With
increase in volume, day to day operations became a challenge. Ramesh and his
team were primarily concentrating on development of features. With more clients
from all round the country, support calls were increasing. Bhishma knew that
unless the users had a great experience and got their doubts clarified on a
timely basis, they would lose interest.
The
central computer system was also running out of capacity. With this capacity
constraint more and more clients were facing problems. He asked Arjun to help
Ramesh to make sure that the capacity is planned and upgraded to match the
growth in volume. Arjun took this up seriously. He undertook a detailed
evaluation of the operations. He realised that the system team as well as MSS
team considered development of features their priority. Solving client problems
was considered a low end job and a necessary evil.
Arjun
went about addressing this problem heads on. He organised a special task team
consisting of smartest kids from business, systems and MSS to address issues
for service quality and redressal of grievances. To begin with there was
significant resistance in being posted to this low-end job. It was considered
to be punishment posting by most.
Arjun
realized that the biggest challenge was changing this attitudinal issue. He
decided to make sure that posting into this task team becomes a privilege
posting and not a punishment posting.
He
called the complete team for a brainstorming session.
“Guys,
I called you all because I want your help in changing our task team
performance. This task team is expected to help our clients to sort out their
problems. But, today the feedback we get from our clients is that we are
failing in our duties. So I decided to ask you all why we are in this stage”
“Sir
I want to make a point. We are from the system team. But we are demeaned by being
posted in this help desk. I don’t feel that I am part of a system team that is
involved in developing an advanced solution. I feel that I am in one of the
call centers.”Ranjit replied
“
I agree with Ranjit” added Rajat also of systems team. “ When the telephone
rings I can almost listen to myself
saying Mam can I help you”
“OK
Rajat is it shameful to help our clients? Are we not being sustained by the fee
that is paid by our clients? If the clients don’t feel happy and they don’t buy
our services there will be no solution development for any of us”
“I
don’t say that we should not help our clients. But that is the job of people who are selected to do that job. We
can simply outsource this to a call center where ‘not so well educated’ chaps
will sit and take these calls and sort out the clients stupid clarifications”
Ranjit replied.
“May
be the business operations team can handle it” Rajat remarked
“Do
you think it is the job of BO to clean up the shit that the systems team has
created” Gopan from BO who was posted to task team was fuming.
“Please
stop this nonsense” Arjun raised his voice mildly. “You guys are arguing
without truly understanding our role and the challenges we face”
“Listen
to some facts. Do you know why I have been asked by Bhishma to take a look the
task team performance? It is because we have reached a situation that there is
severe backlash from our client base about the quality of our solution. The
murmur that was here and there, is now become a uprising asking us to take our
solution back and return their monies”
“In
the last one week I analysed whatever documentation you had created relating to
the customer grievances. I took help of Krishnan the MSS project head to study
the root cause. 90% of the complaints are not some clarification from users on
which button to press or how to start the computer or requesting help on
command. They are performance issues of programs getting slow, the weekly
upgrades failing to load, programs crashing, failure of some functionalities
and so on.” Arjun pointed out
“These
are on account of poor design, poor programming and insufficient testing. These
cannot be solved by call center staff. They need help from qualified people to
solve these problems. We need bright kids like you to analyse these problems
deeply to understand the root causes and solve them. Then we send these
upgrades to our clients so that these problems don’t continue. I don’t even
know why we call these upgrades. They are nothing but bug fixes”
“Let
me make a point my friends” Krishnan butted in. These problems are because all
you smart guys who are involved in development and testing are focused on
features and functionalities and not of performance. We only see if the
functionality work. We test using few records. We don’t appreciate how our
programs scale, we don’t worry about memory leaks, we don’t spent time on the
algorithms. We don’t even worry about basic discipline in coding. I have seen
mixing up data definitions as integer and decimal in the same program. I have
seen logics in queries and searches in program that will always throw out null
records because the logics are plain faulty.”
“What
is required from this task team is Performance Enhancement. But we see the role
of this group as help desk. Therefore we don’t respect the role that we are
expected to play. Therefore we don’t play this role with our hearts in it.
Therefore we don’t do justice to our role. Therefore our clients are happy and
therefore we are failing as a company. It is a vicious cycle.” Arjun was almost
talking to himself.
“We
are going to change what we call ourselves. This group will from now on be
called ‘Performance Enhancement Group’ ; PEG We are the pegs on which the
growth of our company will be supported, we are the peg that we use in our
climb upward”
“If
we fail in this role, we will not be PEGS but PIGS that will drive our company
to its doom” Arjun was getting the drift in his mind, the road ahead was
getting clear.
“But
sir, why should I be there in this group?” Vamsi from MSS asked. I am working on
one component of the solution. ie; communication
“OK.
I agree. Are you a person who understand only programming related to the
communication system. In the next project you will go from MSS, will it only be
in comms”
“No
sir”
“That
is the point. Do you think that the BO team who don’t understand any
programming are better suited? Do you think that the systems team who no
involved in programming are better suited? We don’t expect you to fix all bugs
of all modules by PEGS. We expect smart and brilliant people like you, who have
exposure to different modules will analyse the problem, solve it if you can or connect
to the relevant experts from the team and help it to be solved.”
Arjun
was speaking with utmost seriousness and earnestness. He was looking into the
eyes of each of them. He wanted them to appreciate the import of what he was
explaining. He knew it was important for them to feel and believe the
importance of what they were doing and also absorb how it is going to help them
in their growth. He continued
“This
is a different skill than jut programming. This is a skill that requires
ability to react under stress. Ability to make quick evaluation of various
options under demanding circumstances and to take a call on immediate work
around and on long term solution. It does not give you luxury of time that you
often have when you are solving a problem as a part of your regular
development. This is a different kind of training that you will get; preparing
you to be a leader who can lead his troops.”
He
paused for a minute and looked up as if trying to pull out an idea from the
sky. His hands reached to the back of his head as if he was trying to comb his
hair with his fingers. This was a characteristic
mannerism of Arjun when he is thinking seriously.
“I want you to transform from being Karna to
being Arjun” He said with a smile
“Do
you know what this means?”
“No
sir.” Some of them murmured
“If
you remember the story from Mahabharatha, Karna was a better archer than Arjun.
But he had one curse. Do you know what it was?” He stopped for an answer from
the audience.
“He
would forget all what he learned when it is really a matter of life and death”
Gopan said
“That
is true. What it meant that he was quite weak in managing stress. I’m sure many
of you would have experienced this in your life too. In the examination hall,
sometimes some of us forget all what we learned. For some others, it could be
at the time of an interview. Even in games, a critical point some may feel
frozen. All these are signs of our inability to cope with sudden stress.”
“It
is not enough for us to learn skills and build knowledge. It is also important
for us to be use them effectively and smartly at time of crisis. One of the
most important training that PEGS will give us is this.”
“As
we have a critical role to deliver; we only want as members of this team, those
who possess functional skills and crisis management skills. Please keep this in
mind. With this in mind together will
make PEGS the critical component of success of IES.
Thanks guys for joining me
today. Let us get going.”
All
of them dispersed. Krishna and Arjun walked out to the balcony to share a
smoke. Udhi also joined them.
While
lighting a cigarette Arjun said. “ I
want to posting to PEGS a matter of privilege and not a matter of punishment. I
want them to feel like Heroes”
Krishnan
nodded his head as he took a deep drag of his cigarette.
