People at their best

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QAI
“People at their Best”
-PCMM Case study_Techspan
INDIA | USA | CHINA | SINGAPORE
By Shubhendu Parth

What is PCMM?
PCMM is just not a certificate to help garner more business.
It is a by-product of the initiatives that institutionalize
processes and impact on people and productivity

What do you do when you are booked on J-class and find out that one of your junior
colleagues, who is entitled to Y-class, is also on the same flight? Well, if you have
some time before you board the aircraft, you downgrade your booking. However, if
you have already boarded the aircraft, the best option is to request the cabin-crew
for a seat next to your colleague…
If you think this is some fluff being quoted from the human rights blue book, hold
on... this is a real example from an exhaustive document on do’s and dont’s from
TechSpan, the youngest company to achieve level 3 of the people capability maturity
model (PCMM).
And in case you got it wrong, PCMM does not make it mandatory for a company to
actually include such instructions in its employee handbook. Rather, it attempts to
make an organization conscious enough to develop best practices for nurturing,
developing and managing its workforce.
Introduction

It’s an evolutionary roadmap for implementing the vital practices from one or
more domains of organizational process. It contains the essential elements of
effective processes for one or more disciplines and describes an evolutionary
improvement path from an ad hoc, immature process to a disciplined, mature
process with improved quality and effectiveness.
Also, since an organization cannot implement all of the best workforce practices in
a day, PCMM introduces them in stages.
Each progressive level of the PCMM produces a unique transformation in the
organization’s culture by equipping it with more powerful practices for attracting,
developing, organizing, motivating, and retaining its workforce. Thus, the PCMM
establishes an integrated system of workforce practices that matures through
increasing alignment with the organization’s business objectives, performance,
and changing needs.
Introduction

Why PCMM?
Forty years ago, people feared that technology would reduce the need for educated
workers, leaving large segments of the population unemployed. What actually
happened was just the opposite. In fact, the demand for educated workers today
exceeds the supply. In the knowledge economy, companies are competing in two
markets—one for its products and services and the other for the essential talent
to develop and deliver them.
Recruiting and retention are now as important as production and distribution in the
corporate business strategies of knowledge-intensive companies. Although most
companies understand the importance of attracting and retaining talent, many lack a
coherent approach to achieving their talent goals. Further, most lack the vision to
integrate a system of practices to achieve their workforce objectives. This is
where PCMM tells you exactly what the Fortune 500 companies have been doing world
over to tackle the situation.

PCMM Pre requisites

The Dos and Don'ts of PCMM

The Objective:
The primary objective of PCMM is to improve the capability of the workforce, which can
be defined as the level of knowledge, skills, and process abilities available for performing
an organization’s business activities. Workforce capability indicates an organization’s
readiness for performing its critical business activities and the likely results from
performing these business activities. It also means working towards the potential for
benefiting from investments in process improvement or advanced technology.
No wonder then, since its release in 1995, it has successfully guided workforce
improvement programs in companies such as Boeing, Ericsson and Lockheed Martin.
Interestingly, while Wipro is the first company to achieve the highest level (PCMM 5)
globally, TechSpan India is the youngest company to touch level 3.

The ROI

Top of the World:
Wipro’s first brush with the process was in as early as 1995. According to company V-P
(HR) Pratik Kumar, it was decided to deploy this model due to Wipro’s inherent focus on
processes to deliver high quality services and products and develop exceptional talent.
"The depth and width of PCMM to make a robust and sustained people process
structure motivated us to go for it," he added. However, the initiation took some time.
Between 1996 and 1997, it was a phase of selling the concept internally—the top
management and employees being taken through the awareness campaign and PCMM
related communications.
The entire organization was addressed and key people from across different levels and
departments were involved at various stages. Champions were developed at all levels
and functions—from the CEO of the company to the talent engagement and
developmental head, followed by business heads, technical managers and people from
delivery, quality and marketing functions. And finally, when the company formally
launched its PCMM initiative there were 100 champions to
start this journey.

