Fresh Eyes Peer Review

As I walked into office today, I found a not-so-little black book on my desk. Curious, I picked it up and glanced through the pages. Now let me clarify, there was no ‘Confidential’ mark on it and so reading it is not a violation of regulations. Anyway, I found that it was a copy of a case study submitted by an ex-intern with the team I worked for, who was trying to study the role of this function in a typical organization.

It was an interesting read, especially since it spoke in an external perspective about a function I am involved with on a day to day basis. The study was done about an year ago, before I was part of the team, and so it actually gave me some information about the recent history as well as some extinct service lines. I saw entertainment value in the exercise, but I am sure there is more to it than just that.

When you are facing a nagging problem on your project – one of those kinds where you are sure you know the solution, but just can’t place it – it is often useful to have someone else take a look at it. It is a form of external consultation, except that instead of a subject matter expert or some individual specialized in offering consultancy services, you depend on someone in your peer group who would have sufficient knowledge to understand the problem and suggest a solution. This cancels the effects of fatigue caused by repeatedly tackling the same problem.

Let’s call it a ‘Fresh Eyes Peer Review’. The most obvious shortcoming is the risk of confidentiality breach and therefore please be careful while applying it to sensitive projects. This is probably common practice in some teams, but might be useful to those who have missed out.

Assuming there is some problem to be solved, and that problem is a human error, there is a clear logic that applies to why the Fresh Eyes Peer Review is so effective. It plays on psychology, and I must warn you, most writers tend to take psychology as a subject to wax eloquent on, even without a good foundation on the subject – a science misunderstood by laymen, but that is a fact we can pick up on another day. Coming back to the topic, let me take you through why the Fresh Eyes Peer Review is generally so effective. And for that, let us consider the essential elements of such a peer review exercise:

1.    One is given the opportunity to express his opinion on another’s work/idea and possibly find fault with it

2.    One is able to comment on a project he/she has not put in an effort into building, and therefore has no stake in. This enables the reviewer to suggest disruptive changes and daringly innovative, fresh ideas

3.    There are no personal favorite elements in the project for the reviewer; so there is no reason for thoughts on the lines of “We worked too hard on that part, so let us not mess with it. We can change anything else”

4.    The reviewer has a potential opportunity to contribute to the project and is likely to make full use of an idea that has merit

Many of these points dwell on the personal behavior of people and some of them border on ego and selfishness. It is not a perfect world; and the intelligent ones have to be reasonable and expect some such elements in every professional. The really intelligent ones take this thought and leverage it for the success of the business – or any other endeavor you are part of. Now that is one more reason to use the ‘Fresh Eyes Peer Review’!

Flashback: An End to Outsourcing?

Outsourcing – a concept which took the world of business by storm a few years ago – is slowly becoming a more complex arena, say experts. In the beginning it was pretty simple: Certain business-related activities which are too expensive or cumbersome to be carried out in-house, is taken care of by an external agency specializing in the area. The primary benefits included specialized skills and cost savings – especially if the outsourcing is done to a foreign destination where labor and infrastructure are significantly cheaper.

Asia in general, and India in particular, has traditionally been one of the leaders in outsourcing destinations, primarily due to the savings in labor and availability of certain specialized skill sets like IT. However, this is slowly beginning to change, if recent trends in the industry offer a reliable clue. Take our own IT services scenario as an example - the increased demand for IT skill sets in Asia have driven up the costs incurred in hiring and sustaining an IT professional. Similar is the case with business infrastructure, where the costs have skyrocketed for the same reason. As a result, IT service organizations are compelled to drive up their prices and hence the companies wanting to take advantage of outsourcing are beginning to realize that there is little or no ‘advantage’ left!

Think of it as inflation: Costs drive up prices, which in turn drive up costs – to put it simply. This has recently begun to have significant effects on outsourcing. Last year, New Call Telecom, a British organization dealing in telecommunications, was in the news for recognizing this and actually taking steps towards this. The company has scrapped its plans for a call center in India, and instead set it up back home in Lancashire! Also, countries like Brazil, China and Egypt are the new contenders for ‘favorite IT destination’.

The IT outsourcing industry is changing fast. We, the people, must essentially change with it.