1. 1
Mantra for Innovative Project Management
Jayanta Debnath
Consultant
Tata Consultancy Services

2. 2
Mantra to have happy workforce under
Software/IT Project Manager
(Theme: Mantra for Innovative Project Management)
JayantaDebnath
Program Manager, Tata Consultancy Services Limited
Key Words
Aspiration, Project Manager, Work-Life Balance, New Learning, Challenging Role, Generation Y
Abstract
Over the course of time, with the knowledge based industry revolution that started in the later part of the
20th century, the meaning and importance of human resources have changed the usual management
practice significantly, especially in the Information Technology (IT) industry. This change leads to a
different paradigm of management practice, where human resource management has become one of the
key areas of IT Project Managers. Each IT project has unique nature and needs different commitments
from its resources, however, at longer term, individuals join IT industry with certain perceptions and
buildup their aspirations in personal, professional and social aspects. Managing individual aspiration will
be the mantra for an IT Project Manager to have happy workforce that eventually translates into
committed and result oriented team for him/her. Indian IT Industry has different levels of firms based on
work type, revenue and total employee strength. The aspiration of individuals varies based on firm type,
their experience level, socio-economical background, gender and other factors but there can be a
common framework for all IT Managers to address such issues. Profiling and subsequently classifying the
aspirations and their immediate and further time-bound impact analysis in relation with their work
environment would help to manage the workforce better for any IT Manager. This paper aims to come up
with such management framework which can be considered as the Mantra for managing individual
aspiration in order to create happy workforce under Software/IT Project Manager.

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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Context of Research ................................................................................................................................... 5
Research Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 6
Aspirations seen in young Indian IT professionals ................................................................................. 7
Creating Happiness through Aspiration Fulfillment ............................................................................. 10
Measure of Individual Happiness ............................................................................................................ 13
Critical Success Factors .......................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 14
References ................................................................................................................................................. 14

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Introduction
The question “Does happiness make people more productive workers?” has gone through series of
experiment among different workers across the globe and it is now an established fact that happier
workers produce more productivity than his/her normal ability. The quantitative findings are interesting:
 Happy workers are 22% more productive than unhappy workers, says Andrew Oswald, professor at
Warwick Business School.[11]
 Happy employees are also 28.4% less absentaccording to Kathryn Rost, PhD at the University of
Colorado[11]
 53% of employees were happy at their current job during 2013, according to the Kelly Global
Workforce Index.[11]
For IT Project Managers, it is important to extract the best possible productivity from his/her team
members but often find it difficult even tough individual skill and ability might be the best fit for the given
assignment. The challenges could vary at various firms starting from small, medium or large size but the
cause to the problem usually the same – the conflict between individual aspirationsand project offerings
back to the individuals.Aspirations are important because they influence outcomes [4].
It is the fact that Indian IT industry currently consists with mostly young professionals or more precisely
Generation Y (aged 15-29 [12]). Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the largest software service firm in
India has average employee age of 29 years among its 300,000 employees [1]. By 2020, India is set to
become the world’s youngest country with 64% of its population in the working age group [2].
Figure 1: Indian Demographic Pyramid [14]

5. If carefully observed, the majority of the industry joiners every year are the Generation Y from growing
300+ million middle class families of the country. They join the industry with great hope and aspiration to
achieve many or some specific goals of their life within a very short span of time. "The very high
standards of management practice in Indian IT firms and the tremendous employment opportunities
offered by the industry have had significant effects on the confidence, aspirations and work ethic of young
professionals in India.” [3]
In Indian IT industry where individual aspirations mostly govern young population of overall workforce in
order to choose the best possible career opportunity, the key focus for Project Manager should be to
address individual aspiration. Giving attention and ensuring Management commitment to help achieving
individual aspiration can result into happier workforce and hence achieving higher productive team for the
Project.
5
Aspiration’s management is based on the assumption that each individual is motivated to work towards
actualizing their aspiration and that productivity can be optimized by providing an organizational
infrastructure or work culture that fosters employee aspirations actualization.[9]
Context of Research
Though in larger context, understanding individual happiness is a complicated process from both
philosophical and psychological perspectives. “The criteria used to define happiness are alsonumerous.
Pleasure, wisdom, virtue, conscience, perfection, success, good, love, joy, satisfaction,
wealth,comfortable living, etc., have been seen at various times as being synonymous with happiness”
[8]. In our context, we define happiness as the satisfaction from the aspiration fulfillment through career
driven achievements.
It is important that we focus on the aspiration of young professionals of the industry and the aspirations
that are perhaps within the control of project scope. One can argue that HR and Senior Managements are
mostly accountable for employee engagement and retention but the statistics shows that within an
organization, Front-Line Leaders are 14% accountable for employee engagement and retention [11].

