with the West, and hence at which jobs can be and are being outsourced to the developing world is increasing, so it is natural for this pace of chance to frighten a lot of people, and frighten them into protectionist policies, but we have seen from experience in the other sectors where jobs have moved almost wholesale to other economies around the globe, that the migration will continue sooner or later, and it will continue to escalate as the world continues to develop.
The best strategy to ensure continual success according to Freidman in his book, is to continually invest in ourselves, as a country, as a company and as individuals, so as to always stay one step ahead and to always be able to offer the next level in the value chain. Don’t resist the migration of jobs; instead let them go, for we don’t want those jobs anymore if they can be done by anyone is Freidman’s argument. Instead, we want the higher level jobs, which require most skill, most innovation and most creativity; the ones which are going to add the most value to the customer, and therefore which we can charge a premium for being able to perform.
As I read this it occurs to me that the work Conchango does, and importantly, the methodology with which we do it fits with this approach in a number of ways. Specifically I would refer to chapter 6 in Freidman’s book, “The Untouchables”, which describes the traits and skills that individuals will need, indeed do need to exhibit in order to remain competitive and more than that, to remain in demand. Looking over the list of seven traits of the untouchables that Freidman presents, I can see parallels with the attributes required in an agile development environment. Importantly also, is that an agile methodology can help organizations to leverage these qualities too, and Freidman’s study is as much about what companies must do as it is about individuals.
The added value delivered from an agile project is reflected in the benefit to the client of a faster delivery of the product because of the close working relationship with users and the collaboration with the business. By building and delivering the system in a component like approach, the customer can begin using the system much sooner and therefore begin reaping the benefits that the system is designed to deliver much sooner. Furthermore, with agile development the scope of the project can be changed much more easily, as new requirements surface, technologies change or become available, or experience using the first stages of development uncovers unexpected benefits or problems that the company decides to tackle instead. This kind of development and these kinds of benefits to the user can only be achieved most effectively when we work closely with the business and requires a lot of regular, often daily contact, which would be very hard to achieve with the same level of success with developers based half way round the world and in different time zones.
Another facet of agile development that fits into the strategy for succeeding on a flat world platform relates to broad skill sets. Agile teams, in order to react quickly and flexibly work best with fewer people than would be found in a traditional development project, yet the same spectrum of skills have to be present. Fewer people being required to do more work collectively and perform a greater range of tasks individually to a professional standard as a result of the demands of an agile development project represents to me the kind of cross skilling and adaptation required to deliver the higher added value needed to stay ahead in the competitive flat world.
Related to the above two points is the concept of leveraging, which to anyone familiar with consultancy or management speak in general will not be a new term, however it remains as important if not more so than ever before. Using the unique abilities of our consultants to unleash more of the potential of our clients’ organizations, we can deliver greater business benefits. With the shortened time to delivery, the greater flexibility of scope and the increased collaboration enabled through agile working, these benefits can be realized more quickly and to a greater extent.
A further point that Freidman makes fosters the design of systems “combining the best of what computers do with the best of what people can do”. For example, computers are good at storing, sorting and finding information, which people are not. People are however good at making informed, business critical decisions when presented with all the information required to do that. The better we can develop systems to do this, the better off our clients will be, and once again, the skills required to thrive in a flat world according to Freidman, and those similarly demanded of agile development allow this to happen faster and more effectively than traditional methods have the potential to.
James