Tech Job 9 to 9 (7 page)

Vinay was
walking near Metro Plaza to meet Sana there in the food court on a Saturday
morning. They had planned to have food and then go for the new movie in the
cinemas there. Vinay suddenly halted. He saw someone very similar to Himesh in
the distance. He was just coming out of the main entrance of the Octos Towers
Tech Park.

Octos Towers
Tech Park was located opposite to Metro Plaza. The Tech Park was like a mini town.
There were ten tall towers laid out in each turn of a long and winding
Bezier-curve like eighty feet roadway. Each tower had hundred floors and they
were all connected to each other through long bridge pathways. The entire mini
town was cramped with many companies, stores, shops, food courts and movie
halls. Each tower could easily dwarf the entire capacity of the Holtezent
campus. There was shuttle service every ten minutes taking people through all
the towers.

Vinay had been
there before to attend interviews. Vinay thought what Himesh might be doing
there. He had to hurry to meet Sana or they would miss the tickets for the new
movie.

Later in
office, Vinay saw an email from Sumathi.

“Who is this
Sumathi? Why she is contacting me?” said Vinay.

“It’s given in
her email signature. She is from Delivery Process Group. Murali might have told
her to contact you who else,” said Himesh.

“What she is
asking…’Please send the following documents and artifacts for commencing the audit
by EOD. We will do project audit by this week and project management review by
Monday’. Wow this is one big list of documents she is asking…Risk Management
Plan, Disaster Recovery Plan, Project Plan, Project Continuity Plan, Quality
Internal Audit, Quality External Audit, Project Contract and Statement Of Work,
PM Checklist, KT and Process checklists, previous Audit report, previous
project management progress report, Project Release Tracker, Resource Tracker,
Software Engineering Methodology, Defect Prevention and Casual Analysis,
Defects Reports, Customer Feedback and Rating, Project Team Trainings
completion status,” said Vinay.

“Good. So you
are working as a team member, team lead as well as managing the work within the
timelines. You are also carrying out the work and activities our manager is
supposed to do. And now you are the single point of contact for whoever wants
anything from this project be it any document, project metrics and any other
data,” smiled Himesh.

“I don’t know
why Murali has referred her to me. I’m already overloaded. All these documents
project manager should prepare and give it to her,” said Vinay.

“Ya. Why you
have to involve in this project audit and project management review. We have
already lot of work pending which we are struggling with. It will take lot of
time to prepare all these documents. How can we send all these documents by end
of today?” said Himesh.

“How many work
I can do in a single day? I’m only one person and I can do only one person work
each day. I’m already getting exhausted with all the work and activities I’m
doing. I will get burnt out if it continues like this,” said Vinay.

“Don’t worry.
We will share the work and send her whatever we can complete by today,” said
Himesh.

Sumathi had asked
for various documents and artifacts to be submitted to her every month end.

An artifact,
also known as a software artifact, was a tangible item created as part of the
project work. It could be a document, script, code or files. A deliverable contained
a set of artifacts to be completed and handed over to the client as agreed in
the project timeline.

Nitesh had
stumbled on a portfolio level plan when he was browsing through the project
plan documents in Dochamk Bank intranet web site used for document management.
The portfolio plan clearly laid out the various dates for all the projects. It
also specified which technology group would take over support and maintenance
after the project was deployed into production as well as what would happen to
the existing team handling the current system.

Nitesh checked
the entries corresponding to CDSTP project. It said “Support & Maintenance
to be handed over to Technology Architecture and Solutions Group”. In the
comments section he saw, “Legacy Systems Group currently headed by Nitesh to be
disbanded after take over by TASG team.”

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.

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.