Laxmi

Lakshmi was sitting in her window office, looking at the slow moving morning peak
hour traffic. Her cup of cappuccino did not taste as good today. She was thinking
about the talk she had just had with Shekhar. Shekhar was almost in a rebellious
mood. He had told Lakshmi in no uncertain terms that he was not at all happy with the
way things were going between Pravin and the rest of the team. The requirement
discussion meeting the previous evening had not gone well at all. This was not the
first time Shekhar had come to Lakshmi with such a complaint. It was clear to
Lakshmi that she could no more just sweep the problem under carpet. She would have
to act. But, what could she do?

Thinking about all this, Lakshmi nostalgically thought of how she had built this team
up from nothing in the last two years. Two years ago, when she had just completed
eight years in the industry and in the organization, she had been promoted to the post
of program manager. How happy she had been to finally be able to do the work she
really loved! She was an engineer by training and had joined this organization as a
campus-recruit. Two and a half years ago she had completed an E-MBA with a
reputed institute in the country while working. She had learned all about management
and was eager to put her knowledge to practical use. Becoming a program manager
was going to finally give her that opportunity.

She had then taken charge of two existing projects that were in the maintenance stage.
The previous manager of these projects had moved to the U.S. in a business
development role. Lakshmi, not happy with just these two projects, had negotiated
with the customer to give her group some new work. The result was Project Leo the
project on which Shekhar was working. She had built a team from scratch for doing
this project. Most people working for Project Leo had joined the organization in the
last two years and typically had no previous industry experience. Shekhar was

This case was written by Sankaranarayanan K. V., Abhay Ghaisas, Post-Graduate

Programme for Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM) participants under the
guidance of Prof. Narendra M. Agrawal, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Copyright: Indian Institute of Management Bangalore 2004

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transferred from another group into Project Leo to start the project. Praveen was hired
from a competitor organization to join this team. Lakshmi had a soft corner for
Project Leo as it was entirely her work.

Shekhar had joined five years ago as a software engineer after having completed his
computer engineering degree from a regional engineering college. He had received his
promotion to the post of senior software engineer one and a half years ago. He was
working for the past two years on Project Leo. He was specially brought in from
another project as he knew the domain of Project Leo. His previous project manager
was very reluctant in releasing him as he was recognized as a very meticulous, hard-
working, and well-planned engineer. He had visited the customer site for his previous
customer a few times and had done a good job there.

For the last one year, as Project Leo had grown in staffing, Shekhar was formally
named as the technical lead for Project Leo. Of course, project lead was just a role
and this did not mean any change in the post. Shekhar had to interact on a day to day
basis with the whole team. He was responsible for tracking the day to day tasks and
the progress on the same for the team. He was also responsible for ensuring that all
the design and coding work for Project Leo met the quality requirements. He also
involved himself in doing design and coding for the project and participated in almost
all design and coding reviews.

Pravin joined this company almost at the same time as the start of Project Leo. He had
experience of about two years in his previous organization. He had done his masters
in technology from the Indian Institute of Technology. He had moved from his
previous company as both salary and promotion prospects in the new company looked
better. He was hired directly at the post of senior software engineer. He was
interviewed by Lakshmi and she found him to be a very confident and proud of his
technical capabilities.

Pravin was sent to the customer site in Menlo Park, California within two months of
his joining. The Project Leo deal had just been finalized and someone needed to visit
the customer site to define the detailed requirements for the project. He spent three
months at the customer site at that time. He had again gone to the customer site about
eight months ago and stayed there for another two months. This was with a dual

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responsibility of acting as a requirements engineer as well as to liaison with the
customer to provide support for a demo that was to happen at that time. At that time
Project Leo had reached a stage where a preliminary demo version of the product was
almost ready and some finer details and changes for the demo version were being
identified and made. The demo version of Project Leo was part of a product prototype
that the customer was then planning to display at a trade fare in Hamburg, Germany.
Pravin also went to Hamburg along with the customer for this trade fare and got a
chance to interact with the end consumers who came to the trade fare. While in the
U.S., Pravin also worked on defining some further new requirements that were
coming up for the release version of Project Leo at that time.

