1.What has gone wrong in Maryams software development group? What were the first indicators that something might be amiss?

2.Who was at fault? Who could have done something differently to prevent the problem or manage the situation more effectively?

3.What should Maryam do now?

INTRODUCTION I cannot wait to see how pleased our client will be when we deliver this IT project to them one week ahead of schedule, beamed Anita Maryam, senior project manager at Metropole Services. Based in Newark, New Jersey, Metropole Services was a software development firm focusing on the U.S. health-care industry.

METROPOLE SERVICES Metropole provided information systems integration support for the many software applications that were being adopted in healthcare. For example, after a health-care centre decided to implement patient monitoring software and hardware, Metropole would work with the centres current IT staff to integrate the software into the centres IT network. This involved a high degree of collaboration between client and service provider. Maryam met her counterpart at the centre at least once a week and communicated by e-mail or telephone at least once a day. Internally, Maryam had to interpret her clients instructions and provide guidance for her team of eight software developers stationed in Newark. In addition, Maryam had scheduled weekly meetings with her supervisor, company founder Chandra Mishra, over video conference. As this was a rapidly growing startup with 30 people in total, Mishra handled a variety of roles including business development, human resources and strategy. During the past three months, Mishra had been stationed in Hyderabad, India, where he was working to set up an offshore location for software development. While Mishra had promised meetings with Maryam every week, more often than not, they were postponed or cancelled. Maryam estimated that she may have spoken to Mishra a total of four times in the past quarter.

ANITA MARYAM Maryam had graduated from a prestigious East Coast business school and had finished her undergraduate studies at the Chennai campus Indias Indian Institute of Technology. She had always been in the top 25 per cent in her class and was very ambitious. In her first job after her undergraduate degree, she had worked for a large consumer packaged goods manufacturer in India. There, she was part of a team of account executives whose goal was to sell new products to Indian retailers. She recalled her experience at this first job to be quite enjoyable though she added that she had nothing to compare it to. The hours were long, nine to 10 hours per day, and everyone was preoccupied with executing sales plans. Maryam could not remember any instances of employee training other than the two-day orientation and introduction she was given at the start of her contract. Her team was a mix of male and female employees, and everyone seemed to be eager to prove to management that they were candidates for promotion. Because of her above average performance, Maryam was part of the 20 per cent of account executives promoted to the account manager during the first round of promotions. (There were promotion rounds every six to 12 months.) Promotions had been based solely on sales results. Maryam had the good fortune to be selling into a fast-growing group of retail outlets whose purchases of packaged goods grew rapidly every year. But by no means was Maryam merely fortunate that her accounts were growing: because she was able to sell additional non-food product lines to her accounts, she beat out another male account executive on her team and was promoted six months ahead of him. Understandably, she was very proud of her work ethic and achievements. In her new role, Maryam was in charge of six account executives selling health and beauty care products. At the start of the fiscal year, she met with all six and set sales targets for the first quarter. During the first quarter, delivery disruptions threatened the business, but Maryam was able to find an unorthodox solution by using a third-party logistics provider to deliver the goods. Working around the clock, Maryam multi-tasked between answering sales-related questions from her team and tracking shipping progress on her laptop computer. For the rest of that first year as an account manager, there always seemed to be one external crisis or another that demanded her attention. Fortunately for Maryam, she had a motivated team of account executives working on her team who were able to conduct their business largely independently. After that first year, Maryam was identified as one of the top five candidates for promotion. But opportunity, in the form of a job offer from a start-up, came calling.