In the beginning of 2020, it was the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we all were asked to work from home during the lockdown period. I left Bangalore with family just a day before lockdown and reached my native Kanyakumari. Another 3 months in native worked from home, conducted team meetings in TEAMS and progressed with the work.
Even after lockdown, situation
was not under control, so wearing masks and usage of sanitizers were common
everywhere. The current project was over, and I got to know about a new project
in ADE. It was an onsite project and resource presence in the site was must
since the work can’t be done in the work from home mode. Initially I was in
dilemma to take risk and later convinced to took over this project due to few
reasons. The first reason was the curiosity to see and understand what is
really happening in the government organisations. The second reason was the
challenge of managing an excessively big team first time in my career.
The process of finding the
candidates and preparing the resumes for the project started. Many experienced candidates
refused to come, and we were end up with more juniors. The half of the team of
32 candidates deputed in June 2020. On the first day morning in ADE, engineers
shocked to know that they can’t bring the mobile phones inside the office premise,
and it should be in the locker until we were out of office. Since the lockdown
restrictions were followed, few candidates they didn’t allow inside based on thermal
check.
We were gathered in an auditorium
called Kalam and the training session started. We were supposed to work in two
different divisions, manned and unmanned aircraft divisions. The training was
from both the divisions. Scientists and technical officers provided the full
day theoretical training for a month. The canteen was not fully functional due
to pandemic restrictions, and we had to collect the lunch parcels from the
canteen with prior order.
The get the identity card, police
verification certificate was required. The process was not online during that
time. We filled the forms and submitted in the commissioner office with Aadhaar
copy. I visited the commissioner office 4 to 5 times in the evening after the
office hours and got all the certificates. From 2021 onwards, this process became
simple due to online application, and one must visit the police station of
their residential area to clear the formalities and renew the certificate every
year.
After a month, the initial batch
was divided into two teams under 2 leaders, one for manned and another one for
unmanned. The two month milestone was defined, and the work started. Our
engineers struggled to start with the work since the training given was only
theoretical and they were not aware of the legacy tools used. We got the
understanding of the coding and testing tools through the other contract
engineers who were already working there and through few technical officers.
Meanwhile, the second batch of 30
engineers were deputed in July 2020 and the same training to be provided to
them. The scientists will not repeat the training, and we must train ourselves.
The other team started working and so I must give training for the new batch of
engineers. With the help of the training slides and with prior preparation, I
have given training to all the engineers for another one month. I shared my
past work experiences to make them understand the nuances of software
development and verification. It was a fun filled training period.
The second batch was also divided
into two teams under two leads and started with the milestone activities. I oversaw
a team in this and overall managed all the 4 teams. The work defined for my
milestone was hardware software integration testing. The old engineering test
station was discarded and the migration to the advanced engineering test
station was the main activity. We were clueless since the test environment was new
to us. With the help of a technical officer and a scientist, we were able to
complete the symbols, macros and test files preparation after initial struggle.
Once the first milestone
completed, the real game started. Prepared the exit documents and job
completion certificates and ran behind the scientists for the signature. It was
a typical government office process that the file was on the table for certain
period even after repeated reminders. Corrections were given after some time
and process repeated from the beginning after correction. This was totally an
annoying process since as a leader one can’t concentrate on the next milestone
and had to wait patiently for the previous milestone closure. By the time, the
milestone got signed, the team moved already to the third milestone. We leads
tried a lot to make this signing process in time for last 5 years and we ended
up with only little success.
The team was comprised of many
freshers and work progress in the initial milestones was not as expected since
the team was on learning phase. The office timing of the customer place was
different from the industry standard. It starts from 8:15 AM and goes up to 5:45
PM. The lunch break duration was just half an hour which was not sufficient
even if you had the lunch in the office canteen. If you go out for lunch, an
hour will go easily. Due to these factors, we got an escalation from the
project office regarding complaints on work progress and timing issues. An
escalation meeting happened, and Accord senior managers attended. Our boss
defended her engineers, raised concerns over the infrastructure issues and conveyed
the challenges our engineers faced in the unfamiliar environment.
There were infrastructure issues
faced by the team like limited restrooms, cleanliness of the restrooms,
drinking water issue, vehicle parking issue, lunch issue and poorly maintained
test rigs. There were some discrepancies regarding not to use a particular
restroom, not to use parking slot which were supposed to be for only permanent
employees. All these issues were reported to the project office, and few were
addressed and for few we got adjusted. It took quite some time for me and the
leads to motivate and guided the team to brought them on track with respect to
technical contribution and made them to adjust with the customer timings.
