Seasons Of Love

#8 : Tuning

Vicky's POV

🎶🎶
Tried to keep you close to me
But life got in between
Tried to square not being there
But think that I should have been
🎶🎶

"We've got a problem, here!"

My announcement caught my teammates attention and Ria's too. She was seated inside my cubicle, beside Vanitha, in an attempt to assist
an issue at hand. Their heads snapped towards me along with scrolling of swivel chairs as all swarmed behind me. Their gaze followed to where mine were glued at- a particular mail from a certain unhappy client.

Ria was now at my right and her words found their way directly into my ear, due to the proximity. "What is it?"

"Users are pressurizing the business heads to get the 'Copy functionality' delivered within three weeks. They have approval from the project sponsor head." I declared with a long sigh and turned to face her.

Our eyes met and we could see that neither one of us were happy with the latest developments and knew about the impossibility of delivering it. All communicated in just fractions of seconds, because it didn't take her time to take lead of the situation we were put in.

🎶🎶
Hold back the river,
let me look in your eyes
Hold back the river,
so I
Can stop for a minute and
see where you hide
Hold back the river, hold back
🎶🎶

Govind, standing behind me, asked. "Whose the mail from? There must be some miscommunication as we clearly told them it will take 3 months."

It was the functionality, Govind was leading and as per his analysis and estimation, even 3 months was hard to pull it off. However, we couldn't keep dragging it and to keep our clients happy, we stated we'll pull it together.

Akhil, who had hopped on the table said, "Yes, these dumb people would have messed up 'months' with 'weeks'".

"It's from Michael, the project head with all the users and superiors looped in. They have highlighted the delay in delivery of this functionality is causing serious problems in the SLA (Service Level Agreement) to complete an online bank transaction due to the manual effects involved. Resulting in bank's reputation to be at stake, as there is a drastic deep in number of transactions getting completed. The throughput of ten thousand transactions per minute is now reduced to one thousand." I readout the details in the email, highlighted in red.

Ria's eyes scanned through the email contents and said. "The only person left to be loopped in the mail, is the CEO. I doubt it will be a day or two for this information to reach his ears too."

"It's not our fault! Why did they accept the earlier timeliness, in the first place!", cribbed Akhil. "Didn't they know what a blow it would take. Just because they didn't gauge the impact properly from their end, it doesn't mean we are going to slog ourselves." Huffing, he had crossed his arms like a cranky kid. After all he is a newbie and doesn't know the business ropes and who takes the last call.

"Guys, guys! Chill! First let me get this sorted and then we'll plan on how to take it forward. The worst case scenario is that we may have to deliver it within the timelines stated in the mail. However, let's try our luck to buy us some time or a way out of it." Ria said as she stood up. "Vicky, are you joining me for a quick call with the business stakeholders?"

Nodding my head, we went towards the discussion room, while asking the team to settle down and wait for our return.

As the required attendees were dialing-in to the video conference call, I asked Ria."Will we be able to convince them?"