Politics and corporates

This post may be understood more by the people who work for companies, where there are various internal business units working with each other.

I am trying to draw an analogy of the way the UPA (and similar political alliances) and a typical corporate body function.

Lets take the UPA in India. The main party here is the Congress (I). But it does not have enough number of elected representatives in the Parliament to form the Government on its own.

So, it goes ahead and takes support from other regional parties - DMK being an outstanding example - and forms the Government.

But, the Congress (I) has to share some of the powers with the regional parties, else they would just walk out. But they cant give them too much power, 'coz, that would then leave nothing for the Congress (I).

So what they do is, retain the most critical seats of power within themselves and distribute the seemingly important ones to the members of the alliance. This way, the regional satraps are happy that they get the very visible posts (and hence helping their monetary requirements) and the main party is happy that they still have the REAL posts and the power.

The main thing that drives all these parties is the power and the money that comes along with it. They know full well that if they stay separated from each other, they would still make some money and probably get some fancy post. But, if they want the REAL DEAL, they have to come together.

That's why, even though they may well be united at the centre, they could well be direct competitors at the regional level - e.g.: Congress and Communists at the Centre and in states like Kerala and W.Bengal.

Having said all this, one must understand and accept the undercurrents of ego clashes, desire for power and money that runs through these people on a daily basis. They are together not really for the people. If at all the people benefit, its only a by-product. Their main goal is to keep the "opponents" away from reaping these benefits.

Now, my friends in the field of Software testing, please extrapolate the above example to the way a software company is structured. All companies are primarily oriented towards the Industry verticals as their main business units. The testing departments is almost a service department for these verticals.

So, for any account and project, the drive is still coming from the vertical unit and the testing folk are only "used". We are given fancy posts like Test Managers or Leads or Delivery Anchors. But ultimately, all master decisions are taken only by the heads at the vertical unit. This is the case in all companies.

The testing team does have its exclusive accounts and projects. That's like the regional parties having the main say in the state legislative assembly or the local bodies. When it comes to the centre, they are still only "strategic partners".

I am sure that this analogy can be extended to other businesses as well and I am only quoting from the experience I've had in two software companies.