(A short story dedicated to the man who wrote Animal Farm and 1984, and whose 115th birthday fell yesterday)
"Sure, Mr. Ganesh. Sure. We understand your concerns. We can definitely look into the 'Prayer granting framework' and investigate what went wrong." Ajit tried his best to convince Mr.Ganesh who was audibly angry. But it was clearly not working. He pressed the 'Mute' button on the Polycom device and looked at his team. "Do you guys think we can fix the issue?" His 8-membered-team of 25-year-olds did not answer. "Do you guys have an estimate for the fix?" Silence again. He pressed the 'Mute' button again to go audible. "Mr.Ganesh, we just had a quick internal discussion here. The team is of the opinion that we should be able to fix the framework by tomorrow EOD."
"Hey, Ajit. This is Jesus here. Are you guys confident that you can fix the issue by tomorrow?"
A smile spread over Ajit's face. Mr.Jesus was a more lenient client that Mr.Ganesh.
"Definitely, Mr.Jesus. We are a 150% sure that the framework will be functioning at its best by tomorrow." Ajit's team members helplessly looked at each other as another sleepless night lay in wait.
"Sounds good, Ajit. But just take an extra day perhaps, so that you can recheck the fixes. Guess you had over-promised even to Hanuman last week and had shared a faulty tool."
But Ajit was not willing to take an extra day. Fixing an issue faster was more important than fixing an issue the right way.
"We understand your concerns, Mr.Jesus. But this time, we are sure that the framework should be up and running by tomorrow."
One of Ajit's team members started typing out a WhatsApp message to his friend - 'Dude.. Am not going to be able to make it to the movie tonight. Find someone else..'
"Okay then, Ajit. Let's wrap this call now. Drop a mail tomorrow once the framework is fixed. Thank you."
"Thanks a lot, Mr. Jesus. Thank you for your time. Thank you too, Mr. Ganesh. Have a great day."
A grumpy 'Thank you' was heard from Mr.Ganesh.
Ajit disconnected the call. "Can someone explain to me what the hell went wrong this time?" Ajit's team members did not answer. "This is the 7th time I have had to apologize to these silly Gods for a sillier mistake." Silence prevailed for a minute. A team member finally gathered the courage to speak up. "We are committing the same mistake time and again, Ajit. We should not be giving these impossible timelines when we know it only worsens things."
Ajit rose from his chair and picked up a marker. He then walked to the white board plastered to the wall of the conference room. "Help me understand how this timeline is impossible. Let us break down the tasks hour by hour."
One of Ajit's team members started typing out a WhatsApp message to his dad - 'Would be held up in office tonight. You and mom go ahead with the cake cutting for Preethi.'
"Help me understand, guys. What is the first task?" Ajit wrote an intimidating 1 on the white board and circled it. One of the team members visualized herself as the '1' trapped inside Ajit's circle.
The next hour was spent thus from differing viewpoints:
These hour-level breakdowns had become a routine after the Great Gods organization had become a client. The Great Gods had approached Ajit's data analytics startup with a problem statement as below.
The prayer data we receive has been exponentially growing with every passing day. It has become difficult to differentiate the good prayers from the evil ones. Help us design a system that sorts these prayers and generates a final list of prayers to be answered.
Ajit had gotten excited with the problem statement. More so because he could visualize this project leading to a chain of potential projects in the future. Ajit and his team had devised a plan for a 6-month long program and had labeled it, 'The God Program'. The components of the program were as below, as written in one of Ajit's team member's notebooks.
Ajit's clients had been surprised by such an ambitious plan but since they had witnessed all possible miracles of mankind, they had given a go ahead to the program. And so had started the string of errors and the hour-level breakdowns that had become a routine. Ajit's team members never had the time needed for quality control, which meant that every deployment of the framework led to serious consequences. The team usually caught these errors only through the error logs, which were the newspapers. But their most recent error had led to a devastating consequence - the start of a civil war in a middle east country. And hence the grumpy responses from Mr.Ganesh, and hence Ajit's promise to fix the framework in a day.
22 hours later, Ajit sent out a mail to Mr.Ganesh and Mr.Jesus that the issue in the 'Prayer granting framework' was fixed and his team had double-checked the fix. When Ajit's team members read his mail, one member questioned his teammates curiously, "Did we even finish all the quality checks once?" They replied that there were 3 more checks pending. But then, one of the members joked, "How can things possibly get worse than yesterday?" and the team let out a hearty laugh.
The next morning, one of the team members posted a message - 'Guys! We have screwed up again!' - on the WhatsApp group that Ajit was not a part of. When another member asked him what had happened, he shared a news article on the group.
