Questions:

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.

JOINING METROPOLE When he heard about Maryams success in problem-solving, Mishra was convinced that she was the right person to help him grow his small company. Mishra had been a medical doctor in the Eastern United States for the past 20 years before he started Metropole. Concerned at the slow pace of IT adoption in the health-care sector, Mishra was convinced that someone like him, who knew the health-care system, could make a significant contribution to health care productivity and earn a decent living doing it. Relying on his network of contacts in India, Mishra had started Metropole three years ago to help health-care providers integrate IT into their workplace. But while he had no shortage of talented software developers, firm growth had been slow as Mishra lacked project management expertise. Through his network, Mishra arranged a meeting with Maryam and was so impressed with her success that he offered her a job, including generous stock options, the same day. Maryam seized this opportunity and, within a month, had moved to Newark. She entered an organization that was operating very quickly and had limited systems in place. Managers seemed to be constantly overwhelmed with either client requests or software issues to fix, there were no set meetings or set targets for the year, and, although each person had a different business title, there seemed to be significant overlap in operating roles. After providing a quick overview of the firm, Mishra immediately handed to Maryam her first assignment: working with a team of eight software developers to integrate a new patient monitoring system. With tight deadlines to manage and being new to the organization, Maryam believed that she had a lot to prove as she settled into the organization. Her first agenda item was to meet with all eight developers over lunch. As all eight were located in the same office building, she scheduled a meeting for Monday afternoon, a day least likely to conflict with client meetings. She noticed that three of the eight developers showed up 10 minutes late for the luncheon. Wanting to start off on pleasant terms, Maryam said nothing to them, cheerfully greeting them at the door. As she introduced herself and explained what she intended to do for the year, she was interrupted by one of the eight, Vivek. Vivek was the teams unofficial leader, since the team had been without a project manager for the past two months. Vivek commented: Were very happy to meet you and we want to work with you to deliver this project. But as you know, were already way behind schedule and, if possible, we should get back to work now and resume our introductions when the project has been delivered. I want to know if this is okay with you. Pleased to know that her team was eager to get going with work, Maryam agreed to cut short her introductory lunch by half an hour and allow her team to return to their desks. In a converted conference room, all eight members worked alongside each other, sharing advice in an ad-hoc manner. Maryam listened enthusiastically as she met each team member in turn and asked them to explain their role to her. Every member of the team seemed to be extremely committed to the project and indicated that they were glad that she was coming on board. Maryam could not help noticing that she was the only woman in the room. She left to go back to her office in order to attend her first client meeting. The client explained the urgency of the project, and Maryam reassured him that the team would do all in its power to get the project back on schedule. At 8 p.m. that evening, Maryam returned to the conference room to switch off the lights before leaving. She was surprised to see that her entire team was still present, still working on the project. One member greeted her and assured her that they were staying later by choice. Maryam was very impressed by their dedication and asked whether she could help with anything. When the group said they had been about to go for take-out, Maryam offered to pick it up for them. When she returned with food, she sat down with the entire team for a 20-minute break and talked to them about their work. She was not surprised to hear that all eight had been working with the company from the very start. They spoke enthusiastically about the future value of their stock options in the company and kept repeating that they were proud to be owner-operators and that this was a once-in-a-career opportunity. Maryam had never met such dedicated workers. For the rest of that week, on-site meetings with the client kept Maryam out of Newark. She kept in touch with her team by e-mail and was pleased to hear that their progress was faster as a result of having her as the key client contact. When she returned the next Monday, Maryam spoke to Mishra briefly and proudly indicated that progress had been made. On her lunch break, which she took in her office in order to read the latest news on CNN.com, Maryam was interrupted by a team member who wanted to know whether she could help them get tea from the local Dunkin Donuts. Of course, said Maryam, she would be glad to. Over the next two weeks, Maryam seemed to thrive in her new role. When she reported to the client that the time deficit had been eliminated (they would deliver the project on time), the client was ecstatic. He indicated that there would be a lot more work for Metropole to bid on if the project were delivered on time. To give