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Field trip to Vestas's IT organization in Manila.
We are four students: Jesper Larsen and Tue Lassen (Bachelors in political science) & Claus Laustsen and Rasmus Knap (Bachelors in IT) from Aalborg university, who are currently studying IT management as our Master.
As a part of our 9th semester we are writing two scientific papers in collaboration with Vestas. Furthermore an aspect of our 9th semester has been concerning sourcing strategies and project management. Therefore it is relevant for us to visit Vestas's IT organization in Manila. Besides Vestas we are going to visit two other offshored IT-organizations, NNIT and Excitor.
The papers are as mentioned being composed in cooperation with Vestas which offshored a part of their IT organization to Manila back in 2008. The papers concern the following:
1. How has Vestas IT-organization developed their IT-capabilities and structure over time in the efforts to become a strategic (trusted) partner to the business.
2. To describe and define the IT middle managers role in the IT organization.
The purpose of our trip is to collect data for the two papers and in general learn about and experience the practical aspects of offshoring. We are thereby gaining practical knowledge regarding the challenges IT organizations face when they offshore parts of the IT function, that we can compare to the theoretical literature we have been presented to in class.
We consider this a unique chance to explore the different processes in an offshore organization and learn how leadership and management can be performed.
The purpose of this blog is to summarize and reflect upon the experiences gained from visiting three offshored IT organizations.
Ready to go to Manila? Not quite - the economical aspect
As a student everybody knows that one is on a tight budget and consequently we needed resources to cover parts of our expenses. We therefore have petitioned different funds which have responded positively. The realization of the trip became imminent once the petitions were accept, which was a great relief for all of us.
The blog will be updated regularly and pictures will be shared as well.
After various attempts to get some exercise we decided to do something radical. From our workplace on the 32th floor we observed a big green net and we got curious. We soon learned that this was a golf driving range build on top of a car park. This seemed to be a funny concept which we had to experience for ourselves. After a quick walk to our hotel we changed to “sports gear” or the best we could manageJ. A short notice; none of us can write golf experience on our resumes and that became apparent after a while. After the first fifty shots, some of us became adjusted and managed to achieve a hit rate of 50%, others didn’t. Suddenly golf became life threatening as one member of the group managed to throw his club smashing into the sealing and landing right in front of another group member who saw his life passing before his eyes J. Luckily nothing happened and we agreed to stop before someone got seriously hurt. On top of that rather interesting experience we decided to get some food before exploring the local Philippine night life.
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