CASE # 8 CHANDMAL SOFTWARE LIMITED The Yakamura Insurance Company in Osaka, Japan had given a contract to Toshiba Nippon

Electronics to computerize its systems so that it would become very customer friendly. This meant that accurate, on line data base management was called for, and Toshiba Nippon Electronics farmed out the entire work to a number of smaller Software Companies in the Third World. One such as an Indian Company named Chandmal Software Limited (CIL).

It was expected that CIL would undertake to develop software that would work on Windows NT. It was also expected that the entire database, which was now on a It was assumed all along that an existing package RDBMS packages. On the strength of this, a bid was made and on the basis of the lowest quote CIL got the contract. could be implemented with marginal alterations to suit the Japanese Client. This was shy Marketing had quote so low and bagged the contract which entailed developing an automatic conversion tool and ensuring systems integration on client site.

The Japanese Client, Toshiba Nippon Electronics, had all along believed that CIL would develop an automatic conversion tool so that program conversion would be facilitated. On its part CIL had assured the Japanese client that it could deliver the automatic conversion tool. This was again based on the Premises than an existing portion tool could be adopted with some small modifications. Accordingly, a contract was entered into an in January 1998 work began on the Project. The Project Manager was Mr. Kulkarni who was an introvert but who could easily be ranked high on the technological competence scale Kulkarni hated putting pen to paper and documenting his work. He somehow believed that documentation was beneath his status and may even expose his (Presumed) weaknesses. It was generally believed that if Kulkarni could not do this then that few others in CIL could.

The Project Manager had a team of fifteen persons dedicated to the project. Of these, there were six persons in development, five in quality control and four in maintenance. By February 1998, a team of five persons from the Project Tam along with Kulkarni flew down to Osaka to see the client site and understand client requirements on the spot. It was then that they realized that CIL had bitten off more than it could chew. Language was a major problem and the translator picked by CIL was not computer savvy and had great difficulty converting client expectations in an understandable fashion to these five persons. In addition, the Japanese were very secretive and were prone to change specifications quite often. The lack of technical expertise on the part of the translator made things worse. This put Kulkarni in soup. He however put up a brave face and continued to develop the porting tool. In July 1998 the team returned for a few days to India ostensibly for a holiday.

The first thing Kulkarni asked for was to change the translator. But the translator was well known to the MD so that was not possible.

In India, the Project Team held a meeting and briefed the SBU Head about the extent of the problem. Kulkarni and his team would write a porting program, physically remove the glitches after manual testing and send it across to Japan only to learn that the client did not approve of the quality. What was happening was that the conversion tool was not even semi-automatic and the conversion was actually being done by a number of young engineers manually. The data size was large and this took a lot of time.

Every time CIL converted a set of data and sent it across, it was told that the data was full of glitches, was unreliable and the Japanese end client, the insurance company would never find it acceptable. Yakamura Insurance Company had started to put the pressure on the Japanese client of CIL and the client in turn was turning on the heat on CIL. Six sets of data were sent across to Japan and all six set were rejected on grounds of quality.

By January 1999 the Japanese client was getting very upset and showed it unmistakably. In February 1998 the Japanese client had sent four Japanese experts to India and they parked themselves at the Project Office. They reported that there was no conversion tool in sight and that the conversion was being done manually. They also stated in their report that the quality control team was only comparing data against certain benchmarks on paper and not actually testing the data for quality. CIL insisted that the automatic conversion tool was almost developed. The client insisted that this was not so. The client office on Osaka sent CIL an ultimatum and threatened to revoke the contract as well as sue the firm for damages. There was a state of panic in CIL. At this point the SBU Head decided to intervene personally. He asked for the details of the progress made from the time the project began and was aghast to find that there was virtually no documentation made. He called in everyone who was involved in the project and had a full day closed door meeting. He let everyone speak first and then gave them a sermon on quality, procedures, teamwork and documentation. The following facts emerged.

1.

Marketing had entered into the contract to deliver the automatic conversion tool but had not paid much heed to the reliability clauses.

2.

Project Manager stated that the manpower he had was relatively young and experienced and therefore he was sending the data as well as the conversion output without testing completely.

3.

The Project specifications were being changed quite very frequently and this put too much pressure on the CIL team. In addition, of the original team members only Kulkarni and two others remained with CIL. Others had left the company for better pastures. During the exit interview each of the leavers had pointed out that Kulkarni was competent man but a very poor boss. They had all left out of sheer frustration especially when word spread that the exit interviews were a farce as nothing came out of them.

4.

The Maintenance team did not know what the Quality team was doing and they, in turn, did not know what the Development team was doing. Only Kulkarni knew what was going on in all the three teams. And Kulkarni would not document anything so there was no way anyone could challenge his word that all was well.

5.

There had been not a single Project Meeting in which everyone was present nor had the SBU Head gone to the team members to find out for himself. He would ask Kulkarni who would assure him that all was fine. He in tun would assure the MD that all was fine.

The SBU Head realized his error in depending too much on Kulkarnis words of assurance and vowed never to make that mistake again. But the periodic rejections by the Japanese client worried him. competent. He knew that Kulkarni was a technically very

The SBU Head then called on the Group Marketing Head and together they went through the history of the Project. Three things emerged that would explain why the Japanese client was unhappy.

1.

The client insisted that a quality check be done on the client site in Osaka before the deliverables were accepted and the funds released.

2.

The Project Manager insisted that the testing he did in India was good enough and the client was just being awkward.

3.

The emphasis was placed on developing an automatic conversion tool and not much thought was placed on systems integration.

The original contract was called for and scrutinized.

The actual requirements of

Yakamura Insurance Company were spelt out in fine print but nobody had bothered to study them since they were in Japanese and the translator did not think they were important. There they found that in fine print the client had maintained that the automatic conversion tool would have to be tested on site and there would have to be perfect integration of systems between the RDBMS platform and the Windows NT outlet. Also, the client had reserved the right to alter specifications as the need arose. CIL had tamely accepted these in the zeal to bag the account.

The Project Manager had assumed this testing was to be on Project Site while the Japanese Firm has all along implied that it mean client site. The contract also was silent on how the automatic conversion tool was to be developed, against benchmark what it would be tested and what would be the criteria along which quality tests would be measured.

Toshiba Nippon Electronics was all along dealing with the Insurance Company directly and as per the principal client needs the specifications were altered. This had become so frequent that the CIL team was at loss as to what was expected of them.

A high level CIL Management meeting was called. The MD himself flew down to Osaka and met the MD of Toshiba Nippon Electronics and somehow managed to pacify the irate client and buy more time. The MD flew back to India and recruited six high-level software professionals on a specific contract to complete this project. At an enormous delay, heartburn and anxiety, the project was completed. The automatic conversion tool had somehow been developed and accepted by the Client. The image of CIL was saved and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Questions 1. What do you think had gone wrong and what could be done to have avoided this kind of an occurrence in the future? 2. Do you feel that OD intervention shall be suitable in this organisation?