Except for the total five months in the U.S., Pravin had worked with the India team.
He was involved in defining requirements and communicating with customers. For
this purpose, he would have conference calls with customer representatives two or
three times a week. Any team member, including Shekhar, always went through
Pravin for any communication with customers as Lakshmi had clearly instructed them
that a single point of contact was most efficient.

The remaining team for Project Leo consisted of six development and two test
engineers. Most of these members were with less than two years of experience and
this was their first job.

While sipping her coffee, Lakshmi started thinking about the various incidents that
she could remember about Pravin. She remembered an incident from almost one and a
half year ago. Pravin had returned from his first customer visit. He had worked with
the customer on defining the requirements for Project Leo. His immediate job after
coming back was to write the formal system requirements specifications (FSRS). One
day, he e-mailed the FSRS document to Lakshmi, Shekhar, and the team for a review.
In the e-mail, he said, This is already reviewed by Tim and Jonathan [the customers
for Project Leo] and they have approved these requirements. Lakshmi was not very
comfortable with the idea that she did not get to see the document first. She called
him to her office and asked him: Pravin, you know, maybe you could get these
documents reviewed from the team here first before giving them to the customers?
The team hardly knows the domain, what do you expect them to contribute? Besides,

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Tim and Jonathan were mailing me every day for this document. I could not keep it
for another day, was the reply. She had not pursued the issue further.

One day, Nitin, one of the team members who had joined a year ago came to Shekhar
to discuss a problem. He told Shekhar that Pravin had just come to his cubicle and
asked him to do a certain bug fix. Nitin did not quite well understand what the
reason for this bug fix was and asked Pravin about it. Just make the change I am
asking for, our customers want it, was the response. Nitin told him that he will make
the changes in the next two days. Pravin said, I could have coded these in two hours,
but I dont want to waste my time coding. Any dog can code when told what to do.

Shekhar was not sure how to respond to this. He directed Nitin to Lakshmi. Lakshmi
said, You have to learn to work with different people. Different people have different
ways of communication. Pravin is very knowledgeable in the domain. You should
interact more with him and get this domain knowledge from him. Lakshmi herself
was not very comfortable with the answer she had given to Nitin. She decided to have
a talk with Pravin and called him to her office. When asked about this incident, Pravin
said, So, did I say anything wrong? I can really code that piece in two hours. This
bunch of engineers you have hired is not very capable. An IIT graduate like me can
work ten times better than them. Next time when Nitin went to ask Pravin about
some other requirement, Pravin told him, Go read the standards. All these
requirements finally come from the ITU-T standards. Nitin enquired, Where can I
get them? Its all on the web, look for them, was the reply.

While Pravin was on his second visit to the customer site, for three weeks, the whole
team used to have a daily conference call with him at 8 PM. In these conference calls,
Pravin was in the habit of giving detailed instructions to all the engineers on what
they should be working on for the next week. These instructions normally had very
less continuity from the work last week and engineers felt that the work assignment
was happening arbitrarily. Shekhar also found this quite annoying as this invariably
destroyed his plans for the engineers for the next week.

When Shekhar saw this happening regularly, he went to Lakshmi and sensitized her
about this problem. Lakshmi told him to empathize with Pravin and consider the
situation from Pravins point of view. Think of the pressures he must be facing there,

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our customers are not very easy to handle, she had told Shekhar. She sincerely hoped
that the problems would automatically go away as people iron out their differences.

Just a month ago, Pravin had gone ahead and proposed a multi-property-edit feature to
the customer to solve a problem raised by the customer. He had told the customer that
it would take about two weeks to get the feature in. He had then told the details of this
feature and the expected delivery date to Shekhar and the rest of the team in the team
meeting next day. Shekhar found this unfair. He went to Lakshmi and told her about
this. Meet him alone and talk to him. You two can talk and solve the problem, said
she. Shekhar thought that nothing will come out of this, so he did not do anything
further about it.

Just two weeks ago, they had delivered the beta version of the first release of Leo to
the customers on time. Most of the team members had spent late nights and week-
ends in the office for a month before that to make sure that this date does not slip.
Jonathan, the customer representative, sent an appreciation mail to Lakshmi thanking
her for the on-time release. It also said I will specially like to mention the
contribution made by Pravin in getting this release out in time and with good quality. I
dont think it would have been possible without his able contribution. This e-mail
was carbon-copied to Pravin.

