Nitesh was stunned. This was not what he expected. He thought with all his experience in handling the Legacy Systems Group, he would be handling the Support and Maintenance once CDSTP project was completed and rolled out into production. He thought he fit all the parameters, he knew the existing legacy system thoroughly, he was also involved in developing the new system in the CDSTP project on a day-to-day basis, so he should be the one who knew how the new system worked. He went into deep thought.
“Why I’m not selected to head the new system after it is put into production? I see people playing politics. They don’t need me once this project is completed. They are just using me to coordinate and supply the required inputs in time from the Legacy Systems team as I’m heading them. Once this is all over I would be made redundant and told to leave the organization. They would give me a farewell party to me and my Legacy Systems team,” thought Nitesh.
Nitesh formed a plan. He decided the best way for his survival would be to delay the CDSTP project as much as possible, make it go out of budget and get it scrapped.
“I have to find somebody within the CDSTP development team, who could understand and align with my position. I have to find somebody at the grassroots level to play safe. That person should be outside Dochamk Bank. Who can do that?” thought Nitesh.
Nitesh browsed through the folders and searched for the CVs of all the people working in the CDSTP project. He then spent time carefully going through the CVs. Only one CV intrigued him most. It was Anil’s CV.
Nitesh went over the CV of Anil again and again. This guy would be perfect for the job thought Nitesh. He then dialed Anil’s mobile number late at night and told him to meet at a coffee shop near Copper Book Store the next day. He said it’s regarding an important matter and told him not to talk about it to anyone.
Anil wondered what would be the matter. He feared if Nitesh had got hold of his previous employment history with the local bank, he might be told to leave the project. He met him at the coffee shop the next day.
“So Anil how is the work going?” asked Nitesh.
“Ya, it’s going ok for me,” said Anil.
“I see. So you got into a problem with a local bank. I saw your employment records. Not good. Not good man,” said Nitesh.
“There is no job security in IT and with this kind of record you have, it will pose problems in future,” said Nitesh.
Nitesh thought Anil lacked IT skills and he would not be able to survive in IT field for long. It would be easy to get him to do his bidding. Nitesh played on Anil’s job insecurity.
“Ya it’s getting difficult for me. I lack the experience in IT skills for this project. Down the line after this project, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Anil.
“I can assure you a steady job for the next three years if you are willing to listen. You just need to delay the CDSTP project here and there. Once it goes out of budget, any work on it would be frozen,” said Nitesh.
“Why delay? I thought you are going to ask me to speed up the project,” asked Anil.
“No. Not speed up. Slow down. I manage the legacy systems group. But if this project goes live, all the existing processes and functionalities would be migrated to the new system and it would be managed by a different technology group. My Legacy Systems group would be disbanded. I would be made redundant. Here’s the deal. You slow down the project in whatever way possible and I will take care of your job for the next three years. What do you think?” asked Nitesh.
“I’m ok with it. In what way I can delay?” asked Anil.
“Delay the development progress. You are working along with Shanthi right on getting the file formats from the Legacy Systems team? If you receive file formats from the Legacy Systems team, just don’t pass on to your team immediately. Purposely delay here and there wherever you can. That will cause delay in development. You need to introduce significant delay. Two months delay would cause enough damage to the budget,” said Nitesh.
“Sure I will do as you say. May I ask why this sudden change? Till yesterday you are rushing things like anything. A little background will help me better understand and motivate me if you don’t mind,” said Anil.
“It’s a sad story. Things inside Dochamk Bank work differently. You survive as long as you belong to a group and the group survives. So if the group you belong gets disbanded, then your career within the bank is gone for good,” said Nitesh.
“Why should a group get disbanded?” asked Anil.
“A group may get disbanded for many reasons. One such reason is if the work they do is migrated to new technology so they would no longer be required and laid off. They will be replaced with people experience in the new technology and added to the group that takes care of the new technology,” said Nitesh.
“Isn’t there any other way around to retain people? Surely they would have accumulated lot of domain experience if not specific to the old technology which is getting replaced,” said Anil.
“I wish it’s that simple. But what we have here is a pure business environment, hire and fire. There is no concept of retaining people. There is no spending of time and money for cross training people. Their thought process is with money they can hire and fire as and when required,” said Nitesh.
“What it has got to do with this project?” asked Anil.
“Because I have seen portfolio plan documents that confirm disbanding the Legacy Systems group after this project went operational. And that means that would be the end of my career within Dochamk Bank,” said Nitesh.
“I understand now. You have got my full support,” said Anil.
Chapter 16
Puneet had returned back from his onsite assignment. One day, Shekar called him. Puneet hesitated whether to pick up the call or not. Shekar worked as a Business Executive in TeraSMX. He had earlier spoken with Puneet when he was in onsite. Shekar had made a proposal to Puneet if he could bring out the shortcomings of using PicoEMG in CDSTP project in anyway and persuade his client to go with TeraSMX, he would be paid handsomely and would be able to settle down wherever he wanted to. Shekar had said TeraSMX would take good care of him.
