(Whatever branding is desired goes here)
Getting to quality
Rob got his coffee cup and sat down at his desk. He started going through his email and frowned. Another show stopping defect had shown up and the Indian team was working hard to fix it. Frustration made him tense up and he wondered what the problem was. This had become a frequent issue, and he was concerned about its impact on the Sales team, as they relied on the system to perform their tasks, and the defects were hindering their ability to do their jobs.
He started to look through the code and immediately called Sharath the Indian lead. Sharath gave him his usual smile but Rob wasn’t in the mood to be friendly.
“Sharath, why haven’t you refactored this code?, there are so many duplicate copies of the same code and they get out of sync causing issues. You could have one copy and just reuse that?” he asked. Sharath asked “Yes, that’s my opinion as well, so is it okay if I do that now?”. Exasperated Rob said “Of course but why didn’t you do this sooner?” Sharath replied “I was waiting for you to tell me to do it sir” he said. Rob explained that next time he wanted Sharath to be more open and offer his opinions about such things.
Rob decided he would start a weekly meeting to talk about things that were outside of the day to day. Topics such as better process, possible improvements, what was working and what was not working and new technologies which could add value. He wondered if the Indian team would feel comfortable contributing to the discussion. He decided he would call Sharath and ask him how to get participation from the Indian team for this type of meeting. He had to do something. He was dreading the inevitable angry call from the Sales team about the system performing incorrectly yet again
Q1- What reasons do you think Sharath had for not making changes even though he understood there was a better way?
Q2- What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of Robs approach?
Q3- What are your thoughts on how quality could be improved on your own team?