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Figure 2: Accountability distribution among different roles of an organization for Employee Engagement
and Retention [11]
In this paper, we will identify some of the commonly seen individual aspirations in Indian IT firms mostly
among young professionals or Generation Y. We will focus mainly in Tier 1 firms since majority of Indian
IT population are part of those firms or young professionals aim to get there. By Tier 1 firms, we mean the
companies that have very strong processes including delivery and employee training and performance
appraisals and usually they support multiple industry verticals and have many horizontal service units
which actually help to provide diversified portfolios for an individual [5].
In times of globalization, organizations have to compete to attract, develop, deploy and retain the services
of skilled people. It is crucial for the Project Managers to understand what matters to the project team
members. In particular, they need to understand what things matter most to the majority of his/her team
members, the young professionals.
Research Methodology
This is mostly a conceptual paper based on the secondary data available through books, magazines and
research papers. The data is mainly collected from the secondary sources which include articles
published in journals, research papers, published interviews of professionals in newspapers, magazines
and websites of different companies.The empirical approach also has been used for limited sample size
to collect the direct & observational data. The overall sample for data collection has been divided into two
groups:
1. Professionals of Tier 1 firms appearing for Job interview of another Tier 1 firm
2. Professionals want to move out of their current project of a Tier 1 firm
For both the sample groups, the average age is considered 28 years.

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Aspirations seen in young Indian IT professionals
Aspirations vary by gender, ethnicity, social class and area and also inspiration, information, self-esteem
and self-efficacy are all important components of high aspirations [4]. Due to major Indian IT firms
“comply with international norms to participate in international capital markets, IT firms have set new
standards in accounting and corporate governance. They have offered unprecedented high-paying
employment opportunities for the young and educated labor force, particularly for women professionals”
[3] and the result is the rapidly growing and changing aspiration among young IT professionals.
It is also important to understand how younger generation of India has grown up and what the common
characteristics that they demonstrate are.
Economic Factors Technological Factors Social Factors
 Economic Liberalization in
India (1991)
 Dot-com Bubble Burst(2000)
 Walkmans
 Laptops
 Mobile Phones
 E-mails
 Fall of Soviet Union (1991)
 Rajiv Gandhi Assassination
(1991)
 Kargil War (1999)
Table 1: Factors that shaped up younger generation [12]
While describing the characteristics of younger Indian IT professionals, R. Anish, Intel's South Asia HR
director once mentioned that they expects challenging work assignments, accelerated career growth,
socially responsible workplaces, flexible work environments, freedom,and collaboration and innovation
from their jobsand employers[14].
Generation Y and the Workplace Annual Report 2010 by Johnson Controls finds that while choosing a
company, the top 3 priorities for an Indian young professional are Opportunities for Learning, Quality of
Life and Compensations [13]. Needless to mention,their Personal, Professional and Social aspirations get
reflected through these priorities.
To understand more from Indian IT industry perspectivesand how much of those aspirations can be
directly relate within the scope of Project Managers to influence in fulfilling, a sample size of 30 young IT
professionalswere used.A set of options were given to them to express their priorities in choosing another
firms or desire to move out of current project.
This sample size is small but covers diversification of tier 1 firms in India IT industry. A larger sample size
covering different ethnicity, social class, areas etc. can be considered for future analysis.

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Sample Group
Sample Size
Aspirations influencing young IT professionals
Higher
Compensation
Stability
Elevation in
Designation
Onsite
Opportunity
Challenging
Role
New
Learning
Better Work-Life
Balance
Professionals of Tier 1 firms appearing for
Job interview of another Tier 1 firm
10 √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Professionals want to move out of their
current project of a Tier 1 firm
20 √ √ √ √ √
Table 2: Aspirations influencing young IT professionals of tier 1 firms in two scenarios
Professionals of Tier 1 firms appearing for Job interview of another Tier 1 firm:
In this sample, total 10 IT professionals were used from four different Tier 1 IT firms and among them
80% are male. They were asked to define the priorities for changing current job among given options like
Higher Compensation, Job Stability, Elevation in Designation or Promotion, Onsite Opportunities, Better
Roles, New Learning and Better Work-Life Balance.
Figure 3: Priorities of Aspirations influencing in changing organization.
However, they also acknowledged the fact that Higher Compensation and Job Stability are the two factors
are more for the organization to address but for remaining, they think the Project Manager could have
done more to address their needs. Therefore, individual aspirations like New Learning, Challenging Roles
and Work-Life Balance are the three top most expectations from the Project Management that they have
expressed.

