How to switch from FTE model to Outcome based Model in IT
Rahul SinghPM I| InfosysBangalorei, Karnataka, India
Looking for suggestions, case study for switch from FTE model to Outcome Based Model in IT Saving Changes...
Prasanta SwainPractice Director| ITOrizonBangalore, Karnataka, India
FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) has its significant application in the context of business situations where you determine project budget, capacity & availability (taking into account part-time employees and even over time done by full-time employees). FTE is a key ingredient for various data-driven key decision makings, customer billing etc & surely liked by executives. And that’s good. Now, let us switch the gear. Combine FTE & skillsets, that helps determine resourcing at activity/task level (work package) to a greater degree of accuracy, and here comes the catch! Just think that you have 15 Developers and 1 Design Lead. Do you smell a bottleneck hear? You can’t release development work to your developers unless design work is completed. The point that I am trying to drive home is, for an Outcome Based Model where your “business outcomes” takes the center-stage, you can’t get away with a FTE metrics alone. You probably need to bring in more sophisticated mechanism something like “Effective-FTEs”. In the previous example, while your Design Lead is equivalent to 1 Effective-FTE for that job, probably one of your senior developers could be tagged as 0.75 Effective-FTE capacity to perform design work with some mentoring from your primary Design Lead. Your seasoned developer could be 1 Effective-FTE as a developer, but your new joiners could be tagged somewhere between 0.5 and 0.75 Effective-FTE. Now guess what, when you assign 4 new joiners to your seasoned Developer as mentor, you better reduce mentors’ Effective-FTE to 0.8 FTE towards billing because mentor is going to spend time mentoring! There are more than dozen such scenarios you need to consider and plot them all in your Effective-FTE metrics and hopefully that could provide you a more realistic plan for your “Outcome based Model”. Saving Changes...