Top of the World:
The next big leap towards achieving PCMM was to conduct a gap analysis to understand the missing
links between what Wipro was practicing and what the model prescribed. Design and
implementation of the processes that could bridge the gap followed. Documentation of the
processes was another activity that was initiated as a parallel activity. "We looked at the
documentation from two perspectives. One, it provides the necessary backbone support and two, it
also identifies possible gaps in an existing process," Kumar explained. With this in mind, the 100-odd
champions set out to conduct the huge task of documentation. There was more to come. There was
a need to institutionalize the processes and here, the strong belief in the four threads of developing
competency, managing and motivating performance, shaping workforce and building team culture
came handy.
Next on the block was the need for communication within the organization on the processes, their
impact, usage and modes of feedback. Finally, measurement factors through quantification on status
and value of processes implemented were put in place. Spot checks were conducted to validate the
status and health of processes and to ensure that they are being implemented. A detailed pre-
assessment on the PCMM framework across organization preceded the final assessment as
prescribed by the Software Engineering Institute. The final assessment was done by none other than
the principal architect of the model—Dr Bill Curtis.

What’s Next?
While Wipro’s entire journey to PCMM level 5 was completed in 2001, the model itself advocates
continuous improvement. So what’s the next step for the company which has already achieved the
top level? "We will continue to work on emerging HR challenges and use the PCMM framework to
sustain the robustness of our processes," says Kumar. Meanwhile, Wipro is also providing
consultation to some of its overseas clients in assessing the maturity of their people
processes, developing a roadmap for improvement and facilitating their journey.
Age no bar
"Right from day one of our PCMM journey, we knew that the final assessment of the model
framework would be a by-product of our initiative to institutionalize processes that impact people
and their productivity in TechSpan," says Arjun Malhotra, chairman and CEO, TechSpan. He proudly
adds, profitability and $18,641 addition to market valuation. A similar study by Welbourne and
Andrews amongst 136 non-financial organizations offering IPOs in the US stock market during 1988
suggests that while the average survival probability was 0.70, organizations that placed a high level
of value on their employees had a 0.79 probability of survival. On the other hand, companies that
placed less value on their employees had a survival probability of only 0.60. When considering
employee compensation and rewards, an organization that had high levels of employee value,
compensation and rewards increased its survival probability to 0.92, while firms that scored low on
both measures lowered their chance of organizational survival to 0.34. "Being assessed at P-CMM
level 3 means we are in exclusive and distinguished company of high maturity organizations, and
we have earned the distinction of being the world’s youngest and only ebusiness centric company
achieve this."

Continuous Workforce Innovation
Organizational Performance Alignment
Continuous Capability Improvement
Mentoring, Organizational Capability Management
Quantitative Performance Management
Competency-Based Assets, Empowered Workgroups
Competency Integration
Participatory culture, Workgroup
Development, Competency-Based Practices,
Career Development, Workforce Planning,
Competency Analysis
Compensation, Training and
Development, Performance
Management, Work Environment,
Communication and Coordination
Staffing
5 Optimizing
4 Predictable
3 Defined
2 Managed
1 Initial
Step by Step

According to TechSpan’s senior manager for people development, Monica Mudgal, the journey, which
was appropriately termed the ‘people process improvement’ (PPI) initiative, was aimed at achieving
three specific objectives. First, to increase the involvement of employees in creating and improving
people practices. Second, to standardize people processes with the help of the SEI People framework
and third, to increase efficiency and scalability of people processes and overall software development
and delivery operations.
So how did they do it? The first phase (1999-2000), Mudgal explains, was all about getting
management commitment to pursue the ‘people first’ philosophy and recognition of the fact that
people form the key to sustained business success. After a unanimous buy in the PCMM
model and analysis of where the company stood, it was decided that level-3 was a realistic target to
achieve. Adds Mudgal, "The higher levels were too ambitious for TechSpan at that stage."
What and How?

