He put forth a history of software development that moved from waterfall designs to more chaotic project management which he argues is desirable in order to utilize the intelligence of distributed knowledge. It is important the partner and client be co-located at the customer site and to have the team involved early in choosing and designing the project. Hari Murthy of Infosys presented his company s business model for providing high-quality work for clients. The business model is based on dedicated engineering labs that act exactly like the parent company. At the same time, Infosys emphasizes rewarding generously its employees so that they will not be tempted to migrate to other firms or countries.
Attrition is low for India, as compensation is globally competitive.
As a consequence of their IPO, they have 1000 millionaires as measured by the sum of all joys. They test for learnability in hiring employees. He agreed with Ranjit Singh that the arbitrage model is disappearing and argued that the cost basis of sourcing in India is approaching US costs when considering travel and quality of living issues. The ensuing discussion was marked by a lively debate whether the cost advantage of locations such as India is becoming irrelevant. Farley Blackman argued that these advantages are still important elements in the decision where to locate software development.