Aligning Ferret: How an Organization Meets Extraordinary Challenges

CMM implementation is over. Tomorrow, I'll sweep clear my table of all the manuals, notes, and other related stuff. Then, after a nice, relaxed three-day weekend with Shubhangi in Goa, reliving our honeymoon, I'll restructure my overgrown pending lists and resume normal work.

'Sunny? Did you read my mail?'

I turn around to face Abhay. His usual clean-shaven face is rough with stubble, and his shirt is crumpled. He's obviously come here straight from HO, because his backpack is still slung over his shoulder. 'Mail? No, I haven't read the project mails for a few weeks. Is it something urgent?'

'Its... well, I need more budget for my project.'

'Your project's got an effort overrun? How much?'

'Twelve days.'

'Okay, that's within the contingency range.' I pat his back. 'Besides, you still have some weeks to go, you may even catch up with such a minor effort variance.' Twelve days is not a high overrun for an eight hundred-plus estimate, and quite acceptable for someone managing his first project.

'But it'll increase every week.'

'Why?'

Abhay wipes his face. 'Maybe you should see the report.'

Rajiv has flagged all his forwarded e-mails as priority. I click on the one he got from Karen.

Only twenty percent? I read Karen's mail again. Sounds bad. Very bad, in fact. Surely the shortfall can't be so drastic, or someone at Ferret would have pressed panic buttons by now. If this is true, I'm glad I'm not in Rajiv's shoes.

'Jim has scheduled a telecon today.' Rajiv's frown deepens. 'He says he's unhappy because of various issues.'

I can see that Rajiv expects me to ask which issues, but I don't want to keep getting pulled into this, so I say nothing.

Rajiv continues, 'He'll call today evening, 7:00 pm our time. I want you to be there, and I want you to do some ground work.'

'Ground work?'

'Jim is concerned about profits.' Rajiv dials a number. 'Gaurav, Rajiv here. I'm sending Sunny over to you to get data on Ferret profits. We've fallen behind on them.' He turns to me after hanging up. 'Gaurav is expecting you.'

'Rajiv, I really need to work on my projects. I didn't get time due to CMM and—'

'Exactly. Now that CMM is over, you can help out on this,' he says.

'No, wait, the CMM implementation was in addition to my usual job. I was staying late every day. My project managers—'

'Great job, too, Sunny, all that CMM work.' Rajiv waves his hand. 'I appreciate that. When you get the data from Gaurav, make sure you find out all the assumptions. We don't want to be caught flatfooted again, do we?'

'We'. Obviously Rajiv hasn't heard a word of my protests about workload. I'll talk to him about this later, when he's less hassled because Jim's off his back.

"Ferret revenue and profits are totally off target," says Jim. "And I can't see your plans."

"Plans?" My boss, Rajiv, looks stunned. "You have project-wise data and---"

"Plans, Rajiv. Overall plans, like your direction of growth, the sort of projects you'll execute, and how much of our outsourced work you'll undertake." Jim sounds irritated.

Rajiv's forehead creases. "We've improved our processes. Our focus is to execute PTI work better and--"

"Really? Ferret handles only 5% of our outsourced IT work." Jim's voice is sharp.

"We acquired you to reduce our costs but we still have to use other IT vendors--expensive ones. If that's all you can execute--"

"Jim--" Rajiv wipes his brow.

"I may acquire another firm in India or China instead of using Ferret."