Management

“I quiT” – Episode @30

/ Mr. Venky Bond / Leave a comment

“Oh. Welcome. I am Quadhar. We all are waiting for you.”

“Oh. I am so sorry to keep you all waiting. Good evening to all of you here. I am Ishwarya. I will be your new manager for this location.”

“Welcome Ishwarya.” Said Quadhar clapping his hands. Everyone else joined him, welcoming Ishawarya into the squad.

Ishwarya moved a few steps forward making sure that she is visible by everyone and then started talking to the team.

“Hi team. I thank you so much for your warm welcome.I look forward for a great experience working with all of you. I hope for the same from you.Before I take over the complete responsibility, let me formally introduce myself. I am Ishwarya, I am married and having a 4-year-old kid. I am basically from Mumbai and recently moved to Bengaluru. I have nearly 9 years of experience in the field of IT. This is my third company. I worked under various verticals like banking, retail and now working on mobile projects from last 3 years. Now, I am pulled in to take care of the mobile projects wing, especially the new project that was said OK by the clients. I should thank Quadhar and the team for working on the demo, presenting it to the clients and finally winning the pot.We will be working on this for the next 8 to 12 months.That’s all about myself. Now, each one of you can you introduce yourself, please.”Asked Ishwarya to the team.

When she asked everyone to introduce, each one of them started introducing themselves to Ishwarya one by one detailing their name, home town and the project in which they are operating.It took about 17 minutes for all of them to introduce them to her. When everybody completed, Quadhar reminded Ishwarya that Thyagarajan asked them to call to his mobile once Ishwarya steps into the meeting room.

Quadhar immediately took the phone and dialed to Thyagarajan.

“Hello.”

“Hi Thyagarajan. This is Quadhar.”

“Hi Quadhar. Good evening. Did you guys assemble?”

“Yes Thyagarajan. We have the entire team along with Ishwarya.”

“Oh. That’s great. Hi Ishwarya. Welcome to the team.”Said Thyagarajan.

“Hi Thyagarajan. Good evening. Thank you so much.”

“Team, Ishwarya is your new manager. She will be taking care of the entire Bengaluru team and also the new project that is coming up.I guess she finished her introduction.”

“Yes Thyagarajan. Just now we all introduced ourselves to one another.”

“Oh. That’s great. So, team.She will be your primary point of contact for everything you need. She is not even a technical manager; she also worked as people manager for 2 years.So, hope that will be an added advantage.”Said Thyagarajan welcoming Ishwarya into the team and detailing her role with the team.After that, he said “Quadhar.”

“Yes Thyagarajan.”

“Please help her in detailing the process and also the team structure.”

“Sure Thyagarajan.”

“For few days, you have to support her in understanding everything.”

“Okay Thyagarajan. I will definitely do that.”

“Thanks.”

Meeting went on with the detailing of her roles and responsibilities.

After Thyagarajan disconnected, some of them started asking Ishwarya some questions regarding technical and non-technical. When Ishanth’s turn came, he asked her a question related to management.

“Ishwarya. Can I ask you a question.”

“Sure. Ish..” Ishwarya is trying to remember his name and when she confirmed herself that she cannot recollect, she asked “Sorry, what’s your name?”

“I am Ishanth.”

“Sorry, this is the first day right. After a few days, I will start getting used with the names and people.”

“That’s okay Ishwarya.”

“Yeah. Continue. You want to ask something.”

“What is your management strategy?”

“Management strategy? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, you are 9 years experienced right. What is the strategy that you have learned that will best suit thissector.”

“That’s a very beautiful question Ishanth. But, I don’t think strategy is something that can be defined in words. It is how we work or react upon situations. May be you can know based on how I deal with people and things as the days move forward.”

“Okay.” Said Ishanth. He is basically attempting to understand her management and so posted such a question. But, she gave a dynamic answer to his question.

After the meeting, Ishanth and Meher were walking out of the meeting room. Meher asked Ishanth “Hey Ishanth. Why did you ask that to Ishwarya?”

“I just asked it very randomly Meher. Frankly speaking I want to know whether she is like Thyagarajan or not. That’s it.”

“Okay.” Said Meher and they both went back to their desks. Quadhar and Ishwarya walked towards Quadhar’s cabin.

For the next two weeks, Quadhar got busy with Ishwarya detailing her about the team and the process. And also explaining her about the projects the team is working and the roles and responsibilities of each individual member in the team.

Slowly Ishwarya started taking over responsibilities from Quadhar. When someone used to approach Quadhar for any information, he used to divert them to Ishwarya. After a few days, it turned out like people started going to Ishwarya directly. Quadhar’s work at office used to come down day by day. Ishwarya is very quick at understanding the process and so used to handle things quickly and efficiently.

As this is going this way, one day Meher came to Ishanth’s desk for some information.

“Hey Ishanth. What are you doing?”

“I am just going through the QA report Meher.”

“I need a small info Ishanth.”

“Yes, tell me Meher. Regarding what?”

“This is regarding the maintenance project Ishanth.”

“I am not aware of anything in that project Meher. Why don’t you talk to Quadhar?”

“I don’t know Ishanth, from last few days, he is directing to Ishwarya whenever I go and ask something. Not just me, whoever is approaching him for anything, he is asking them to go and talk to Ishwarya.”

“May be because she is manager right and so he wants her to take decisions and give directions.”

