The four heads in the meeting room all lifted from their printed A3 project plans and, in unison, turned their mechanical gazes on him.
They were like, Ramble thought, a troop of Daleks, taking their instructions by remote control and incapable of independent thought. Daft sods, they had no idea what they were doing. It was bad enough having to suffer through the idiocy of his manager and the project manager on a weekly basis, now he had these two muppets from Group to hand-hold, the guy with the curly hair and the Chinaman.
‘Excuse me?’ the curly-haired one said.
‘Yes?’ Ramble snapped back immediately. ‘Er …’
‘Ryan.’
‘Yes Ryan?’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’
Ramble let that hang for a moment before saying, almost with a sigh, ‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite get it either,’ the Chinaman said. ‘It’s Kong.’
‘Kong?’ Ramble said. ‘Like the giant gorilla?’
‘If that helps, sure.’
‘So what does it mean? Is it some Confucian state of confusion?’ He had them well on the back-foot now, he could see it in their bleary stares and deep frowns.
‘It’s my name,’ he said.
‘Really? How unfortunate. Back on the subject, I believe you’re having trouble understanding the development status.’
‘Um, yes,’ Curly said, trying to gather his thoughts.
Curly, or … Ryan, that was it. Ramble was going to need a mnemonic. Curly Ryan. Curly. Swirly. Curls. Loops. Loopy Ryan? No. Ringlets. Ringlet Ryan? Perfect.
‘You’ve marked the development status of CR2107 as “completed”, but you say it’s not ready to be tested.’
‘Yes,’ Ramble said without further explanation. No free lunches for these two, not if he had any say in it.
Ringlet Ryan looked to Troy for assistance, but all he got back was a pair of upraised eyebrows and a slight shrug. Troy Bleeker was Ramble’s manager, but he’d long since had his spirit broken by Ramble’s unassailable knowledge of the system. Ryan and Kong both looked to Sevak, the broken project manager, but he was already shaking his head, eyes downcast. He looked like he wanted to curl into a ball under the table and weep. Ramble thoroughly owned Sevak.
Ryan held his hands out. ‘Why?’
Ramble sat back in his seat and folded his arms. ‘You wouldn’t understand. It’s very technical.’
‘Oh, that’s OK. Kong and I are both from a technical background.’
‘Ah. Well, you see, it’s because the developers identified a gap in the requirements.’
Sevak’s forehead hit the table with a dull thud.
‘I’ve read the requirements,’ Kong said. ‘They seem quite thorough.’
‘Seem thorough, yes. But there are still outstanding questions on how the business wants the work-flow to change.’
Sevak sat back in his chair as though dragged back by unseen wires and shouted, ‘Liar!’
‘Steady Sevak,’ Troy said, the only contribution he’d made in the meeting.
‘The requirements were signed off by the business three weeks ago. No outstanding questions!’ Ramble could see the capillaries bursting in the little man’s eyes as he glared at him. Glare all you want, tiny. You can’t hurt me.
‘Ah,’ Ramble said, ‘that was before IT hit a hurdle in the work-flow code block. The development to implement the requirement has led to a mandatory work-flow change, otherwise the whole thing could go tits-up.’
‘So, what’s this hurdle?’ Ryan said.
‘It’s in the document.’ Ramble said.
‘Can you summarise it?’
Ramble's eye flew open in shock. ‘No! It’s a question from IT.’
‘Yes, but … you’re IT, aren’t you Stan?’
‘I’m the IT manager,’ Ramble said. ‘I don’t work with the code.'
‘But you work with the developers?’
‘I manage them, yes.’
‘But you can’t explain what they do, or ask questions on their behalf?’
Ramble screwed up his mouth like he was fighting to keep bile from rising into his throat and spraying out over their ignorant arse-faces. ‘DDNPLFRR doesn’t work like that. What you need to understand, Ringlet, about DDNPLFRR, is that it was inherited blind off the back of a Belgian acquisition five years ago, without any documentation, and our team have been working around the clock, twenty-four-seven, ever since just to keep the damn thing ticking over.’
‘It was seven years ago, and … did you just call me Ringlet?’
Buggery bullocks, he thought he might have done. Damn tricky mnemonics, now he remembered why he never used them.
‘Let’s try and stay focused, shall we? Why are we talking about piglets all of a sudden?’
‘Ringlet.’
‘Don’t do that!’ Ramble snapped. ‘That’s soirritating.’
‘What’s irritating?’ Ryan said. ‘Being corrected?’
Ramble threw his pen at the window. ‘I don’t believe this. Are you trying to wind me up?’
‘Easy, Stan,’ Troy said. ‘Easy.’
‘I just want a straight answer,’ Ryan said. ‘How can the development status be complete, when it isn’t?’
‘I suggest,’ Ramble said, ‘you read the requirements document, paying particular attention to the open questions section. When Sevak answers the questions in the document —’
‘You only added the questions yesterday!’ Sevak screamed in a pitch of voice right up their with a kettle’s whistle. ‘Development was supposed to be finished two weeks ago!’
‘— then my team,’ Ramble continued, ignoring Sevak’s outburst, ‘can complete this additional requirement.’
‘So let’s get the team on the phone now,’ Ryan said. ‘Sort this question out.’