The next phase involved the formal launch of PCMM. Education sessions with the staff were held on
the various PCMM KPAs and the people processes within the company and 13 internal assessment
team members were selected. All this, while the task forces were fine tuning processes within their
KPAs. However, the company decided to postpone the final assessment date from May 2001 to
December in order to buy some more time for implementation of suggested improvements in
processes. This was also aimed to ensure effectiveness of newer initiatives and to increase
awareness among staff through more involvement. The time was also well spent with the ATMs
undergoing training on assessment techniques, while a two-days spot-check or mini-pre-assessment
was also carried out during the period. The final assessment included interviews with process
owners, senior managers and staff, collation of data from the interview sessions, document reviews,
survey findings and the conclusive rating.
What and How?
April 2000 saw the company actually taking the plunge after its key members attended a workshop
organized by QAI. Soon Mudgal and her team were mapping all the people policies and processes to
understand the missing areas. Task forces from amongst the employees were formed for each key
process area (KPA). Luckily for TechSpan, the gap analysis showed that the company already had 80%
of systems in place for level 3. The need was now to create a plan for covering the remaining 20%
and this became the key result area for each KPA.

The Road ahead
"The certification has been an important milestone that has left its mark on all those involved in this
journey at TechSpan. The certification has helped TechSpan in addressing and tackling important
issues like career development, performance management, competency development, training and
organizational competency," says Bonnie Singh, executive director, TechSpan India and sponsor for
it’s P-CMM initiative. According to him, the next step for the PPI team is to harness the learnings
from the assessment process to further enhance the robustness of the existing people processes at
level 3 maturity in the next six months. And by August 2003, TechSpan is aiming for the PCMM 4.
While the Indian software industry has been quick in adopting the software CMM developed by
Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and there are already two dozen IT companies assessed at level
5, experts suggest that PCMM is slated to be the next big thing in the software industry. And as
Mudgal says, "Process improvement is important but the key to success is the capability of the
peopleware. In fact, the P-CMM model works as a supporting process framework to facilitate better
software processes."

Bonnie Singh speaks.
Executive director, TechSpan India, and sponsor for it’s PCMM initiative
Even though we achieved the PCMM level 3 recently, the ground rules for people processes were laid out in early
1999, the day TechSpan was set up. We wanted to build an institution where employees share the same values as
founders and hence it was important to have mature processes that would help translate values down to every
single employee. During the initial days, a lot of time was spent on deciding small but significant things like the
organization’s culture, values and etiquette. This was the beginning of our people processes program. However, let
me clarify that our people process initiative was not aimed at achieving the PCMM certification. Instead the
certification is the byproduct of our initiatives.
When did TechSpan start working on the PCMM initiative?
Not really. By October 2000, the slowdown had hit the Indian economy. But then, customers had also
started demanding consistent quality of deliverables in the processes. This is when the idea for testing maturity
through an external audit started gaining importance within the company. However, we decided to go in for PCMM
rather than the software model because we felt that our people processes were more matured. Also, we chose
PCMM for its business implications like stability, retention, knowledge retention, re–skilling, retooling, better
recruitment, quality of people and ability to resource.
So what was the trigger for the certification? Was it the desire to showcase what you were
already practicing?

After a unanimous decision to go in for PCMM certification, and doing an analysis of where we stood, we set level-3
as a realistic target to achieve. However, when I was given January 2002 as the date for Bonnie Singh final
assessment, my initial reaction was of nervousness. Fortunately, we had most of the processes already in place for
level 3 and hence the next step was to create a plan and a gap analysis to identify how we would cover the rest.
Also, we decided to treat the level 3 assessment as a separate project, and laid down a detailed plan to achieve the
same. We also included pre-assessment as a part of our plan to improve as we went along. In the long 18-month
project, education emerged as a big focus area. We also realized that it was important to constantly educate people
and make them aware of the changes as we went along
How difficult was the task?
The certification has been an important milestone in TechSpan’s journey and has helped us in addressing and
tackling important issues like career development, performance management, competency development, training
and organizational competency. The transformation at the organizational level has been significant and perceptible.
The achievement reflects in our consistent software delivery to customers. One of the biggest achievements at the
company level has been the value that this certification has brought to TechSpan. Today, people tell me that this
has been a truly enriching journey that has bought TechSpanians closer. The process has also helped us
institutionalize our people process improvement program and the certification has ensured that we will constantly
innovate and look at the new processes to sustain the current level and target the next levels—P-CMM 4 and 5. On
the personal front, a big achievement for me was my evolution from being sales oriented and transactional
focussed to becoming the ‘process man’ at TechSpan.
What has been the learning from this initiative?

Thank you

People at their best

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