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Professionals want to move out of their current project of a Tier 1 firm:
In this sample, total 20 IT professionals were used from a Tier 1 IT firm and among them 70% are male.
They had asked to define the priorities among given options like Elevation in Designation or Promotion,
Onsite Opportunities, Better Roles, New Learning and Better Work-Life Balance.
Figure 4: Priorities of Aspirations influencing within a project.
It appears that Better work-Life balance, New Learning and Onsite Opportunity are the top three
expectations from the project. They also give high importance to Challenging Role.
In our analysis, it is also worthwhile to understand the workplace characteristics of young professionals.
Understanding workplace characteristics of young professionals help Project Managers to deal with them
in most predictable manner.
Work Ethic and Values What’s next, Multitasking, Tenacity, Entrepreneurial, Tolerant and Goal
oriented
Work is A means to an end Fulfillment
Interactive Style Participative
Communication Email, Voice Mail
Feedback & Rewords Whenever I want it, atthe push of a button, Meaningful work
Messages thatmotivate You will work with otherbright, creative people
Work & Family Life Balance
Table 3: Workplace Characteristics of young professionals [15]

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Creating Happiness through Aspiration Fulfillment
From our analysis, it is evident that three fundamental aspirations of young IT professionals that can
directly relate to Project Manager Scopeare Better Work-Life Balance, New Learning and Challenging
Roles. We can qualify these as fundamental because other aspirations can be seen as the part of these
aspirations, exampleslike Onsite Opportunity can also be considered as an option for new learning
(however, many consider it for enhancing compensation), Elevation in Designation can be seen as an
option to get into Challenging Role. On the other side, Quality of Life comes in larger context where Work-
Life Balance, Safety and Job Stability are part of it. Especially in Indian IT industry, where female
workforce constitutes more than 30% [1], the aspiration to have better work-life balance is becoming more
significant and vital.
A new global research by Accenture found that around 70% of female respondents in India said that
work-life balance was key to their definition of “success” in their career, while only 40% of men felt
that.The study also found that the difficulty of balancing life and work is a key reason why women in India
leave their jobs. While 24% of Indian men surveyed said they quit their jobs because of long or inflexible
working hours, for women that figure was 48% [16].The second annual global Work-Life Balance study
published Regus, based on the views of 26,000 professionals in more than 90 countries, shows that
work-life balance in India is a growing concern among workers [17].
With the above observations and findings we can come up with Aspiration Pyramid for theyoung
professionals (within the project scope) where Better Work-Life Balance can be placed at the bottom.
Individuals seek new learning opportunity and challenging roles, yet work life balance is of utmost
importance to them. New Learning and Challenging Roles can be placed at the top of pyramid to classify
them as the aspirations for accelerated career growth.
Project Managers can take Aspiration Pyramid as reference while addressing the issue of unhappiness of
his/her workforce.
Figure 5: Aspiration Pyramid of young professional within Project Scope

11. Within the influencing limit of IT Project Managers, a set of enablers can be planned for each of the
individuals towards the actualization of aspirations. It is also important for the Project Managers to realize
the individual potentials and helping individual to realize his/her potentials.
11
Aspiration Key Enablers
Better Work-Life Balance  Flexible work schedule
 Set priorities for all work (when priorities are unclear, team members tend
to overwork because they think that everything must get done at once)
 Promote telecommuting
 Encourage to take vacation (rather help team members to plan for
vacation at least once in a year)
 Option for Working from Home
New Learning  Career development& Training plan for near term
 Accommodate Training time in the project plan
 Make New Learning mandatory for all
 Create opportunity for individuals to demonstrate new learning
 Encourage knowledge exchange among team members
 Rotation plan for the outdated technologies and systems
 Engage individuals in secondary assignment that demands new learning
 Engage in Proof of Concept initiatives
 Onsite Opportunities
Challenging Role  Short term deputation to different roles
 Assignment Rotation among team members
 Promote Creativity
 Include in Decision Making process
 Assign specific and measurable goals
Table 4: Project level enablers in actualizing Individual aspirations
It is important that Project Managers understand the learning process for an Adult professional. As Kolb
and Fry explained that adult learning is seen as happening in a cycle made up of four stages: concrete
experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation [18].
To put it simply, first the learner must experience something directly (Concrete Experience). Next the
learner reflects on the experience, comparing it to what he/she already knows (Reflective Observation).
The learner then thinks about his or her observations and develops some new ideas about how things
work (Abstract Conceptualization). Finally, the learner acts on what has been observed and thought about
(Active Experimentation). The active experimentation stage then becomes the basis of future learning.

