Workforce issues and their impact on projects: study on the Indian IT and ITeS industry

Abstract

Today’s information technology (IT) industry is facing challenges from different corners because of globalization, technological changes, market and economic fluctuations and dynamic changes in customer requirements. A new stream of jobs has been emerging from time to time in the IT and IT enabled services (ITeS) industry. People management is gaining more concern when compared to technology management. Issues of recruiting right people with right and special skills, motivating them to improve their productivity continuously and retaining potential and productive people are becoming additional challenges to the success of IT projects by enabling the IT industry achieve steady growth and continue the ongoing projects without any interruptions or constraints. The study focuses on the dynamics of human work force of IT projects and analyses the important issues of managing the manpower and their impact on time, cost and quality of the projects. From the analysis of data collected through surveys in some big IT and ITeS companies in India, it was found that the issue of availability of human resources stood as the most significant issue in addition to showing highest impact on quality, cost and time of the IT projects. In contrast, the issue of employees-oriented programs attributed lowest significance and showing least impact on the three success factors of IT projects when compared with remaining ones.