Hi Mxx,
These are my thoughts based on what I perceive in EP and also in FSS. Most of it is my opinion (mostly as
an outsider - as there are things about which I would not even know
by now!)
First the EP groups as such.
The EP project is quite big. In fact ,
my previous company was almost half its size - to put things in
perspective! To think about things for EP, I just thought what I
would be doing if I had to ever lead such a big group.
So, in my opinion I would say the
project has to be run as a company within the company - with a
different set of rules than other projects. Things which apply to a
group of 10-20 people cannot be extrapolated to something as big as
200 people. Its like the difference between driving a maruti 800 and
a F1 car!
So there should be a full time support
staff. This means that the following roles would have people
dedicated 100% to EP ( if something like this exists, then I am not
aware of it ) :
- HR ( 1 person from HR only for EP -
who takes care of new recruits, inductions, change of group from
other groups).
- Admin ( 1 person for the admin needs
, and seating arrangements ).
- IT ( 1 or 2 people who look after the
computer installations, licensing, new computer setup, virus etc)
The above information should be
available easily - probably as part of induction or an intranet.
The other issues I see are two folds :
1. Communication , and,
2. Duplication.
1. Communication:
-----------------
There is a big communication gap even
within teams. Take the instance of DSP. Its a big team ( 20+ people)
and they are spread around on 3 floors. It took me 2+ weeks to meet
everyone. And then almost a month to find out where the people are.
Anything that needs to be circulated in the team has to be either
through email ( Lotus Notes is *not* a good email client - opensource
stuff like Thunderbird are much better ) or through team meetings.
Team meetings cannot be called every
other day, so any communication has to wait till the week day when
most teams have their meetings. Emails get lost as there is a quota
limit, and also cause there is no filtering/tagging mechanism in LN.
Now when free email like gmail is 2.5GB and with a huge number of
features it is ridiculous for a company like FSS to still cling on to
some archaic tool and space limits. Quite a lot of work can be done
faster if people of the same team sit together. It will be easy for
managers to get updates, for developers to find answer to queries -
and also leads to team building.
So, I would suggest an immediate
seating plan to go in place to get people of the same team together.
Another helpful tool would be a big whiteboard for each team - which
can be used by the team to discuss something, or for keeping the
approaching dates up for easy reference (whatever a team wants).
Having boards in rooms does not help - you cannot keep things up
there indefinitely.
Another communication problem is what
came out with the IRMA guidelines. No one was paying any attention
cause it is not easily available. All these guidelines are either
being sent through email , or being put into the EP file server (
where the hierarchy is not easy to see). Such things since being
project wide would make more sense to be in one place and easily
accessible. The best option here I see is having an intranet for EP.
Guidelines/ howtos / rampup / software list / lab lists / etc can
easily go here as webpages - which allow people to see the situation
from anywhere.
Another disconnect I felt was that
there is no ramp up plans in place. When I joined ( and I guess
K is also going through the same kind of problems) there was no
ramp up given. Even though we are experienced guys , we cannot work
without inputs. And this is leading to an extra long rampup time. I
suggest that ramp up plans be put in place which should be in 2 parts
1) A generic rampup on the tech, and about the DDF working. 2) Role
specific ramp-up (tech lead/ architect/ management level). These
things have not been thought of and there are no such things in place
now - which leads to neglecting the rampup cause everyone is so busy
- which leads to people working less efficiently - and hence people
become more busy ... etc.
Another thing missing is the visibility
of the roles of upper management to the developers. A person recently
promoted was given a card from A.J. , and asked me later who was AJ
cause he had no idea why the congrats came from him. I suggest that
the intranet also have a profiles section for the people in charge so
people who don't know will still be able to find out.
There also seems to be no process in
place for induction of a new person in the team. Cubicle space,
workstation procurement , setting up of software - no plan exists for
this. I had to sit without a comp for 3 days, and the comp was only
operational after 1 week ! I was thinking this was slow - but with
new people joining the group i see that the wait time is more than 1
week ! Time wastage.
2. Duplication
--------------
Duplication of activities I feel is a
critical time killer. Almost everything has to be done 2 times.
Take the case of effort updation. It
has to be updated in MPP on a task basis *and* in Timesheets on a
totally different basis. EP ( and FSS probably ) needs a convergence
of these things. The Time sheet application is very old - and people
only fill it in cause salaries are tied to it. I find it utterly
unbelievable that a tech company is tech starved. How else could it
be that in a time of AJAX and upcoming W3C specs employees are still
forced to use a browser ( netscape 4.5 ) from yesteryear. I have
also found instances of places in A where a pop up comes that
you *have* to use IE for accessing certain things. Bad design !
People should be developing to the specs not the application.
And since MPP access is not to the
developers, the managers need to indicate the tasklines using
something else. So, for the managers its mpp for management meetings
and xls or scraps of paper for developer meetings.
Another place of duplication is the
passwords. I have 4 FSS passwords ( desktop login, email, timesheet,
ESS ) and a few more from Nokia ( PI access, Webmail, webpronto). No
convergence at all. Why can't i automatically have the same
login/password at least on a FSS level if not on a client level ? It
not an impossible task - WIPRO is a good example of it. Everything is authenticated based on the Active Directory password. It just takes
some will to change the existing system. But most people have gotten
so used to it that they are not willing to change :(
Another issue of duplication is the
document updates - have to be done in both DOORs and in PI.