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Complete learning happens when learner moves through all four stages and the new knowledge, skills,
and/or attitudes become the basis for new behavior [18].
Figure 6: Kolb and Fry's New Learning Process [18]
To make New Learning effective for the individual team members, Project Managers should take the
individuals through all the stages of the learning process.
Usually, young professionals prefer the Challenging Roles that are more aligned with their vertical growth.
It is the real challenge for Project Managers to convince individuals to go for challenges that are at the
same level of currently assigned role.Young professionals take horizontal learning and challenges as
short-term arrangement and show resistance and unhappiness if asked to continue for long.
Our Aspiration Pyramid can be aligned with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as mentioned in his
famous paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” published in 1943.
Figure 7: Comparisons between Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [19] and the components of Aspiration
Pyramid of young professional within Project Scope

13. Our Aspiration Pyramid suggests the order of aspirations of young professionals and how Project
Managers can lead their team members to become self-actualized within the scope of project influence.
Helping team members in realizing self-actualization through New Learning and Challenging Roles on top
of better Work-Life Balance can increase the happiness of team members.
13
Self Esteem of young professionals and its implication in Project Management certainly cannot be
ignored, however, this subject has different dimensions and perspectives and needs larger or different
context to discuss, hence not covered in this paper.
Measure of Individual Happiness
It is important for Project Managers to measure and monitor the happiness of his team members
frequently. Many firms conduct annual employee surveys but at project level, the frequency should be at
least weekly or monthly basis based on project type, duration, and individual impactability.Tracking
employees’ happiness doesn’t have to be complicated or time taking.Employee Net Promoter System
(eNPS), a metric that is picking up traction, as Fred Reichheld, the intellectual father of Net Promoter
System(NPS), mentions in his book The Ultimate Question 2.0 [6]. While the well-known NPS tracks
customer loyalty, the eNPS measures employees’ engagement and happiness, asking them in a survey:
“On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend your workplace to a friend or family
member?” [6].
Figure 8: Scoring mechanism to check Project Members’ engagement and happiness [7]
There are simple and interesting ways also like NixonMcInnes, a social business consultancy company in
London has implemented “barometer of happiness” as they call it. By using two buckets and few tennis
balls; every day before leaving the office the people would place a ball either in the happy bucket or the

14. unhappy one, depending on their state of spirit. The next day, the count would be taken to understand the
overall sprit of the employees [10].
14
Critical Success Factors
Following could be considered some of the critical success factors in making workforce happier through
their aspiration actualization:
 Upfront understanding of individual aspirations for Project Managers
 Establish direct communication channel between Project Manager and individuals for open and
informal discussions
 Create breathing space for the individuals beyond day-to-days job
 Help realizing individual potentials and limitations
 Create space for individual requirements in overall Project Plan
Conclusion
IT Project Managers’ one of the objectives to have highly productive workforce cannot be achieved unless
all the team members are happy. Therefore, creating happy workforce is essential and that can happen
through individual aspiration actualization.
Understanding individual aspirations is the key along with order of priorities. Indian young IT professionals
not much different from rest of the world but there are specific social, environmental factors influence
them differently. Project Managers need to understand such ingredients in individual aspirations and
chose the enablers within his/her influencing limit.
References
[1] TCS Press Release
(http://www.tcs.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Investors/Presentations/TCS_PressRelease_IFRS_INR_Q
4_14.pdf)

15. 15
[2] Girija Shivakumar, “India is set to become the youngest country by 2020”, April 17, 2013
(http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-is-set-to-become-the-youngest-country-by-
2020/article4624347.ece)
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(http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/~subhash/pdfs/Indian%20software%20industry.pdf)
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(http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090114000528/http:/cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/109339/aspi
rations_evidence_pack.pdf)
[5] Ashish Kumar, “Tiered classification of Indian software services companies”, June 17, 2008
(http://latestinindia.com/2008/06/17/tiered-classification-of-indian-software-services-companies/)
[6] Verne Harnish, "Growth Guy" and Sebastian Ross,“A Better Way to Measure Employee Happiness”,
August 1, 2013 (http://www.gazelles.com/a-better-way-to-measure-employee-happiness.html)
[7] Reliable Metric (http://www.netpromotersystem.com/system-processes/measure-of-success.aspx)
[8] Happiness – Between Aspiration and fulfillment (http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042813028826/1-s2.0-
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[12] Dr. Parul Saxena, Rajiv Jain, “Managing Career Aspirations of Generation Y at Work Place”,
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2062042726/)

16. 16
[15] Greg Mammill, “Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees”
(http://www.fdu.edu/newspubs/magazine/05ws/generations.htm)
[16] Work-Life Balance a Challenge for Indian Women
(http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/03/08/work-life-balance-a-challenge-for-indian-women/)
[17] 6 Things You Should Do To Retain Talent In India
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/sylviavorhausersmith/2013/09/06/6-things-you-should-do-to-retain-talent-in-india/)
[18] Learning, Training and Development (http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/learning-understanding.cfm)
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