The year was 2002. A young team was formed.
Photo courtesy - http://iphotopick.com/user-group-icon-png-gallery/
We were huddled up in conference room 'Mars'. Our department head, affectionately called 'PS', wrote BIC (name of client) at the very top of white-board. He then turned around and did a quick sweep of the room while looking intensly at everyone with his trademark shrewd eyes. He was wearing his favorite blue shirt - which meant that day was to be start of something big. While all of us elbowed past each other, gathered a chair that was sufficiently distant from him and settled in the room, he started off, 'Welcome guys! You know we have managed to secure this challenging project from BIC .. blah blah blah.... and then some more blah blah blah'. Few minutes later, he was furiously drawing the project org-chart on the whiteboard and while mumbling 'OK.. so the overall execution will be led by YD...Architecture will be led by SV ... Technical teams will be divided into blah blah blah'. We - the curious group - were listening to him attentively. There was a feeling of excitement and nervousness in each of us.
At this point, our VP (affectionately called as 'Doc') walked into the room, took a look at the whiteboard, smiled and sighed - he felt assured that things have started moving. He and PS had eye contact for few seconds and then exchanged a nod. While this was happening we kids were still marveling the project org structure and beaming with smile to see our names on the whiteboard. Our names were at the very bottom of the chart .. meaning we were lowest in hierarchy :) But hell... at that time it didn't matter. The cause of happiness being that there was lot of hype around BIC and the word in the company was that the very best from our department will be put on that team - and now formally seeing our names made us proud.
After his non-verbal dialog with PS, Doc went on to tell us the significance of this project for the company 'We have sold licenses worth blah blah.. all eyes of the company are on you blah blah.... time to show what we are made of .. blah blah blah'. At the end he said 'Guys we need you to build a Taj Mahal in next 6 months' and everyone laughed. Of course our laughter was abruptly cut short when PS said 'But Doc.. do you remember that those whose built Taj Mahal were killed at the end'. And that's when only Doc and PS laughed while the rest of us shared a stoned silence. We quietly wondered what were we getting into :(
Now it was YD's turn to take the stage. He did not waste any time and addressed us, 'Guys... forget weekends.. we will be working 7 days a week. You cannot fall sick unless you have my permission. You cannot take off unless I permit - is that understood?'. YD was revered as the best task-master in the company. Everyone feared him - he commanded lot of respect from juniors, peers and seniors all alike. If there was some task to be done which no one thought could be done -YD was the guy to go to. You give him the team and he will make them slog, he would lead from the front and get the job done. He was a furious dictator. Even the senior members of our teams including the technical-leads shivered at the thought of interacting with YD. He acted bad for the greater good - something we did not immediately understand but the senior management of our company understood well. YD was known was his sharp wit, ruthless pragmatism and blunt responses. If you did not do what he expected, he would tear you apart with his words.
The following four months were - to use a euphemism - mildly hectic for everyone (including YD). On two occasions we worked 36 hours straight because there was a demo scheduled for Suresh Antaryami (MD of BIC). The environment on the floor was always electric. A common sight was groups of developers rushing into conference room for design discussions - our technical architects surrounding SV's desk and picking his brain. The sheer energy of everyone in the team was contagious - there was never a dull moment, ever! Even the more senior members of our team often commented 'we have not worked on anything like this'. The project was under lot of spotlight (within our company and also from client) and that gave everyone the necessary motivation of doing things right, first time, every time. Defects were frowned upon. Everyone took the work rather personally to see that the code that rolls out from their desk is free of any defects. The entire culture breathed of perfection. We had taken Doc's word of 'building a taj mahal' very seriously and we worked round the clock towards it. If a module of code did not work, it would give us sleepless nights - things were that personal!
Every few hours YD would do his infamous floor-walk where in he would stop by our desks and politely ask 'hello, may I know what you are doing?' If the answer stretched more than 8 words he would interject and say 'aye boss.. I have not asked you to tell me a story.. I have just asked you what are you working on'. If someone tried to act smart with him, YD would show the person his place. He would also throw his weight around in various decisions by telling us 'mujhe mei common sense aapse bahut zyada hai so please do not argue and just do what I am asking... thank you very much'.
What I personally observed was that YD was correct almost every time - he also had good political foresight. Even though I was a developer back then, I had keen interest in project management and would closely observe how YD worked. Whenever I found him having some time at hand, I used to ask him questions about his decisions (the how, why, why not, what if kinds). Initially he would rebuff the questions. My colleagues would laugh at this sight and would later tell me 'why do you need to ask him.. lets just do our job', 'You know how he is... he doesn't like being questioned'. I persisted nonetheless and eventually managed to break some ice... details in subsequent posts.
Just a note about BIC - It was an upcoming telecom company at that time time having its roots in petrochemicals and textiles. All eyes of the market were on BIC as they were launching their telecom services. There was lot of hype in the market about this venture. BIC is known not to spare any expenses for any new initiative and that normally translates into lot of vendors eyeing a big piece of the pie.
The finished product was Order Entry system for BIC that was to be used across all its retail outlets across India. Our application had a small but very important role in this launch - it was the only application that allowed electronic capture of Customer Application Form - the form that you fill up while applying for a mobile service. It then processed it further and helped towards order fulfillment, provisioning, activation and billing.The project went LIVE almost close to the original target date and it then moved to support phase - business as usual. Most of the team was retained and asked to move onsite to BIC campus - famously known as BAKC.
Somewhere close to GO LIVE of our project, I was drafted to work on second assignment for BIC. It was another proud moment for me as for me it meant a validation of 'the best' tag. The second assignment was to be solely done out of BAKC campus.
Again, a young team was formed. One sunny morning we all huddled in a Toyota Qualis and enthusiastically started our journey towards Mumbai... an interesting phase of our lives awaited us!
to be continued...
