Both my parents worked in government sector and I was so used to hearing them saying that their managers control their work lives to a great extent.  Even after 3 decades and now that the private sector is cherished with a greater Corporate Culture, lot of things changed except the fact that even today, mostly our managers control our work lives.  The kind of infrastructure where we work ( compared to good old depleted government buildings Vs Lead Skyscraper buildings),  Posh office furniture ( Rolling cushion chairs compared to Wooden seats with cotton cushions not changed for decades),  well maintained housekeeping ( compared to dirty toilets and rusty ceiling fans filled with dust over years with now High class wash rooms with deos and perfumes, handwash and towels),  Fringe benefits (Compared to Rs 1 or 2 tea wala refreshments to Vending machines in office/  Microwaves and in-house Kitchens and 24 hours food malls in the office building)… the list goes on and on in the comfort zone. Yet, today’s employee is a very stressed out and unsatisfied project team member.  Why is it so?

Sometime in 2004-05, I got a chance to meet one of the Senior Vice Presidents from Netherlands of the Bank I was working for when he came down to India. First ever one on one session with a senior person in the Organization and he came up with few questions to understand how we operate on the floor for a global migration project.  When I informed him the process, he sounded surprised saying that he was not aware that we have been doing so much of efforts in the back end.   I felt disappointed and I asked him, whose fault?   He was frank enough to tell me, that he never heard my name nor the process I was talking about and said, it is a big question of visibility.   And where was the gap-  Communication!

Last week there was a discussion on usefulness of Project Management in product development in this blog. Umasree Raghunath added a detailed comment on the topic. I thought it deserves to be highlighted as a separate guest blog. Here goes…

I would like to begin with a vital way of we perceiving the service industry today. To most of us working in the IT industry, the applications we build is also considered as Products. And hence Product Management and Project Management widely go hand in hand.