There were few audit observations
from the Audit committee regarding the experience of the deputed employees,
their qualification and queries on salary contribution from the parent company.
Sufficient proofs were collected and submitted to the project office for all
such audit observations.
We were slowly settling in the
work and by the time second wave of COVID-19 pandemic started vigorously. First
wave was prolonged one and our team successfully managed that with masks and
sanitizers kind of protocols. The second wave was a rapid one and to stop the
spreading of virus, a 3 week lockdown period was announced by the government of
India in the month of May 2021. It was the toughest period of my entire 20
years of professional career.
We already faced lockdown period
during the first wave, so we were aware of managing the grocery like household
things. During that period, I supported for another project from home and most
of the team members gone to native. This second wave was horrible since many publics
lost their lives due to lack of oxygen cylinders and ventilators. I lost two of
my relatives during this time but couldn’t visit due to the restrictions. 11
engineers from my team affected by COVID and they isolated themselves with
medicine and recovered safely.
3 weeks lockdown period was over,
and I got message from ADE to come back to office. The private organisations
extended the lockdown and asked the people to work from home. Since there was
no option of work from home in ADE, we were asked to return immediately. I went
to office the next day and I realised that I was the only person reported out
of the 62 members Accord team. The ADE chief scientist asked me to bring all
the resources back in no time. My tough time started from there. After the
office hours, I dialled all the engineers, and few responded to come to office
since they were in Bangalore. Most of the people denied since they were in
native and transport services were not started. The next day one more engineer
came and again I got warning from ADE to bring back all. My evenings calls and
messages gone for a month to bring back everyone. Few engineers threatened me
to give assurance to their life. My immediate supervisor helped in this
process.
Once everyone back, the antivirus
vaccination campaign started. Now ADE instructed those who don’t avail
vaccination were not supposed to come to office. Even though I like it or not I
started convincing people for vaccination. I took vaccination in ADE and all my
team members took vaccination in the campaign organised by Accord. One day I
was not well bit, and I went to office since there were pending work to close.
On seeing my face, one scientist stopped me in the door and asked me to go out.
I straightway went to Manipal, done the test and next day attended the office
with a negative report. The entire world was in home, and we were in office
added lots of stress to the team. In all these two months happenings, the fear
of CORONA never came to my mind even a single time since I had lot many other
worries which feared me more than CORONA.
After two months, the next
outburst ATTIRITION started. Due to the fear of CORONA and not happy with the
infrastructure, restriction of workplace and strict scientists, engineers
started resigning one by one with lucrative offers and work from home option.
We retained few engineers with great difficulty and most of the engineers
turned down the stay back option. Now, we must provide replacements with one
month overlap time and engineers those who were working on other projects in
Accord not ready to come to ADE. The only solution was to recruit people.
The recruitment drive started
with the help of HR team. 300 resumes shortlisted and called for interview with
the condition of ADE deployment. The interview was strictly on Teams after the
office working hours. Within 2 months I took 40 interviews out of the 100+ and
remaining by the leads and few team members. We have recruited around 40
engineers and only half of them joined. ADE started accessing the candidates
before deployment. This added burden and we setup a training team from our team
to train the recruited candidates for a week or two before deployment. Even
after few sleepless months, we were not able to fulfil the replacements
completely.
My immediate supervisor came with
the idea of fresher candidates as the ramp up resources. We took permission
from ADE for freshers and deployed them as buffers. This plan worked out very
well since after one point of time all these freshers were absorbed as
replacements. Our super boss came out with the plan of double the site
allowance to all the deputed engineers which helped to control the attrition
rate. In the last two years of the project almost no attrition happened since
the team got gelled with the ADE work and received good support from the Alten
supervisors.
Meanwhile one good thing happened
to the team. A new six floors building ‘FCS Complex’ constructed in 45 days
with all amenities for the engineering division in ADE. Our manned team moved
to the top floor and the unmanned team to the fifth floor. The team was quite happy
with the spacious cabins with good chairs and sufficient restrooms.
The private offices corporate
working culture and government working culture were completely different. As
part of my professional career, I had two onsite opportunities before this
program. An onsite within Bangalore with a private customer (HP) in the
beginning of my career from 2005 to 2008. It went up to 4 years smoothly and I
got a skilled professional experience. Later, I was in onsite in Germany (DIEHL
Aerospace) for almost 3 years between 2012 to 2015. Even though I had few tough
times there, it was good to manage due to the respect I received as an engineer
in the workplace. But in this current onsite, government officials always
showed their authority to everyone irrespective of your position.