‘Can’t,’ Ramble said, staring at Ryan like he’d just grown a pair of tits on his head. ‘They’ve gone home.’
Ryan looked at his watch. ‘It’s not even three. What happened to twenty-four-seven?’
‘They work in bloody Bangalore!’ Ramble shouted. ‘Do you want to literally work them to death? Do you want them to be taken down by a pack of wild dogs as they walk home, alone, in the middle of the night? Look, I’ll call them now, shall I? I’ll call them at home in the middle of the night and wake them up, wake their family up, and demand they make the journey back to the office so they can join this call give you your answers? Shall I do that now?’
‘Why not just talk to them on their home number? No need to drag them all the way into —’
‘They don’t have phones!’ Ramble shouted, pulling at his hair with both fists so hard his eyebrows seemed to be temporarily standing in for his hairline. ‘Jesus Christ man, they live in slums!’
‘OK, OK, look,’ Kong said, holding his hands up in a plea for calm. ‘No need to call them at home, let’s just attack it in the morning when everyone’s fresh. Yeah? So, Stan, when your team has tidied up this work-flow question, then the users can test?’
‘Yes, obviously,’ Ramble said, standing to leave. ‘Unless this new work-flow requirement necessitates another code tweak.’
‘When will we know if that’s going to happen?’ Ryan said.
‘I couldn’t possibly say, that’s a question for IT,’ Ramble said, and drifted out the door, leaving the simpletons to scratch their bums in confusion.
Check-mate, Ramble.
***
Ryan stared at Kong, and they both stared at Troy and Sevak.
‘Did that just happen?’ Ryan said. ‘Did we just have that conversation, or have I been drugged?’
‘If you’re drugged, it must be in the water,’ Kong said. ‘I feel like I’ve just been run over by the stupid truck. What the hell was that?’
‘That, my friends,’ Sevak said, ‘was Stan Ramble. That –’ he jabbed his finger at the door, ‘– that is the roadblock you have to clear if you have any hope of understanding DDNPLFRR.’
‘All we asked for was a functional design document,’ Ryan said. ‘How did we end up reviewing all the issues in the system?’
‘Because that’s what Ramble knows,’ Sevak said. ‘He knows what the issues are at any given time, and can plausibly explain the issues inherent in resolving the issues ... just don’t ask him how.’
‘How what?’
‘How anything! The more direct your questions, the greater barrage of crap you face. You need to trick him into answering you directly.’
‘How do we do that?’ Kong said.
‘Buggered if I know. I’ve been trying for two years.’
Ryan turned to Troy. ‘Isn’t there a way around him? Can we discuss this with the development team?’
Troy leaned back in his chair. All the office chairs were “intelligently ergonomic”, meaning they moved with the body but couldn’t be fixed in place. Being rather heavy on top, Troy faded into a recline which could almost be viewed as napping. He steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the development team in Bangalore are under contract with a third party supplier, and they are only contractually obliged to communicate with Stan, or with others but only if Stan is included.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Kong muttered. ‘So we have to deal with that guy? Are you sure none of this is documented?’
‘Well …’ Troy said, suddenly interested in the ceiling.
‘Well?’ Ryan said.
‘Well, it was documented at one point, at least we think it was. But all the documentation appears to have gone missing.’
‘Missing?’
‘Missing. Absent. Deleted, either accidentally, or …’
‘Dear God,’ Kong said. ‘He wouldn’t, would he?’
Troy held his hands up palm out. ‘I’m not saying any more. OK? I can’t.’
Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stem his growing headache. ‘Right, so there’s no documentation, and we’re not going to get anything meaningful out of Ramble. We can’t communicate with the developers directly. Can we raise a change requires to have them document the system?’
‘You could raise one, sure,’ Sevak said. ‘It’ll never be approved though.’
‘Why not?’ Ryan said.
‘I’ve tried it before. Ramble made a big show of telling everyone how he’d have to pull the team off their current development work to document the system, which would mean the business wouldn’t get their expected deliverables for another two to three months. Gillette hit the roof.’
Ryan had been writing change request for documentation, but he drew a line through it. Gillette was the chief business sponsor of DDNPLFRR, and if he didn’t get his changes delivered on a regular basis, people lost their jobs.
Sevak leaned in and lowered his voice. ‘You know the only reason Ramble still has a job, don’t you? It’s because whenever Gillette says jump, Ramble practically throws a disc in his back. Gillette doesn’t want to lose that flexibility.’
‘Well, our mandate is from Group. If we hit obstacles, we need to escalate to our sponsors.’
‘By all means,’ Troy said. ‘Please, escalate. Knock yourselves out.’
Ryan looked to Kong. ‘Maybe we should see Gillette, he’s aware of the profile of Harmony. If his system poses a risk to the project, he should know about it.’
Project Harmony was a Group effort to standardise all the common data in the bank, to enable seamless reporting and audit at all levels. It was never going to happen, everyone new that, but it was being driven by industry regulatory requirements, which meant Big Brother was watching. They had to go through the motions with due diligence. Ryan and Kong had been sent to perform their little role, which was the integration of DDNPLFRR, the dog system of the bank.
Kong nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it.
‘Cheer up, mate,’ Ryan said, slapping his colleague on the shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t be fun if it was easy.’
‘Fun,’ Kong said. ‘Right.’
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