Jharna Software Case: Change Management
Jharna Software was a middle size Indian software company with approximately 180 employees, which was also an offshore centre in the United States. With the rapid development of India offshore software industry in past few decades, Jharna software achieved its success by delivery high quality and low-cost service to the customers.
However, the rapid change in customer demands and fiercer market competition forced it to make a choice whether or not to adopt agile methods instead of traditional plan-driven development method. The iterative nature of agile method makes it an excellent alternative when it comes to managing software projects. But since the new method differed from the traditional way in almost every respect, Jharna Software had to take a flexible and feasible approach for change management to execute the agile method. There was no denying for the necessary and urgency of the change management in term of customer orientation business model. The case that a rival company Ampersand was closed after lost a main client confirmed this point.
Now Khan, head of Jharna Software, was going to introduce organizational changes to improve its current business model. Organizational Change Management aligns groups’ expectations, communicates, integrates teams and manages people training. Normally it includes following aspect:
1. Strategic changes
2. Operational changes (including Structural changes)
3. Technological changes
4. Changing the attitudes and behaviors of personnel
Jharna Software’s strategy was using the traditional method and agile methods in parallel. I think it is reasonable because both two methods had advantages and disadvantages. Take agile method in the XP as an example, its shortcoming will be that “while individual practices are suitable for many situation, overall view and management practices are given less attention” which means agile method doesn’t scale well. So Jharna Software can conduct large software projects using its
However, the rapid change in customer demands and fiercer market competition forced it to make a choice whether or not to adopt agile methods instead of traditional plan-driven development method. The iterative nature of agile method makes it an excellent alternative when it comes to managing software projects. But since the new method differed from the traditional way in almost every respect, Jharna Software had to take a flexible and feasible approach for change management to execute the agile method. There was no denying for the necessary and urgency of the change management in term of customer orientation business model. The case that a rival company Ampersand was closed after lost a main client confirmed this point.
Now Khan, head of Jharna Software, was going to introduce organizational changes to improve its current business model. Organizational Change Management aligns groups’ expectations, communicates, integrates teams and manages people training. Normally it includes following aspect:
1. Strategic changes
2. Operational changes (including Structural changes)
3. Technological changes
4. Changing the attitudes and behaviors of personnel
Jharna Software’s strategy was using the traditional method and agile methods in parallel. I think it is reasonable because both two methods had advantages and disadvantages. Take agile method in the XP as an example, its shortcoming will be that “while individual practices are suitable for many situation, overall view and management practices are given less attention” which means agile method doesn’t scale well. So Jharna Software can conduct large software projects using its