Puneet thought Shekar’s offer was tempting. The offer also came with an unconditional job offer even if he could not persuade his client to go with TeraSMX, he would still get a job offer to work anywhere he wanted to where TeraSMX was located.
Puneet picked up the call and immediately went to a secluded place. He discussed on the phone for fifteen minutes. He had finally agreed to Shekar’s proposal.
The next day Puneet went to TeraSMX office. There are three tall towers housing the TeraSMX office campus. The three towers are at equal angles to one another and pointed towards one central location in the middle. Each tower was having around fifty floors. All three towers were connected towards the centre through a closed bridge around the middle floor of each tower.
Puneet looked around to make sure no one he was familiar with was around. He then went in to the reception hall and dialed Shekar. After a few minutes Shekar came and they both took the lift and went to third floor. They discussed the project progress and their plan. They discussed about the weaknesses about the current project and how those could be exploited in their favor.
Puneet fully utilized every chance he got to show PicoEMG was a bad choice. He was very good in creating presentations and articulating and stimulating the thought process. He knew how and what to present to which audience. His brief work in onsite had taught him a thing or two in presentations which he was doing a lot when he was in onsite assignment for six months.
Puneet secretly edited power point slides created by Vinay and Himesh for project presentations and weekly status reports. He highlighted the server down times and issues team was facing with Xorbiz on the PicoEMG software and hardware platform. Xorbiz on the PicoEMG platform had lot of stability issues compared to Xorbiz on the TeraSMX platform. Puneet did not miss one single issue. Even a minor issue he made sure to make it appear like big issue
in the power point. He did all the editing from someone else PC so his name would not be traced. He then removed modified by and last modified date attributes from the power point file to mask any updates to file in the shared folder.
During a monthly meeting with very important stake holders from Dochamk Bank, Raghu was presenting the power point slides for the project. When Raghu was going through the issues highlighted in the power point slides, it raised lot of eyebrows within the leadership team in Dochamk Bank. One stake holder even commented they should have gone with TeraSMX as it was known for good stability.
Shekar was also in the meeting as he was also the TeraSMX partner with Dochamk Bank for maintaining their existing Legacy Systems infrastructure. As a TeraSMX partner to Dochamk Bank, he had worked with them closely for more than fifteen years. He knew the mindset of the important people among the stakeholders present in the meeting and how they took their decisions.
Shekar knew the stakeholders were fearful of any project failures whenever they venture into any new technology with unknown risks. He played on their fear to his advantage.
Shekar immediately took the chance and pitched in that there was still time to take a step back and go back to drawing board and start from the beginning. When nobody looked interested, he then suggested divide the project into two phases, phase-one and two. He said it would be less of a risk to develop and deploy phase-one of the project to fully understand all the potential risks involved with trying out with a new platform.
Everyone in the meeting agreed with Shekar’s suggestions. They decided to divide the project into phase-one and two. Dochamk Bank decided if phase-one did not go through as expected they would choose TeraSMX for phase-two of the project. It was a big triumph for Shekar and Puneet. Shekar later on discussed with Puneet in private for ways to disrupt the phase-one of the project.
Work on phase-one of the CDSTP project progressed at normal pace.
“Oh mine. Now I’m able to sit and think. I can now focus on the job rather than worrying about what to answer to Nitesh on the daily status call,” said Vinay.
“Yes. It’s good to work now. It’s without the regular biting and barking from him you know who I mean,” smiled Himesh.
Anil helped out the team by consolidating all the queries each team member had about any use cases. He acted as a coordinator in getting the clarifications for the queries from the Legacy Systems team, a task Shanthi was supposed to do but she did not.
This placed Anil in a convenient position. Anil delayed his work as much as possible. Sometimes he would have got clarifications to the team’s queries about the project requirements for some use cases. He would not forward the documents immediately to anyone. There were many times Vinay, Himesh and Ashutosh were stuck in their work waiting for clarifications from Legacy Systems team while all the documents providing the clarifications were already sitting in Anil’s email box which Anil purposely hid from anyone. Anil was able to introduce considerable delays into the project. He would introduce half day delay here and there and was able to create significant delays in every one’s work.
No one seemed to notice the delays and it did not become a major issue. Nitesh did not complain about any of the delays. He even went on to add that Legacy Systems team was busy with lot of priority deliverables and they were trying hard to squeeze time for this project from their narrow bandwidth.
Nitesh and Anil secretly discussed out of office in what other ways delays could be introduced into the project.
Anil started persuading the team to postpone the testing of the code to a later point. He said testing could be done in the end so that more time could be spent on development. When testing of the code took place later, many bugs were detected. This ended up in lot of rework for the entire team.
Anil succeeded in secretly introducing more than two months of delays into the phase-one of the project. Due to the various delays caused, the scope of the project for phase-one was shrank and the de-scoped requirements were moved to phase-two of the project.