“Not just that Meher. He is not being interactive as like before. He is just coming and going. Half of the day he will be in meeting with Ishwarya or Thyagarajan. He is not even asking the status of the tasks.”

@Strategy

Guess the story: How will Ishwarya manage the team?

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“I quiT” – Episode @15

/ Mr. Venky Bond / 10 Comments

“I already told him Ishanth. He said let him learn.”

“Then you have to give him sufficient time to learn.”

“Hey Ishanth. Can we discuss later on this?I am running out of time now. I have a conference to attend at 02:00 PM.”

“Okay Quadhar.”

(02:10 PM)

Quadhar, Thyagarajan and few others gathered in the video conference room for the Quarterly meet.It is a large room with lot of colored high quality paper posters on both sides of the wall. Those represent the current statistics, vision and mission with which the organization is running from many years.

Meeting started with update from Andrew who is the Sr. Vice Presidents of Mobile account of the company. He has been in this role from last 7 years. He takes care of all client interactions and travels around the world to meet upon various clients both to get new deals and also to update clients on the currently assigned deals. He is a guy who is always into business. If you say have an hour with you, for the first 10 minutes he talks about how to do business and in the next 50 minutes, he makes u do it. That doesn’t mean he is 24/7 and 365 days in business. He is the guy who takes one week vacation every quarter. And he schedules the Quarterly meeting once he is back from his vacation. Even though he looks serious outside, he is well known for his sense of humor.

(02:20 PM)

He finished his welcome speech in the first 10 minutes and gave window for each project manager from each division to give updates on their respective project. From every project, one senior manager and one senior employee will be invited to this meeting every time. Each manager will be given 15 minutes for their updates and then it is followed by questionnaire by Andrew. He takes 10 mins to shoot his questions and get answers from the managers.

The meeting went on for 90 mins. And now it’s Mr. Thyagarajan’s turn to speak out. Thyagarajan started his project updates by starting his presentation deck which Quadhar had prepared.

“Good evening every one. I will now start with the updates on the TNX mobile application which we started 6 months back. It is in healthy status as we are completing on time and as of today, the team is working on the 2nd release and hopefully we will go live by the end of next month. We have planned for a demo on the first week of next month. And if the clients give a green signal, we will launch it by month end.”

Thyagarajan gave a complete update on the project along with the number of resources who are working on that. He took about 5 minutes to complete the update on the first project.

“Wow. That’s wonderful.” One of the mangers replied clapping his hands and then few others joined him.

“Thank you. And now when it comes to our next project, it is in progress and going good. The progress is little slow when compared to the TNX mobile project because we are concentratingmore on the TNX first as we have demo next week. Once we will finish working on it, we will resume our work on that allocating 50% of our resource time.”

“Thyagarajan, wait. I guess we talked about this before I have been to vacation. Last time when I met them, they said that they are planning to launch the first version to their customers in the next month. And so maybe you have to speed that up. Don’t wait for the TNX to get completed. Resume this and try to finish it off as per the latest schedule. And also try to share the revised timelines by tomorrow noon.

“Okay Andrew. Sure” replied Thyagarajan and continued giving updates.“During the last quarterly meet, we discussed about the cross location team set up to manage the project by setting up teams at different locations. As of now we are dropping that plan due to the logistical and financial issues. We will be continuing our work on that project from Bangalore location.”

The moment Quadhar heard this; he felt surprised and ran into deep shock. He is requesting Thyagarajan regarding transfer to Hyderabad from almost a year. And Thyagarajan kept him silent saying that very soon he will be setting up a team in Hyderabad and Quadhar will be leading that team from that location. And so when he heard the news from Thyagarajan that they dropped the plan of setting up a team in Hyderabad, he is completely depressed.

(04:45 PM)

Meeting almost came to an end. The entire project managers finished giving updates about all the projects they are handling. And now it’s again Mr. Andrew’s turn to wind up the meeting.

“Thanks a lot guys for all the updates. I am so happy that almost all the projects are on GREEN. And here and there I have noticed some projects which are still in YELLOW. We have to push ourselves and try to bring them into GREEN. By the next quarterly meet, I have to see all the projects in GREEN. And the next most important thing I wanna discuss is regarding the 100% productivity. We have enough resources in all our projects. But, I don’t think we are making proper utilization of our resources. If you take a project X with 5 resources, each resource working for 8 hours for 5 days,and thenour productive hours should be 120 hours. Which is very well enough to complete a module? But I am not seeing that kind of stats in most of the projects. I guess hardly we are achieving 60 to 70% of that and the remaining 30% we are simply losing it. I don’t want these kinds of gaps anywhere. The world is growing so fast and the customers are demanding a faster delivery of their products. The competition is so high that each customer is so working their part to release their products with uniqueness and high quality.Apart from our regular project activities, we also need to work on the innovation. Customers are looking for an innovative solution these days. They are in greed for products that can be developed in little time innovatively. The days of traditional waterfall models and other models are gone. Software engineering is being redefined every day. Hope you are on track on what I am trying to say.Any questions?”

All of them who are seated in the meeting room are just thinking about what Mr. Andrew just said. None of them had any questions.

(04:59 PM)

“Okay guys as you all don’t have any questions, and also the time is closing up, I am winding this meeting. Thank you guys. Thank you

@Quarterly-Meet

Guess the story: Why is Quadhar shocked after hearing updates from Thyagarajan?

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