An underlying thread that I find in all
the duplication that I theorize is that initially some tool was
being used - which was found lacking in some aspect. So, people
started looking for a new tool, and *added* that. I think that is a
typical knee jerk reaction. What should have been done for any new
tool is to see how it can replace some other tool - and only if there
is an efficiency benefit (not just a feature benefit) it should be
taken up.
I don't know if something can be done
for the above issues - people are so busy that they don't have time
to think. But whatever happens, don't add something if it is not
replacing something first.
I think that the work is still holding
up because you have some very very hardworking people. They put in
the extra efforts and keep pulling things together - but there is a
limit to that too.
You have also asked me for inputs on
team members and FSS in general.
Team members in EP
-----------------------
- Very hard working people. But not
many bright people. People know how to work hard, but not smart (
typical managerial dribble - but I think you will know what I mean).
- People don't know the upper
management or their roles. Mxx is known as the big guy, but not many
people ( specially the juniors) know your role. Ditto for V, S, A.J..
I don't know if it will be politically
correct for making comments on people specifically, but since this is
going to be confidential, I have a few observations :
- Recently promoted people : People
have been promoted to higher tech/managerial roles. I think that they
are not really ready for it - and have been promoted as a way to keep
people in the company. They need grooming. Especially the managers.
The senior management needs to keep a constant grooming going on.
Also, the promotions seem to have gone into a few people's head and
they think greatly of themselves. It becomes difficult to work with
these people as they are unhelpfull - and wanted to be treated extra
nice ( maybe its my problem as I cannot sweet talk much).
- I think P needs to be assertive. Most
of the meetings turn out to be quite a fish market cause things are
not kept on track. And assertiveness does not mean being assertive on
deadlines. I think P is trying to pacify everyone - but the problem
is not everyone gets pacified. Here I would like to state that since
I don't know many of the reasons for the decisions, maybe I am
perceiving something which is not there.
- Another comment that I have often
heard is that the management bends over backwards to keep the N
people happy.
- N people complain that they are kept
in the dark. Its not about sharing of plans etc - what they say is
that they are not told the actual reality, and it is being masked
under a smile and "everything is going fine" - while they
being here know that things are not ok. I think that the main problem
comes from the fact that we still treat the N people as not part of
the team , and only as an irritant. If they are treated as part of
the team then only will we be more open to them. Currently I am
seeing an erosion in trust.
- No overall Architect : When there is
contention between the teams , there is no one who has overall
knowledge. R comes pretty close to it - but he is too overloaded.
- Which brings me to the overloading of
R. I think something should be done to make other people take up
ownership - as R has the habit of taking everything upon himself.
General FSS
-----------
The general impression is that FSS is
not a fun place to work in. Also it is not the best paymaster ( this
is from a non-newbie perceptive - freshers are just glad that they
get a job anywhere). I will not talk about salaries - you know more
about it than me :-)
The fun factor is missing from the work
spaces. Its not about having an annual gala event where people blow
up money. Its about peer comparisons. Nothing seems to be happening
here which people can identify with as a sense of achievement. Also
the impression about N projects is the huge "process" that
is being followed - and people from non-N projects don't want to
move in , or have sympathetic comments for those who are.
Even if something like EP gets done on
time - and that is taken as an achievement ( as it will inevitably be
), most people will just chit-chat over chai/coffee that management
had pushed everyone tooo much for the completion, and the project was
a very lousy place to work in. Catch 22. Image drop.
With a negative image - you will never
get smart people in.
Processes . Hmm... Everyone has a
personal grouse against processes it seems. I think its because
people don't know what they are for. My way of thinking is that
processes are important cause they facilitate things. But here I feel
that processes are done for process sake. And almost too often it is
tied with the actual implementation.
What I mean is that supposing a project
is to be undertaken. The Process( CMMi etc) talks about the things
which need to be done. As a CMMi Lev 5 company all the projects need
to comply with this. But what happens is that the implementation (
use MPP, don't use html , etc) is taken as the process. This has lead
to processes which are not really useful. If the process talks about
finding defect density and tracking it, it does not specify that you
can only use one tool - which is the case here. So, if something more
efficient comes by , it wont be taken up. Similarly for IT processes.
It should specify support for the IT infrastructure, not just which
softwares to support. If a requirement comes for a new software, the
IT should be able to support it , not say that the policy is not to
support. There is a lot of negativism here.
Most people perceive quality as
something which has to be done - not something which is a control
mechanism. If a defect density is supposed to be 4 per ksloc, people
get confused and think that they have to get that magical figure.
Quality is not a much understood topic. Also, I am not too sure how
much data was/is being fudged to get good quality figures. People
fear RCA.
Other issues that I have personally (
this is totally an individual thing) is slow network access, blocked
sites, blocked messenger services, no CD rom drives. Basically gives
the feel that the company does not trust any of the employees. Seems
strange that a company which talks about end to end communications is
blocking communications inside it (it is probably a huges hangover).
Well, the mail turned out to be more
that I had thought I would write. Its a mind dump.
regards,
Vibhu..
