1. Advance Productivity Tools: Assignment: 3
We continue with the productivity tool used in your organization…Study the productivity standard
followed in your organization and identify:
1. If your organization is a KA organization. Justify with reasons.
2. The level at which your organization is vis-à-vis productivity. And justify why you feel that the
organization is at that level.
3. Productivity principles and models followed by your organization. Will you recommend any
other? Why/why not?
4. Benchmarks that your organization might possess/follow to measure its productivity.
Response:
1. NIIT Ltd is a KA organization. It is a People organization which believes that it is the people that
make a company. It is further re-enforced in their Vision document. There are many instances
that can be quoted, from the starting of the company itself by a set of entrepreneurs to many
initiatives that have born fruit like the starting of the SW arm which was later shunted out as an
independent company to small innovations and entrepreneurism that has led to some of the
successes like the IFBI, Imperia etc.
But having said that, there is a streak on control centric process implementation that is still
continuing which makes the company less agile in the market, with the customer. All the
business verticals are completely governed by the management in terms of investments
(budgets) and revenue and collections to the kind of business it wants to be in,
2. NIIT being a large company, it is spread across all productivity levels. Some of it’s verticals are
SEI CMM L5 and CMMi certified as well as some of the processes are ISO certified, they are not a
companywide practice. And they should not be as each vertical has it’s own business paradigms
and operational mechanism and focus. Having said that, I would want to share my observations
on the productivity levels of the vertical/business that I belong to:
a. Measurement is of course happening at all levels for all kinds of data to get the
productivity norms evaluated. I would rate measurement at 70% as in some cases, there
are no systems to collect the data, or it may not be the right data or data collected may
not be showing the right picture.
b. Analysis is an integral part of collecting dat. But as said earlier, right data must be
analysed right with the right intent. Analysis must be an open minded exercise for it to
Advance Productivity Tools | Assignment # 3 | Susmita Pruthi 1

2. be effective and useful. I believe, there must be around 50% of data being analysed to
derive some decisions and directions. Right or wrong is not under consideration here.
c. Optimisation: Of lately, optimization has been taken up to such an extent that it is a
practically live process with real-time process updates. I would rate this to be at 25%.
3. While there are no standards or models being followed for productivity in our vertical, project
managers individually are managing using some of the principles and models like the PERT and
GANTT charts. These tools help them represent each task with it’s timelines and responsibility
matrix as well as track it for completion or slippage as the case may be. It therefore, becomes a
critical tool in all project based work scenarios. The PMs are on top of their projects and hence
the productivity standards expected from them and their team.
These tools also help them analyse the reasons of slippages if any and build risk mitigation plans
in future. It further has given them the experience to further optimize the work plan in the next
project.
4. Unfortunately, the only benchmarking that the business vertical follows is backward from the
budgeting. Unfortunately, there are no Sales productivity benchmarks for our business vertical.
The comparison is always made on sales numbers of another competitor against ours. In some
cases, the people involved are taken into account but with no obvious data available on
manpower or the various business models that any competitor follows (like an acquisition
partner model), it primarily results in as the word of the most ‘experienced’ in the system versus
concrete data points.
One does refer to previous years data as a reference point, but I would consider that invalid in
the current fast evolving times and market scenario.
Advance Productivity Tools | Assignment # 3 | Susmita Pruthi 2