One day, other leads came to me
for discussion and the chief scientist scolded me in front of everyone that why
are you wasting time with these guys. After that, we used to discuss after
office hours only. There was only one telephone available to use for the entire
team and that too won’t work whenever really needed. My Accord immediate
supervisor calls normally goes beyond an hour. I got warning few times from the
scientists to avoid attending long calls.
The project what we worked had a
25 year history. Legacy process followed and the customer was not ready to
accept any new recommended changes. We were forced to work with the existing
setup like all the problem reports must be raised using paper and the closure
also through paperwork. It was a ‘cultural shock’ in the beginning that are we
into the ‘stone age’ after seeing the paper process. Later, I realised nothing
will happen in a government organisation without signature on a paper.
There was no straightforward way
to communicate with the team apart from ‘call and shout.’ I shout the team
member name and inform loudly to get the work done. Later, based on our request
the internal mail server was setup and individual mail ids were created and
given to the entire team. This eased our job to certain extent. RTC and CCM
tools were given by the customer for the software problem reports management.
There was no internet in the
customer workplace due to security concerns. So initially the team struggled
for any online help for the work. Later the team developed the practice of memorise
the syntax or instructions to do the activities and it was a kind of knowledge
enrichment. There was a ‘Knowledge Center (library)’ which was used by the team
for technical references.
Even though the customer place is
in the heart of the city with all required amenities, due to the lack of mobile
phones and limited access of telephones, emergency contact was a problem any
day. So, I always think this place as a ‘remote island.’
Controlling a bigger team is
always challenging. The team had conflicts either with the customer or with our
leads, I had to negotiate and brought the peace among the team. The team
usually had a tough time with the customer and normally I was friendly with the
team to avoid more pressure on them. I always motivate the team to work
peacefully in a restricted environment. I used to share stories from my
experience, stories from public life which I can easily author a book on
motivational thoughts if I summarize all of them.
As a manager, I had to repeat the
same thing again and again. Many days, I had submitted work status to different
scientists on the same day since they didn’t share among themselves. The ego
between the scientists was one major issue to dealt with them. When we were
investigating a particular defect with a scientist, we can’t go to other
scientists for help. If a team member was associated with a scientist for a
particular work, the same resource can’t be used for any other work. One scientist
repeatedly interferes and not allow us to work. One scientist always provides
only limited information which was exceedingly difficult to proceed with the
work. Few scientists were very unpredictable, one day very friendly and other
day very bad-tempered.
My mindset and my team’s mindset were
working for the project but few of the customers mindset was about their
position first then the project. The scoldings from the customer always brought
negative vibes among the team. Most of the times my intervention required to
brought back the positive vibes. My mantra to work with the customer is “We are
here, not to change anybody. We are here, to complete the assigned task with
quality. Don’t take the pressure on your head which plays spoilsport on your
work. Be cool and do the work calmly. Adjust with the people and with the
environment to live peacefully in life.” This is what the message I passed to
the team ‘n’ number of times.
We had a competitor there and we collaborated
with them for Mk1A program. We worked together for this program under the scientist’s
guidance which paved way for the successful first flight. We witnessed the Mk1A
first flight in the HAL airport. The chief scientist described this flight as
the ‘perfect flight.’ We got appreciation from the scientists for our hard work
in this program.
Normally, the perspective towards
a government organisation is work will move very slowly. But this was opposite
in this work environment. The scientists were very resolute towards the work.
Most of the times we got genuinely nice technical explanation from the
scientists about the flight control system. The chief scientist sat and did
coding on any day and the technical solution provided by the chief scientist
was top notch always. This division had the habit of doing other divisions work
to move forward the work in a faster rate. The only obstacle was the heavy
dependency on the test rig. The certification of the software was depended on
the hardware software integration testing. Our team struggled in the beginning
to isolate the problems between test rig and software. With the learnings,
later we understood the nuances of test rig usage and able to isolate the
issues correctly.
Snakes, one of the common things
in the customer place. Initially, the team was worried too much about the
snakes wandering there. Later, the team learned to live with nature. There was
one test rig which located in a dark room. Whenever, we used that test rig
after 6:00 PM, there was always fear of snakes. We were blessed with nature, so
no worrisome happened.
