Rupee Appreciation and Agile/Lean practices

One of the hot topics being discussed in the Indian IT sector is how to beat the rupee appreciation against dollar. Here is an article explaining various moves by Indian software giants to handle the current rupee appreciation issue. Most of the decisions taken by these software giants are the ones usually taken during financial crisis. These decisions include laying off employees, asking employees to work overtime with no extra pay, or increasing the hourly rate for the customer.

My view is, one could effectively utilize the dollar earned during every hour by incorporating Agile and Lean practices. Some simple practices(as explained in many of the Agile and lean books) include,
1. Project managers sitting with their team rather than in a far off cabin. This reduces waste due to frequent walking up and down by the team members to PM's cabin.

2.Having enough supply of coffee, tea or snacks within each project room. Otherwise, a lot of time gets wasted when the team goes to a far off cafeteria. As it is evident that even though the customer is billed for 8 hours per day, effective value generated is only worth 6 hours(Ideal Engineering Hours) . The wasted 2 hours can be effectively utilized in situations like the rupee appreciation issue impacting Indian IT sector.

3. Improving communication and collaboration using tools like Wiki, Skype, etc.

4. Redirecting the investments on expensive tools and looking at simple solutions such as usage of digital cameras, white boards, post-its.

5. Improving quality of code and reducing defects by early and continuous integration.

6. Applying the engineering practices like Test Driven Development & refactoring right from the beginning of the project.

and many more...
bottom line is, one could start fixing the issue internally by adopting the right processes, which adds value to the customer rather than applying the usual "inside the box" solutions.

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