"Hey, Ajit. This is Jesus here. Are you guys confident that you can fix the issue by tomorrow?"
A smile spread over Ajit's face. Mr.Jesus was a more lenient client that Mr.Ganesh.
"Definitely, Mr.Jesus. We are a 150% sure that the framework will be functioning at its best by tomorrow." Ajit's team members helplessly looked at each other as another sleepless night lay in wait.
"Sounds good, Ajit. But just take an extra day perhaps, so that you can recheck the fixes. Guess you had over-promised even to Hanuman last week and had shared a faulty tool."
But Ajit was not willing to take an extra day. Fixing an issue faster was more important than fixing an issue the right way.
"We understand your concerns, Mr.Jesus. But this time, we are sure that the framework should be up and running by tomorrow."
One of Ajit's team members started typing out a WhatsApp message to his friend - 'Dude.. Am not going to be able to make it to the movie tonight. Find someone else..'
"Okay then, Ajit. Let's wrap this call now. Drop a mail tomorrow once the framework is fixed. Thank you."
"Thanks a lot, Mr. Jesus. Thank you for your time. Thank you too, Mr. Ganesh. Have a great day."
A grumpy 'Thank you' was heard from Mr.Ganesh.
Ajit disconnected the call. "Can someone explain to me what the hell went wrong this time?" Ajit's team members did not answer. "This is the 7th time I have had to apologize to these silly Gods for a sillier mistake." Silence prevailed for a minute. A team member finally gathered the courage to speak up. "We are committing the same mistake time and again, Ajit. We should not be giving these impossible timelines when we know it only worsens things."
Ajit rose from his chair and picked up a marker. He then walked to the white board plastered to the wall of the conference room. "Help me understand how this timeline is impossible. Let us break down the tasks hour by hour."
One of Ajit's team members started typing out a WhatsApp message to his dad - 'Would be held up in office tonight. You and mom go ahead with the cake cutting for Preethi.'
"Help me understand, guys. What is the first task?" Ajit wrote an intimidating 1 on the white board and circled it. One of the team members visualized herself as the '1' trapped inside Ajit's circle.
The next hour was spent thus from differing viewpoints:
- Ajit's viewpoint - Creating an exhaustive hour-level breakdown of the fix for the framework
- His team's viewpoint - Planning needlessly for a fix that would result in a bigger error
These hour-level breakdowns had become a routine after the Great Gods organization had become a client. The Great Gods had approached Ajit's data analytics startup with a problem statement as below.
The prayer data we receive has been exponentially growing with every passing day. It has become difficult to differentiate the good prayers from the evil ones. Help us design a system that sorts these prayers and generates a final list of prayers to be answered.
Ajit had gotten excited with the problem statement. More so because he could visualize this project leading to a chain of potential projects in the future. Ajit and his team had devised a plan for a 6-month long program and had labeled it, 'The God Program'. The components of the program were as below, as written in one of Ajit's team member's notebooks.
- Prayer granting framework - 1 month (Real timeline - 3 months)
- Prayer forecasting framework - 2 months (Real timeline - 4 months)
- Devotee churn analysis - 1 month (Real timeline - 3 months)
- Devotion campaign management - 1 month (Real timeline - 2 months)
- God performance tracker - 1 month (Real timeline - 3 months)
Ajit's clients had been surprised by such an ambitious plan but since they had witnessed all possible miracles of mankind, they had given a go ahead to the program. And so had started the string of errors and the hour-level breakdowns that had become a routine. Ajit's team members never had the time needed for quality control, which meant that every deployment of the framework led to serious consequences. The team usually caught these errors only through the error logs, which were the newspapers. But their most recent error had led to a devastating consequence - the start of a civil war in a middle east country. And hence the grumpy responses from Mr.Ganesh, and hence Ajit's promise to fix the framework in a day.
22 hours later, Ajit sent out a mail to Mr.Ganesh and Mr.Jesus that the issue in the 'Prayer granting framework' was fixed and his team had double-checked the fix. When Ajit's team members read his mail, one member questioned his teammates curiously, "Did we even finish all the quality checks once?" They replied that there were 3 more checks pending. But then, one of the members joked, "How can things possibly get worse than yesterday?" and the team let out a hearty laugh.
The next morning, one of the team members posted a message - 'Guys! We have screwed up again!' - on the WhatsApp group that Ajit was not a part of. When another member asked him what had happened, he shared a news article on the group.
The title of the news article read, 'The United States of America elects its 45th president'.
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