The work life balance was quite
difficult in this work environment. The security won’t allow if you enter late
and early coming out also not possible. So even for a small personal work, one
should go for a half day leave. The test rig usage normally planned between
7:30 AM to 8:00 PM. The team must follow the planned weekly roster on the rig
timings. If no one there in the early morning slot and late evening slot, then
I must answer to the scientist. I used to stay from the early morning to until
the late evening to make sure that someone was there in the rig. Any pending
work of the week must be completed in the following Saturday. Since no lunch
facility on Saturday, I provided snacks to the team occasionally.
Because of the unusual timings
and contact restrictions, one of my bank loan issues took two years to resolve.
One time, there was a bomb hoax all the schools received. The panicked parents
went to the school and took back their kids. My wife tried to reach me but in
vain. I came late as usual unaware of the news. My wife seriously questioned me
do you really need this job. I replied, “yes, it is a pride job,” and I
enjoyed doing my work without any outside disturbance.
There were around 2000 employees
in the customer place including the contracts like us. Since it was a defence
program site, there were around 200 security personnels all time around the
site. After the biometric entry in the gate, the security check with metal
detectors and bag scrutiny were the daily routine. The security checks our
in-time, out-time, not to allow the mobile phones even for emergency situations
and they were more like moral police than the security guards. The repeated
check on the identity card validity, open and check the nook and corner of the
bag was irritating at times. Even small agitation ended up with apology letter.
Few of my teammates wrote apology letter for not wearing masks during the
CORONA time. I always used to think someone must teach all the security
personnels that they are for protecting the people and to make sure the
confidential government information’s are safe. They are not here to stop
people from doing their duty. But I know, until today the security system of
our country follows the British regime methodology and being extremely strict
is their mantra.
Weekend message from the customer
on the tasks and weekend calls from my immediate supervisor were quite common
in my life. But, whenever I saw any customer message in the morning, I used to
run towards the office to address the issue on any day. Usually, the lunch time
was noticeably short and whenever I got any immediate work during that time, I
skipped lunch since later going out for lunch was a tedious process.
During the initial times, the
team was sitting in two buildings, and I was running between these two
buildings. One day, unfortunately that was my birthday, I was in the main
building and the team in the other building was roaming around within the
campus after lunch. The chief scientist went to the other building and saw only
few were there. He called me and scolded in such a way that it was the worst
day in my life. I called the entire team and scolded them very badly and it was
pin drop silence everywhere since no one expected me in that avatar.
Thereafter, its unavoidable me to remember this incident on any of my
birthdays.
Calling people by name
irrespective of the designation is common in the corporate culture. In the
customer place, ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ is the expectation everywhere. The team and me
faced little difficulty in the beginning and later adapted to that culture. After
one point of time, not only in office I started doing the same even outside with
younger guys.
During the CORONA time, there
were restrictions even visiting the parent company. One time I was throwed out
by the parent company security for not having ‘Aarogya Sethu’ app to show I was
free from CORONA. I couldn’t do that because of my smartphone issues at that
time. Life was tough outside too. Most of the shops closed and especially xerox
shops were closed everywhere. Due to difficulty in getting printout of
deputation letters, resume checklist, police verification certificates, I
bought a printer, and it saved my life until today.
Getting the milestone
definition/entry for a new milestone was always a painful task. We prepared the
definition with the known existing tasks, and we must wait until further task
from the coordinator. At times, the scope changed in between the milestone due
to the arrival of new tasks and thus entry undergone changes even at the end of
milestone. Similarly, getting signature for the milestone closure/exit
documents also took time always. Normally, the team completes the planned
activities in time. Sometimes, the HSIT task delayed due to test rig dependency
like DFCC target not available, DFCC box issues, cooler not available, simulation
cards issues and test rig wiring issues.
I have maintained separate excel
table for the team’s attendance in SharePoint from 2020 to 2025. I, leads, and
immediate supervisor used the same data for the timesheet’s submission for the
team members. Apart from this, we have maintained interview questions, training
materials and teams PVC data in the SharePoint.
The milestone job completion
certificates submission in the project office for billing was the usual
practice. The project office needed data on the resource’s deputation,
resources experience, PVCs, attendance data and software version released kind
of information for very milestone. We leads maintained all the data in the
customer server and provided the same to the project office. We prepared and
submitted efforts and productivity metrics whenever project office demanded.
Data maintenance was one biggest
problem in the customer place. Even though SCM was there, only the final
deliverables stored there. Many intermediate documents were stored in random
places and whenever in need of those documents it was difficult to search and
find out. We tried to streamline this process to certain extent. Created few shared
areas in the storage servers and followed the practice of keeping all the
intermediate documents there. Data sharing via internet was prohibited and any
data sharing was only through non-returnable CD with proper written letter.
