Thoughts on Processes

The other day I was talking to a friend working for the Indian subsidiary of an MNC on the different processes they followed in their software delivery model. Since the MNC primarily grew as a consulting firm and then had diversified into technology outsourcing, I was expecting that they would be having a bunch of very well defined processes. However, contrary to my expectations, my friend informed me that processes are not as well defined as in another top notch tier-1 Indian software company, Infosys, where he had worked earlier in his career. He said that processes in his present company are often defined by the processes required by the client. This observation rings true with my current and prior experience also. In order to bring in well defined processes and quality levels, extra effort has to be expended. If the client is not willing to take the cost of that extra effort, there is no incentive for a vendor to follow detailed processes which incur more effort or cost. But the story does not end here. He told that in Infosys, the rigour on processes came naturally. It is something which is ingrained into all Infoscions. May be that is what makes Infosys outstanding.