Stanley held an Awards meeting for the TouchWorks team. He presented 4 awards to 4 of team members. I took many pictures and will post as soon as I can get them from Stanley (Stanley's camera). The whole team attended and Stanley asked for each to indicate on a map of India were they were from that one of the members drew on the whiteboard. It turned out that most of the team was from the southern part of India (Bangalore's general location). Many were from Bangalore. It was a good way to break the ice and was a fun exercise for all.
Attrition is a mjor problem with Indian IT companies. Allscripts and HealthAsyst was not immune to this problem facing a 15-20% attrition rate. To help deal with the issue HealthAsyst has agreed to keep extra non-chargable staff on the project. So for example of a staff of 20 TouchWorks developers they have an additional 4 developers where on the project who they are not charging for. If someone quits then the team will remain fully staffed because its been overstaffed already.
HealthAsyst went through their retention plans with us. They give raises every 6 months and say that they pay above to 90th percentile salary. Their senior people have been around here 3-4 years.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Dinner with Bijoy
Bijoy who is VP of Engineering at HealthAsyst and who has been taking us around invited us to his house for a traditional Indian dinner. It was very interesting and I really wanted to see how people actually live in India so I ws excitied about it. You don't really get a sense of were the typical Indian lives just driving on the main streets, etc.
Bijoy's family consists of three people his wife Sonja and 4 year old daughter. They live in a two bedroom apartment in a neighborhood about 15 - 20 minutes away from the old office. Getting there is interesting as you go through a variety of residential streets that are actually more like alley's in the US. They zig and zag around because there is no planning that goes into development of a neighborhood it's a hodge podge of different buildings.
Sonja brought us many dishes that could have fed 50 no just the 7 that were there. Each had it's unique taste and smells. Like many Indian dishes most were spicy, some of the dishes were fish, mushed mustard leaves, variety of bread, vegetables and chicken. It was all taste but for me I still need to develop a more tolerable stomach so I ate moderately.
Our hosts were very gracious and we stayed until about 11pm. All the US guys were pretty tired by that time. Stanley slept overnight at Bijoy and Sojna's house. The amount of available labor in India is amazing. Bijoy has a live-in house keeper, he has someone come in every morning to wash dishes, he has someone to wash his car a few times a week. He had someone paint the inside of his house for very little money.
When we left the stray dog's that wonder the streets of Bangalore were fighting and creating quite a commontion. The streets during that time of night were pretty quiet of traffic and pedestrians.
I'll post some pictures from the dinner as soon as I meet up with Stanley who is currently at the old office.
Bijoy's family consists of three people his wife Sonja and 4 year old daughter. They live in a two bedroom apartment in a neighborhood about 15 - 20 minutes away from the old office. Getting there is interesting as you go through a variety of residential streets that are actually more like alley's in the US. They zig and zag around because there is no planning that goes into development of a neighborhood it's a hodge podge of different buildings.
Sonja brought us many dishes that could have fed 50 no just the 7 that were there. Each had it's unique taste and smells. Like many Indian dishes most were spicy, some of the dishes were fish, mushed mustard leaves, variety of bread, vegetables and chicken. It was all taste but for me I still need to develop a more tolerable stomach so I ate moderately.
Our hosts were very gracious and we stayed until about 11pm. All the US guys were pretty tired by that time. Stanley slept overnight at Bijoy and Sojna's house. The amount of available labor in India is amazing. Bijoy has a live-in house keeper, he has someone come in every morning to wash dishes, he has someone to wash his car a few times a week. He had someone paint the inside of his house for very little money.
When we left the stray dog's that wonder the streets of Bangalore were fighting and creating quite a commontion. The streets during that time of night were pretty quiet of traffic and pedestrians.
I'll post some pictures from the dinner as soon as I meet up with Stanley who is currently at the old office.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
India - Day 3 - The Old Office
Today we are at HealthAsyst's "old office". This is their original office when Allscripts started working with HealthAsyst. It's basically full and they cannot expand here. Many poeple still stay here to work because its close to home. Others have moved to the new office because it's closer to home for them or they started at the company later and have no choice but to go to the new office. The pictures above show are drive to the old office. It turns out that it wasn't as busy as we expected.
The rush here starts later than in the US. Thats because people come in later so that they will have a window to talk to people in the US. So its typical for an Indian to start work at 9:30am and go til 9:00pm From 6:00pm to 9:00pm is there window to talk to folks in theUS. Its an 11.5 hour difference between India and Chicago. So 6:00pm in India translates to 6:30am in Chicago. You can see how communications with India must be very precise and detailed to be efficient. It's frustrating to have to wait so long just to get simple questions answered.
Monday, February 11, 2008
India - Day 2
Today I met Umesh Bajaj who is the CEO of HealthAsyst. He's a very interesting guy and has filled in a lot of gaps about India history, Indian economy and IT industry in Bangalore. Umesh is coming to the US in early March and will be visiting Chicago. I've asked him to stop by our office when he's hear.
The country is clearly changing and becoming more Westernized. This process is evolving but clearly it is happening.
India has its share of internal terriosm that you never hear about in the US. They also have insurgent groups that operate in rural parts of the country.
Today's newspaper had an article about seven people getting run over yesterday in Bangalore.