The opening and closing the of
the department and the test rigs were maintained by the customer through the
monthly roster. Most of the times myself and team also supported for this
activity. The turning ON the severs in the morning and OFF in the evening also
done by me frequently.
Sometimes I think the about priority
of government projects. Government gives more importance to infrastructure
(buildings, roads, power supplies) development projects than any other project.
In the customer place, we waited sometimes for months to get even a small
hardware. I really couldn’t understand the irony behind this.
Team meeting with the chief
scientist was always a memorable one. During team meetings the scientist ask
questions to our team. When the answer was not correct the technical
explanation was given by the scientist after scoldings. Even though such
meetings were terror experiences, those were good learning experiences to the
team. We conducted weekly once training sessions to improve the skills of the
engineers.
ADE always preferred a
lead/manager who are not only supposed to manage the team but also do technical
contribution. Whenever the customer was not happy with any of our team members,
they asked to return them and provide replacement. Wherever possible, I
negotiated and taken steps to improve the engineer. Few times, we returned the
engineers with suitable replacement. Few of the engineers who came in between
struggled to gel with the work culture and work environment and later they absconded.
In between, the customer did an
experiment of doing few jobs at the offshore mode of work at the parent
company. With an isolated secured network this work was tried with few
resources for few months. Later, this work was stopped due to permission denial
from the customer top-level management.
The identity card must be renewed
every 89 days. The paperwork and the waiting process of this work was again a
time consuming activity. The security persons were very much particular about
this identity card even though the biometric (eye and fingers) were proofs of
your identity.
Whenever any issue reported, the
immediate reaction of pointing fingers by the customer was on our team only
since we were the easy target. But most of the times, after the defect
investigation, it was found that the issue was due to another team. When the
issue was due to us, the postmortem meeting was done always so that the issue
will not repeat again.
During this journey, in 2021, we
lost one of our team members in an accident on a personal trip. Our team
members and two customer technical officers went to the spot and paid homage to
the departed soul. The customer’s support during this tough time was admirable.
During the 2021-22 times, half of
the engineers left the company and joined other firms. After one point of time,
everyone called/messaged me and asked about the possibility of returning to ADE
project. This clearly showed even in the restricted environment, people enjoyed
the work and liked the team bonding.
Since the project was a long term
one, the entire team became one family now. Few of the team members got married
during this project tenure and we attended the functions as part of the family.
We had few teams’ lunch and dinners which were unforgettable ones. Birthday
celebration and farewell parties also happened sometimes.
My wife said few times; someone must
change your company since you are not going to change. This happened in 2023,
Accord was acquired by Alten. This change didn’t change anything majorly until
today. Same project, same manager and same team. I am happy with all these noteworthy
associations.
As I said in the beginning, we
started this project with a fresher majority team and now developed in to bunch
of experienced engineers with diversified skills. The exploration on the
complete flight control system was once in a lifetime opportunity. The team has
completed all the planned milestones, done various releases and worked on
multiple programs. The team involved from SOI1 to SOI4 certification activities
for certain programs based on the DO178B and DO178C level A standards. The team
contributed to the design coding activity, hardware software integration
testing and low level testing of manned and unmanned onboard flight program
software. Apart from the core software development, the team contributed for
the device driver development of MPC 5566 processor and the implementation of
IO interfaces like Watchdog, 1553B, RS422, A/D and D/A conversion. The team is
very well experienced on i960 Compiler, Green Hills ADA Multi, Understand,
Visual Studio, Beacon, Rhapsody, ADA programming, C programming, MATLAB,
Simulink, Logiscope, LDRA, Polyspace, Absint, DOORS, Git Lab and RTC. Many
budding engineers started their career in this program groomed into technical
leads who are all assets for the future programs of our company.
It was quite a rollercoaster
journey with lots of ups and downs, and it was steady at the end. Thank you to
the Accord/Alten management, ADE scientists and officers, and my dear engineers
for the happy support of 5 years for the successful completion of this project.
There is no end for technical learning and the same way there is no end for
understanding people. The art of surviving with our strengths and limitations
is particularly important in life.
Summarily, what is my take on
this five years’ experience. There are two major things to highlight. The first
one, this 5 years’ experience is almost equivalent to 25 years of experience, gained
both technical and managerial skills. The second one, when I entered this
premise 5 years ago, my hair was completely black and now I am ‘salt and
pepper’ and that is my experience.
