Pathways#Innovative Planning#Level4#1 Managing Projects - Saving the Project!

 Good evening Toastmaster of the evening and fellow toastmasters. Today I am going to explain the recovery of an IT project at my work.

Last year April, I was asked by the customer to join a management meeting, in that meeting I was told that the client project manager wants to scrap the project as our team at offshore was not able to deliver even a single delivery as planned in the last one year. He requested the money spent on this project to be considered as sunk cost to his management as he doesn’t have confidence to deliver the project by December.

The customer has already spent more than a million dollars on that project. His management was totally surprised and afraid of the consequences from their senior management. If we go and tell the management that we are incurring a million-dollar sunk cost, then it will raise various questions on their management capabilities as well as us.

To save the face, we told the customer that we will analyze the root cause of this issue and come up with Go To Green plan. I started working on the root cause analysis. I started having extensive discussions with the customers and our team members and documented the issues and sorted them into the highest priority order. Some of the key issues identified are

1.      There is no dedicated offshore project manager for the 15-member team. Since we operate in Time and material mode, the customer thought that they could control the team from onsite directly.

2.      There is no dedicated technical lead who knows the existing system and helps the team with any queries.

3.      Requirements are not clear from the developer perspective.

4.      The current lead at onsite was overloaded and not able to reply to the team’s queries on time.

5.      Daily scrum calls are extended for hours, and the total daily meeting hours are around 3-4 hours on average due to various reasons, and it completely spoiled the team’s productivity.

6.      Daily extended working hours and weekend work have affected the team’s morale.

Due to all these issues, the team morale is low, and senior resources want to move out of this project.

Against these issues, we started writing our action plan. Dedicated project manager at offshore, Business system analyst at onsite and offshore for requirement clarity, dedicated technical lead at onsite. We presented this to the customer & the customer was convinced of the identified issues and the action plan from us. We projected the final release date within December with phased monthly releases in the subsequent months.

The only constraint we faced was that the customer clearly told us that they couldn’t pay for additional resources as they already burnt more than a million dollars into this project.

So, we had many discussions internally with our management and were convinced to invest non-billable resources in this project as part of our recovery plan but ensured that the profit margin won’t go below standard. Our management also agreed, and we added one Business System Analyst at onsite and re-mapped existing lead at offshore as project manager and added a replacement for him. We also added one Business System Analyst  at offshore. I took control as PM from onsite. 

We started strictly adhering to Scrum ceremonies. We ensured that the daily scrum meetings do not go beyond 20-30 minutes. Requirement walkthrough sessions are recorded and kept in the common repository for future reference. Requirement clarification queries from the team are properly addressed and the members started enjoying the work. We ensured to avoid weekend work and extended work hours to have the work-life balance. We also introduced a bi-weekly session on “Get to Know your team” where every team member will present about themselves nothing about the work. This session played an important role in getting to know each other and it really gelled the team together. The team members loved these sessions as they started hearing different life paths & ambitions of their colleagues.

The timelines for the phased releases are very tight so that even one slippage could push the project end date to the next year which the customer doesn’t want. We all stick to the plan though we had minor hiccups in the releases. At the end of December, we have done all the releases as planned. It is a great achievement for all of us who planned meticulously and worked very hard for this.

What I learned from this project are.

1.      Members in the team should enjoy working on the project.

2.      The leader of the team should enable the camaraderie within the team.

3.      Psychological safety should be provided so that the team will not be afraid of taking risks and showcase it as a safe environment.

4.      Key roles/Bottle necks of the project should be identified and addressed as early as possible.

5.      All the leaders within the project should be allowed to take decisions in their capacity considering the project objective and timeline.

Over to the TMOE!

Club-ISC - Feb 2025 - When life hands over a lemon…

One day I went for a walking in a nearby park. My attention was grabbed by. Waoh! Waoh! Waoh! Waoh! (Barking) .

The dog enthusiastically jumped like a bouncing ball, twirled like a twister and played with the fellow dogs. It played enthusiastically with the owner.

Suddenly I found something odd with that dog. I watched him closely and astonished to find that he has only three legs. It seems that the dog has lost a leg due to some accident. The dog showed no sign of handicap or remorse. I got awe inspired.

Good evening contest master, fellow toastmasters and guests.

On a warm Sunday morning, I got a call from my cousin.

He said “Next week … our Singapore uncle is coming for his house warming ceremony”.

I got very excited on hearing that our Singapore uncle Mohan is coming.

Immediately I started to think about my Singapore uncle Mohan. He was born and brought up in a middle class family. He finished his schooling and was very much interested in doing engineering. But, due to his financial situation he joined polytechnic. After that he worked in a mechanical lathe in Chennai. Seeking a better livelihood he went to Bangalore. When he reached Bangalore he didn’t have any money. He even slept in the railway station for 3 days with limited food like a pauper. Then he got a job in a company and worked like a bumble bee to become the top performer in his job.

After a couple of years working in Bangalore, he found an opportunity to work in Singapore and moved to Singapore. He was the top performer in that job also. After a brief stint in that job, he switched over to sales in another company. During the course of the job he frequently travelled all around the globe and he was regarded as the best sales person in the entire sales community in his field. In the meantime, he started his own venture in Chennai. Within five years the company progressed northwards and now at the age of 60, he is a multi-millionaire owning assets in both Singapore and India.

On the other day, I met him in an event. I wished him and asked ,

Me: Uncle, What is the major reason behind your success? Didn’t you ever worry when life handed you just a diploma?