In Pravins last performance review, Lakshmi had asked him what he wants to do in
the long run. He had told her that he did not find the work very challenging and in the
long run would like to pursue research.

Just to judge the customers reactions, Lakshmi had recently told Jonathan that she
was planning to change the customer interaction point and would bring in someone
else in place of Pravin to talk to them. Jonathan had said, I dont think we will be
able to work with anyone else. I think Pravin is the only capable guy on your team. I
speak to him almost daily and I know from him that almost everyone else in the team
needs his help all the time.

The traffic outside had started to ease out. Lakshmi looked at the bottom of her empty
coffee cup. She knew she could no longer wish away the problems in her team. She
had to do something about this issue if she wanted to keep this team from
disintegrating.

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Exhibit A. Organization Chart (omits other projects with Lakshmi)

Exibit-B: MBTI Results for Key Persons

Lakshmi A: ESFP

Pravin R: INTJ

Shekhar P: ENFJ

Nitin S: ISTP

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Case Analysis

We will analyze this case from the perspective of different people to find out the
reasons for their specific behaviors. Then, we can move on to finding some solution
for the current situation.

Roles

Pravins role expectation from others is very different from other engineers role
perception about their job. He expects them to pick up knowledge from the source
itself. They expect some help from him for picking up knowledge.

Team Behaviors

There seems to be a total lack of trust between Pravin and Shekhar. Some lack of trust
also seems to be developing between Shekhar and Lakshmi as she repeatedly ignores
his complains. The team seems to have trust in Laskshmi as they bring their problems
to Shekhar.

Management Grid

Lakshmi will probably score 2x2 or 3x3 on Blake and Moutons management grid
framework. This is seen from the fact that she neither seems to show a high interest in
getting work done nor shows a high interest in solving problems faced by her
employees.

Type Indicators

Looking at the MBTI results of the people involved, we get some idea about the
reasons of the conflict. There is the thinking versus feeling conflict between Pravin
and Shekhar that is being manifested here. Also, the perceiving trait in Lakshmi is
probably what indicates why she is so indecisive in this regard.

Power and Politics

Pravin, due to his work allocation and customer contacts, clearly possesses expert
power and is not reluctant is using it politically. The rest of the team is dependent on
him for domain knowledge and he knows it. He is using this as a lever to maintain his
position in the team. He may end up using this power for getting better rewards in the
future.

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Conflict Situation

The grade of the conflict situation seems to have moved from overt questioning to
assertive verbal attacks. The case gives us some examples of such attacks happening.
This is a serious matter. The fact that Lakshmi is not intervening after getting repeated
intimations of the situation shows her inability to work towards conflict resolution.

After having considered all the above diagnostics, we think that this is a behavioral
problem and can be solved only through better performance management of Pravin by
Lakshmi.

Performance Management for Pravin

Lakshmi needs to clearly prepare a development plan for Pravin to identify behaviors
which need improvement. These behaviors will include teaming, communication, and
respect for others.

Lakshmi can arrange for some workshop or specific training to help improve the team
bonding. The rest of the team may not need it, but Pravin needs it for developing
better bonding with the team.

Lakshmi should arrange a feedback session with the help of outside OD consultants
where people can give honest feedback to each others. This can help clear the
perception mismatch between Pravin and the rest of the team.

Lakshmi needs to set specific and measurable goals for Pravin that will be met with
improvement in the domain knowledge of other team members. This will clearly give
an incentive for Pravin to share information and to ensure that the other team
members also become domain experts in time. Right now he has no stake in this
happening.

Lakshmi needs to explore further on the long term career aspirations that Pravin has
mentioned. If he is serious about them, she needs to seek other opportunities within
the organization where Pravin may get something that he is looking for.

As far as the transition of some other team member as a replacement for Pravin is
concerned, it is important to address the reservations and perceptions that Jonathan
has. Lakshmi may even need to bring in someone senior from some other team to take

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over from Pravin. She will benefit by making the transition phase-wise, with both the
contacts working with the customer for some time simultaneously.

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