298 Mehta and Mehta
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flow — from within as well as outside. Most of the time the required knowledge existed
somewhere, but no one knew where. I noticed that while I was searching for solutions
to enhance complex knowledge flows for CMM Level 5, the mechanisms for even the
simplest of knowledge flows were nonexistent.” Later, he discovered that the problem
was also aggravated by the demands of two of the Infosys lifelines — the Global Delivery
Model and scalability strategy.
Demands of Global Delivery Model (GDM)
GDM enabled executing software projects in a geographically distributed environ-
ment, yet with high degree of predictability and dependability. Typical software devel-
opment and delivery units were located at multiple locations across the globe. GDM
required a third of Infosys’s 19,000 employees to be based at the corporate campus in
Bangalore, another 8,000 in four other DCs in India, and the rest across three smaller DCs
in India and eight global development centers. Additionally, 10% to 15% of employees
were always at client locations.
Despite a robust communication infrastructure connecting these locations, knowl-
edge flows among them were conspicuously absent. Each location operated like a
knowledge oasis. For example, people would come up with problems in Boston similar to
the ones already faced and resolved by people at Bangalore. Ironically, Boston never
heard of that and would waste time on solving the problem again. “There was clear-cut
redundancy problem, and there were indications that GDM needed to be buttressed with
a knowledge-based system,” Nandan explained.
Demands of Scalability
Scalability demanded building a flexible and learning organization that constantly
utilized its knowledge assets to replenish its repertoire of resources and capabilities. It
was becoming increasingly clear to Nandan that true scalability would elude them unless
organizational knowledge assets were made accessible to every employee. He admitted,
“We realized that scalability demanded learnability — the ability to extract knowledge
from specific concepts and situations and apply it to other situations. And learnability
required real-time access to firm’s knowledge resources.”
Scalability also demanded efficient utilization of capacity. Management had to
ensure that they did not overrun the capacity, and yet remained responsive to new market
needs. Infosys had to be ready for project-related opportunities in totally new markets
and technology domains. This required a highly responsive system that would quickly
assimilate knowledge regarding these opportunities and then disseminate it among
appropriate groups to enable project execution with exceptional speed and high quality.
In addition to individual demands of GDM and scalability, Nandan also identified
problem issues in certain areas of overlap between the two. For example, GDM enabled
Infosys to grow exceptionally fast. But the absence of truly scalable knowledge
resources and the infrastructure to share them constrained the growth potential. Nandan
summarized: “All said, we needed a system to build domain-specific knowledge re-
sources and the technological infrastructure to share those resources.”