Maryam a sense for the variety of projects available, he arranged for her to tour the facility, meeting with eight to 10 different IT managers. Maryam conservatively estimated that up to four times Metropoles entire firm revenues was available, if she could just manage the execution of the current plan and gain credibility. When she returned to the office after an absence of a (productive) week and half, her team casually chided her about her absence and the fact that they had to send out a member to get their regular order of tea and food. Maryam apologized for her absence and eagerly recounted her client meetings and the opportunity that lay before them. Her team spontaneously erupted in applause, and they celebrated by going to a nearby restaurant for a meal. As the deadline approached, Maryams days in the office included a combination of client meetings and e-mail missives to her team members. At 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day, she promptly headed out the door to Dunkin Donuts to bring back drinks for her team. At 6 p.m., she would take dinner orders and bring them back. This arrangement worked nicely, except for one or two instances when she mixed up an order or two. When she saw the dissatisfied look on her team members faces, she immediately offered to return to the donut shop or restaurant to get the correct order, which she did. Two weeks before the deadline, Maryam knew that her project was in superb shape. She anticipated delivering the project a week early and indicated to Mishra (on only their fourth telephone meeting since she started at the company), that much more work was available. Mishras enthusiasm was evident in the tone of his voice and he congratulated Maryam on a job well done. Returning to check on her team, Maryam asked them to take a five-minute break to discuss follow-on work. As she began talking about another upcoming project, she was interrupted by Vivek, who said that he had to get back to his coding. Maryam excused him from the meeting. One of the remaining team members was surprised to hear about future projects. We assumed youd be heading back to India to get married, he laughed. How old are you? You must be no older than our daughters, who are all happily married now. Maryam was caught off guard. But she recovered and replied, saying that she had no intention of starting a family in the next few years. She was very excited about her prospects at Metropole, she offered, and she wished to be able to lead the companys North American expansion. She indicated that she wanted to take on greater management responsibilities in the near future. At this point, Vivek returned to the room and conversation shifted to another topic. Maryam, wishing to leave them to their work, took their dinner orders and left to drive to the restaurant. The next day, Maryam returned to the office to hear that there was a minor issue: a section of code written for the project was not working out as expected. As the code was written in a software language familiar to her, Maryam asked to take a look at it. Immediately, she noticed the error and informed the team member how to correct it. Her team member appeared skeptical and, in front of Maryam, turned to his colleague for advice. His colleague looked over the section of code and confirmed that Maryam was correct. Maryam, pleased that her judgment was correct, smiled and walked away. The client was visiting Metropoles Newark site that day, and Maryam had planned a meeting and a facility tour. She assembled her entire team in a meeting room and was preparing to start her introduction when Vivek started speaking directly to the client. Vivek proudly indicated that the team was on-track to deliver the project a week ahead of schedule and that everyone had contributed greatly to the effort. Not wanting to interrupt the flow, Maryam remained silent, interjecting now and then to provide missing information. At the end of the client meeting, and as they were leaving to start the tour, Vivek turned to Maryam. He said, I hope you dont mind that I started that meeting. I was very pleased at my teams effort and wanted to congratulate them in front of the client for the work theyve put in thus far. Maryam assured him that it was no problem, that she was glad that he took the initiative. As they turned to rejoin the group, Vivek turned to her: Would you mind going to fetch us our teas? Ill meet with the client and get us started on the next project. Remember, I like my tea extra hot. It dawned on Maryam that her relationship with her team might not be what she had assumed it to be. She was their project leader, and it did not seem right that she would not be present for the client meeting. As he hurried back to the group, Vivek added, And by the way, when we met yesterday night, the team and I agreed that it would be helpful for me to resume my client contact duties. Lets sit down later to see how you can refocus your efforts to target future clients. Maryam was stunned. She had been unaware that the team had met the night before to discuss this. Did they even have the authority? It was 11:30 a.m. in the morning, a half hour since the client had left on a facility tour with the team. Maryam had been standing in the same spot in the conference room, thinking about her reaction to what she believed was a sudden shift of events in the past few days. Although it was not clear what the issue was, she knew that something was wrong and had to be corrected immediately.