Uncle: Thani, I was worried when I had just a diploma. At many times I thought how I am going to have a good life with the meager salary and with a diploma education. All my worries vanished and I was reincarnated after reading a story by Dale Carnegie.

Me: Oh! Can you please share with me the story uncle?

Uncle: Definitely!

Once upon a time a man lived in Chicago and had five sons. One day he called his five sons to a meeting and handed over a share of his father land to all his sons. The next day all his sons eagerly visited the land and shocked to find, that the land is present near the forest and is fully occupied by the most venomous rattle snakes. Four out of the five sons consider the land as barren and left. But one son thought he can do something with it. After couple of years, he started exporting the poison of rattle snakes across the globe to all the pharmacy companies manufacturing antitoxins. He also exported the canned rattle snake flesh.

When life handed him the most venomous poison in the world, he accepted it graciously and become a successful person. “Be the best in your job, everything will be taken care”.

When life handed him a small lemon - a diploma, he accepted it and went on to become a successful entrepreneur.

Nelson Mandela says, “It is what we make out of what we have … not what we are given, that differentiates one person from another”

Dear Fellow toastmasters, what is the thing that life handed over to you?  Are you worrying that the thing you received in life is worthless or very small?

When I introspect my life so far, Am I not given fairly by life? I really agree that life has given me far beyond when compared to my uncle.

My parents gave me a wonderful start to me by which I had done my master’s in computer applications, 18 years later I had done my MBA, through the course I got professional certifications. This month, I got my Japanese language certification N2. Though my lemons may not be comparable like other achievers, but I am trying my best to make it a lemonade.

Don’t worry about the lemon handed by the life; strive hard until you make lemonade.

What is your lemon?

Pathways#Innovative Planning#Level3#1 Descriptive Language - Excruciating Start!

 

Excruciating Start

Good evening toastmaster of the evening and fellow toastmasters. Today I am going to elaborate the commotions and feelings during my first term in my M.B.A course which started on October 2022.

I started my M.B.A journey like a person onboarded a ship to the promise land. We must take a minimum of 36 credits and maximum of 40 credits to graduate. Each course will have a credit of 1 to 1.5 credits based upon the duration and complexity. Each term is 3 months. If it is 1 credit, we will have 4 classes in 3 months. if it is 1.5 credits then we will have 6 classes in 3 months. So, I must complete 25 to 28 courses to get all the credits. All the classes are conducted every two weeks.

A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, my M.B.A journey of 40 credits started with the 4 subjects of 6 credits in the first term. They are

Essentials of Marketing and Strategy

Human Resource Management

Critical Thinking

Business Analytics

Two classes were online, and two classes were conducted at the campus in the first term.

At the start, I was very eager to attend and learn but as the classes progresses, my eagerness started to fade away and it seems my ship headed for the hell instead of promise land.

Since I am going to the student life nearly after 18 years, I am totally out of sorts for the student life. After 2 weeks into the term, my hair in the head started withered like the leaves during the fall season. I started imagining myself without hair post completing my M.B.A.  

Critical thinking course is all about how efficiently we can solve the problem with how many effective solutions. It will be like 5 why analysis to find the root cause of the problem and address it.

While doing the Critical Thinking course assignments, my mind behaved critically ill, and I started behaved like a mad dog with my family. My family also understood the stress which I am in and started sympathizing with me. I have become the 3^rd student in my home after my son and daughter. Instead of critically thinking on the assignments, I started thinking critically about the next 2 years of my course that how I am going to fare the upcoming terms. Getting 40 credits seems to be like reaching the top of the mount Everest.

Though Business Analytics was interesting on hearing the stories in the case studies, I was tormented by the assignments in that course. Each assignment completion & submission has become a herculean task. I started working on late nights to complete the assignment and in the sideways saw my hairs in the head withering away. On passing of every day my head had become more shinier in the mirror. My wife cautioned me that I will loss all my hair in the head prior completing the M.B.A.

HRM (Human Resource Management) though it is more theoretical, I can study with somewhat ease when compared to Critical Thinking and Business Analytics. We studied the case studies of various HR process of huge companies and how it got evolved through kaizen.

Essentials of Marketing & Strategy is also more theoretical. It dealt with the various principles of Marketing & Strategy. More than the course, I enjoyed the dinner after the class with the fellow students and lecturers at the nearby restaurant called Spice Hub.

The dishes in that restaurant are still flowing in my mind regularly. The light brown fresh tandoori chicken with crispy baked salted potatoes placed around it with the tickling sound of the hot iron plate directly from the tandoori oven, blue berry lassie in the pot shaped bottle, the fragrance of the hot masala chai, the deep-fried squid with mayonnaise, the green evenly diced avocado-shrimp salad. I can say on and on. All the dishes are mouthwatering.

Even though the first term of 3 months seems to be a small mound in my 2 years journey, but I felt it like a mountain hill. Each week has become a great ordeal to me. My once sparkled eyes started possessing black rings around it.

I held on to my nerves to sail through the turbulent phase in my M.B.A journey. At-last I saw the light at the end of the tunnel after 3 months. I was able to complete all the 4 courses with good grades. Yes, I felt a sense of accomplishment which carried me for the next term though my head had become more shinier in the mirror. I had totally a different commotions and feelings in those 3 months which I faced huge challenge and started fighting with myself to improvise myself to tune to the student mode which enabled me to face the upcoming terms in the M.B.A course.