Cybernetics Framework for addressing the people related challenges in an IT Services organization

The purpose of this paper is to interpret and address the unique challenges faced by Human Intensive IT Services Organizations*¹ using a Cybernetics Lens. A framework is being proposed based on Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety and Stafford Beer's Viable Systems Model. Software is an artifact requiring large-scale human effort. IT is unlike other engineering industries because it produces non-material products. IT employs skilled intellectual workforce (that works with, and produces, ideas). IT is unlike other intellectual workforce intensive industries, such as the newspaper business or the entertainment industry because the ideas it produces actually control machines, that is to say that these ideas are formal, precise and unambiguous, and not open to interpretation[1]. Given this complex characteristic of the IT industry, we need to see if the organizations are equipped to support the building blocks, i.e. the Human Resources of this complex industry adequately. Dealing with the needs of such resources in IT services business environment through appropriate Human Resource interventions is a challenge. It is difficult to comprehend and deal with this complexity. While some can be managed by introducing appropriate processes, others may require Systemic Structural Interventions. The author proposes to use concepts from the field of Cybernetics to address the complexity. Variety, the cybernetic measure for complexity is being proposed along with System 3 and System 4 of the Viable Systems Model as key functions for Structural Interventions.