I'm helping Simon interview people for a project that he may staff here. He's passing them along to me if he feels they are promising. So far I talked to a total of 3 people out of 9. Simon is looking for Delphi coders to get his code base up to the latest version Delph which is Delphi .Net.
I've uploaded a picture of the office here. It's pretty typical I think. The cubes are 4 person and tight.
Cross Cultural Sensitivity
We started our day out at HealthAsyst by attending a workshop on "Cross Cultural Sensitiviy" ran by a consultant. The workshop met through about 1:30pm.
The approach to workshop took was to learn about yourself and then also learn about your Indian counterpart by using a questionare called "Windham International Cultural Model". I learned that I was different from the sterotypical Indian but not hugely different.
There are certain cultural aspects of India that may help explain why Indians may act differently from an American. For example, Indians prefer a hierarchy, Americans less so. This has something to do with Indians large extended families. An Indian will still go to their parents for decisions even when they are self-sufficient, married, have children etc. This may help explain why an Indian may not appear to be working independently.
Indians like harmony. This means that they are less likely to be direct or object to ideas they may think are silly. Doing so would impact harmony but it is necessary in a thriving creative team.
None of these types of things seem very insurtmountable to being able to working together. In fact, a good process should be able to overcome these issues.
Developing long distance capabilities is certainly doable. One issue that is more difficult to deal with is the time diffference issue. This really requires that written communication be thoughtful, detailed and clear. The window for direct communication is only a few hours a day. Early in the morning for US (7pm - 9pm) and evening (6pm - 8pm) for India. Contrast that with working with our Cary team who we can contact all day long if necessary.
We also learned today the TOUCHWORKS V11 was really developed using a classic waterfall model. I'm not sure that the HealthAsyst people understand what is being done in the US to stablize the product and the collection of resources from the other company BU's to plug holes. They do have a sizeable issues list that they are working on.
Thats it for today I think. Simon is not feeling well either something he ate or just jet lagged.
Tomorrow we will be looking more at some of the quesitons that Russ, Bobby and myslef came up with for them. I'll publish those tomorrow for you.
By the way my cell phone does work here. Cheaper to communicate via computer.
The approach to workshop took was to learn about yourself and then also learn about your Indian counterpart by using a questionare called "Windham International Cultural Model". I learned that I was different from the sterotypical Indian but not hugely different.
There are certain cultural aspects of India that may help explain why Indians may act differently from an American. For example, Indians prefer a hierarchy, Americans less so. This has something to do with Indians large extended families. An Indian will still go to their parents for decisions even when they are self-sufficient, married, have children etc. This may help explain why an Indian may not appear to be working independently.
Indians like harmony. This means that they are less likely to be direct or object to ideas they may think are silly. Doing so would impact harmony but it is necessary in a thriving creative team.
None of these types of things seem very insurtmountable to being able to working together. In fact, a good process should be able to overcome these issues.
Developing long distance capabilities is certainly doable. One issue that is more difficult to deal with is the time diffference issue. This really requires that written communication be thoughtful, detailed and clear. The window for direct communication is only a few hours a day. Early in the morning for US (7pm - 9pm) and evening (6pm - 8pm) for India. Contrast that with working with our Cary team who we can contact all day long if necessary.
We also learned today the TOUCHWORKS V11 was really developed using a classic waterfall model. I'm not sure that the HealthAsyst people understand what is being done in the US to stablize the product and the collection of resources from the other company BU's to plug holes. They do have a sizeable issues list that they are working on.
Thats it for today I think. Simon is not feeling well either something he ate or just jet lagged.
Tomorrow we will be looking more at some of the quesitons that Russ, Bobby and myslef came up with for them. I'll publish those tomorrow for you.
By the way my cell phone does work here. Cheaper to communicate via computer.
Nandi Hills
After arriving on Sunday and after some lunch we drove out to the site of an ancient temple and fort called Nandi Hills. Its a pretty popular tourist site for locals. Here is the Wikipedia entry on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandi_Hills%2C_India
It's really a magnificent site on one side of the hill its a sheer drop off and all rock. We walked through the temple were a Hindu priest would perfom a cerimony for you. We had no idea what he was doing and some of us thought that he might curse us rather than blessing us so we kept our distance.
The drive out to Nandi takes about 1 hour so by the time we headed back we were all nodding off.
To get us around Bijoy hired a car and driver. The driver was quite efficient and couragious and certainly knew his way around. I would easily say that he is the equal to any New York cabbie I've ever driven with. He was not afraid to take on any truck or bus and figure out how to fit the vehicle into the smallest gap possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandi_Hills%2C_India
It's really a magnificent site on one side of the hill its a sheer drop off and all rock. We walked through the temple were a Hindu priest would perfom a cerimony for you. We had no idea what he was doing and some of us thought that he might curse us rather than blessing us so we kept our distance.
The drive out to Nandi takes about 1 hour so by the time we headed back we were all nodding off.
To get us around Bijoy hired a car and driver. The driver was quite efficient and couragious and certainly knew his way around. I would easily say that he is the equal to any New York cabbie I've ever driven with. He was not afraid to take on any truck or bus and figure out how to fit the vehicle into the smallest gap possible.
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