Of Project Managers and Staged Shows

Days back I received an email from an acquaintance based in Mumbai. He informed me that he has joined as a PM in an e-learning company. To quote him verbatim, “I am having a gala time as a PM. The only thing I need to do here is to squeeze timelines so that we get the most out of these silly IDs and graphic designers.”

That didn’t surprise to me, largely because I had sensed this trend about a year back. The issue of squeezed timelines is not usually done by the outsourcing client but by the Project Managers within. The logic is simple – squeezing the timeline reduces development costs for the company and adds a feather in the PM’s cap that can be converted to a higher annual increment.

Consider the statistics (lent by a senior ID from Genpact). About 2 years back the average number of frames that IDs were required to churn out daily was 12-15. This number has now shot to 20-25 even while the salaries have not seen an increment by that rate. So even while clients throw a deadline of say 15 days, the project manager reduces this to 7 days even while the client is billed on the actual effort of 15 days, and maybe more.

Project Managers are also instructed by the management to escalate fictitious issues for IDs and GDs so that the conditions become conducive for them to leave the company. With an annual increment of an average of 25% companies discover that certain resources are a liability and their replacements can come at a lower remuneration package. However, for individuals who redefine themselves and are capable of shouldering higher responsibilities are not axed.

Even as you see those flashy growth figures of Indian e-learning companies, the underlying politics weigh far too heavily on the employee’s careers. For some rational and far-sighted ones e-learning today has come to be a makeshift arrangement, a platform, to launch their actual careers. Perhaps they see the e-learning as closely resembling the BPOs where numbers matter more than the grey matter. Is it this coldness that makes software professionals giggle at ‘e-learning?’ Who knows – the answer is best left unanswered.

The 8 hour shift that never is

There's more to the 8-hour stumper, the number of hours an e-learning professional spends in office. For most Indian companies the 8-hour mantra remains a pleasing jargon -- to be uttered by sweet-mouthed and 'cute' HR executives (the bait). And it just cannot be practiced. After all 'we are a family'. Surely they are!

Cleverly hidden inside this practice of extended work hours lies a hidden agenda, a vile lucidity that transcends beyond mere rhetorics. For most Indians in the e-learning industry the salary they earn is not for an 8-hour job, 5 days a week, its for delivering more. After all such long and extended hours of work deliver nothing except gimmicks in the form of shabby food and the pride to travel in a so-called cab.

Time-centric employee politics has some to be the mainstay of most Indian e-learning companies in India today. Its not uncommon to witness IDs and graphic designers spending sleepless nights over courses, endlessly. They hope that after this one project, this last effort they will be able to return home on time. And even as such hope remain chained within the deepest realms of cognition, e-learning professionals register a whole range of health related issues.

Perhaps its too early for the industry and too early for us to witness strong non-nonsense e-learning professionals who are qualitative and assertive to the core. Perhaps it the clients to be blamed who ride on an ill-conceived value of outsourcing -- cost. Till then IDs and Graphic Designers have to carry on with that 12-14 hour shift. What they loose in the process is a decent human life, a desire to give quality time for themselves and their families, and live a life of contentment. Are e-learning employees humans?

Global players in as Indian institutes sleep

Even as India's desi Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) gets crowded with more and more so-called intellectuals, the wider needs of the Indian student community will now be met by Cambridge College. With a strategically located center in Mumbai Cambridge College spell that their mission is to "to provide academically excellent, time-efficient and cost-effective higher education for a diverse population of working adults for whom those opportunities may have been limited or denied."

The college also has plans to open a school in Delhi, and eventually an entire campus in India. The method by which students will earn their degrees is an adaptive blended learning model. The system was developed by Nishikant Sonwalkar, currently the Vice-President of the Center for Adaptive Learning and Programs at Cambridge College. Sonwalkar researched on the model at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he had been the principal Educational architect.

Amidst such moves one cannot help but wonder what value does institutions like IGNOU bring for the student commnuity. Consider the fact that most course material of IGNOU stand outdated and useless. The only one service that the institution has done till date is to serve as a platform for Indian scholars who have got a wide area to tread and satiate their urge of self-promotion.