Over the last decade, India has emerged as an important global player in software and other IT enabled services. Studies have attributed India's success to factors such as the existence of a large pool of English-speaking and technically qualified manpower, low cost, and minimal regulatory intervention. While the influence of these factors cannot be denied, the authors feel that adaptive as well as archetypal project management practices have the biggest influence on the industry in maintaining its competitive edge. This paper presents the features of the project management practices in the Indian software industry on the basis of a questionnaire survey, field visits and a number of interviews with industry participants and researchers. The paper addresses the unique characteristics of the industry and highlights the opportunities and challenges facing the project managers.
Indian IT industry has grown substantially over the years and has found its place in the global market. The $47 bn industry, having generated over 1.63 million jobs spread over 2,800 software firms that have majority of Fortune-500 firms as their clients, is growing ever so steadily (NASSCOM Annual Report, 2007-08), particularly in the software and services sector. The total software and service exports have grown from a mere $4 mn in 1980-81 to a staggering $31.5 bn in 2007-08, registering an average annual growth rate of over 40% during the period. With the country becoming a highly attractive destination for business process outsourcing (Kobitzsch et al., 2001; and Mclaughlin, 2003) and with the recent focus on offshore development, the industry is definitely poised to realize its long cherished potential. In addition to that, top firms of the industry are consciously building up their domain expertise in different industry verticals. Of late, the national and provincial governments have given greater thrust on communication and other infrastructural growth. As a result, the firms get sizeable contracts in IT-enabled services, and also a boost to go up the value chain. All this has made the Indian IT industry globally competitive (Acharya and Mahanty, 2005).
Many studies have sought to explain the reasons for the growth and success of the Indian IT Firms. Most current studies link the dramatic success to many macro- environmental factors in India such as the existence of a large, English-speaking and technically qualified manpower, low costs, minimal regulatory intervention in the IT industry, role of transnational corporations, etc. (Arora et al., 2001; Arora and Athreye, 2002; and Athreye, 2004). While the importance of these factors cannot be denied, they provide only a partial explanation of the growing competitiveness and success of the Indian IT firms. A more important explanation may reside in the continual and painstaking investment and efforts of certain Indian firms to develop the project management and client management capabilities, critical to achieving sustainable success in this business (Ethiraj et al., 2002). In this paper, the authors assess the extant project management practices in Indian IT firms, how they have helped the industry grow, the advantages enjoyed by the project managers, and the challenges encountered by them.
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