Nitesh was happy. He felt that with phase-one of the project covering only a small set of project requirements and with phase-two not in sight anytime soon, his position as head of the Legacy System Group within Dochamk Bank was cemented for few more years to come. Legacy System Group was there to stay and could not be disbanded anytime soon. Nitesh felt with the change in scope of the project now, he would be asked to also take care of the phase-one of the project once it went into production. He thought he would put Anil into production support team. But Nitesh wanted to ensure everything went by his plan and the talk of phase-two of the project never comes again. He started thinking of a plan to ensure that.
Chapter 17
Vinay and Himesh started working on the cost savings and value additions the team had implemented in the project.
“For POC, one month we both have worked at least six hours overtime. We have worked on Saturdays as well and two Sundays during that month. So it comes to hundred and eighty hours overtime for one month assuming nine hours for a working day. So for two resources, it comes to three hundred and sixty hours overtime.
For three of us you, me and Ashutosh, we have worked at least two hours extra on the average for the entire year. That comes to five hundred and four hours for one resource. For three resources, it is one thousand five hundred and twelve hours.
Sana was working as a free resource for one year. So let’s add up her hours for entire year for the working days. So for twenty one working days by twelve months, it is two thousand and two hundred and sixty eight hours.
Total add up to four thousand and one hundred and forty hours. So for twenty dollar each hour billing rate, this comes to eighty two thousand and eight hundred dollars in savings from overtime and a free resource,” said Vinay.
“How can we show countless hours of work we did by framing algorithms while travelling or at home? Will they accept?” asked Himesh.
“No. They won’t consider those things,” said Ashutosh.
“It’s appraisal time of the year. Let’s start filling our appraisal and submit,” said Vinay.
Vinay, Himesh and Ashutosh logged into the employee web site and opened the appraisal site to fill the appraisal.
“What we have here. Under Goals we have Deliverables, Quality, Financials and Learning. Under Attributes we have Communication & Presentation, Problem Solving, Leadership and Customer Satisfaction,” said Himesh.
“Ashutosh can you guide us for filling this? What we need to put under each section?” asked Vinay.
“Under Deliverables, put whatever you have developed till now. Put the module names you worked and explain in detail the work you have done. Explain all the cost savings and value additions you have brought in.
For Quality, it’s mentioned there maximum how many defects are allowed in your work. So don’t expose all your defects in that section. It says maximum three defects every hundred KLOC allowed. I know everyone have lot of defects but just downplay it. Don’t put actual figures there.
For Financials, say how many leaves you have taken and how much is your utilization percentage. Just make sure it is above ninety five percent.
For Learning, mention all the trainings you have attended and any training you have given to others,” explained Ashutosh.
“For Attributes section, put blah-blah. Say you did this, you did that, you achieved that,” said Ashutosh.
“What we will put for Customer Satisfaction?” asked Vinay.
“Just say how you have completed work within project timelines, how you have delighted the customer with your POC work,” said Ashutosh.
The appraisal cycle got over after two weeks. Vinay got a rating of three which stood for “Meets Expectations”. Vinay went over the supervisor comments in the employee appraisal web site which were given by his supervisor Murali.
“Guys just see here what is written under Attributes section,” said Vinay and started reading out.
Vinay read out the
appraisal comments to Himesh and Ashutosh.
His supervisor comments were, “Communication and presentation needs to be improved. You could have coordinated well in getting the queries clarified in a timely manner.
Considering the kind of issues we are facing in the project today, you didn’t fully address all the potential problems during the POC phase itself. You need to go into the root of the problem and resolve each issue. Need to improve your problem solving skill.
You need to be proactive in leading the work. There are delays in the project due to which scope of the project got reduced. You could have proactively taken the initiative and reduced the delays.
Customer was not happy with the way you have approached the problem. They were not happy with the way POC was done. They were also dissatisfied with your performance due to delays in project deliverables.”
“Wow, it’s hard to satisfy everyone no matter how hard you work these days,” said Vinay.
Everyone laughed.
Murali was promoted to Project Manager. But he called himself as Program Manager. Raghu had now become the Delivery Manager.
Vinay asked Himesh, “How to get promotion? Do you know the process?”
“You need a Godfather for that,” said Himesh.
“Who is Godfather? Can we get promotion too?” asked Vinay.
“You need to build rapport with some senior manager here. There are ties like hailing from the same region or city, same language or religion that can help in building rapport with some manager in our department. It will take longtime to build that,” replied Himesh.
Vinay’s salary increased after receiving his annual confirmation in Holtezent as well as the yearly salary hike. His salary was three lakhs rupees per annum before tax.
Phase-two of the CDSTP project was postponed due to budget cuts at Dochamk Bank. Phase-one of the CDSTP project was completed and went operational. The management made Satish as the team lead for the Operations Support team as well as the maintenance team for the CDSTP. He reported to Nitesh in Dochamk Bank. Nitesh placed Anil as a team member in the Operations Support team. The management added newly recruited people to the support team and released Vinay, Sana, Himesh, Ashutosh, Puneet and Shanthi.
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