Soft Issues In The Software Industry A Case Solution

2. Addressing Reasons & Rationalization

Rahul, the team lead at XYZ Guragon office is facing an ethical dilemma, which emerged from a simple mistake of a subordinate. Given the high turnover rate at XYZ, many senior employees were leaving the company, which shifted the all of the burden on the remaining pool of senior managers that included Rahul, as well. The company hired new inexperienced engineers so that they could conduct routine task and learn from senior managers. Rahul, being overworked due to few senior colleagues, appointed Pawan Patel to handle critical tasks that were not allowed without senior supervision. Rahul trusted Patel as he was one of the shining subordinates in the team due to his adapt learning skills. Patel accidently deleted 10 million transaction entries from the client’s online supply chain management portal. This caused a lot of the problem for the client as the client’s portal was switched off for approximately 18 hours.

However, the company fixed the problem and client’s portal was up and running within less than 24 hours. Now, the client company wanted a cause analysis meeting with Rahul to identify the main issue due to which such an elongated shutdown occurred. Rahul’s substitute boss, Harshit recommended Rahul to blame everything on ABC Company, one of outsourced company for hardware support and maintenance of core-database. This could be easily done by Rahul and no one would know except Harshit. However, there is a high probability that Patrick, client’s representative, would find out about it with in some time.

Now, there are four options that Rahul can pursue. The first option is that Rahul takes the blame on himself and let everyone free from negligence accusations. The second option is that Rahul can blame Patel as he was the one who accidently deleted a whole section of the master table. The third option is that Rahul can go with Harshit’s advice; blame the hardware and database support team, ABC. The last option is that Rahul can go to XYZ’s Ethics Counsellor so that he/she can resolve the issue within the company and saving company’s reputation.

3. Stakeholders’ Stakes    

In order to prepare arguments to tackle the opposition, it is important to understand who the stakeholders are and what their stakes in this problem are. The first key stakeholder is the company, XYZ. The company has a reputation in the market as a reliable and trustworthy supplier of IT services. The second stakeholder is the client’s company as it has invested its time and resources in the company and placed its trust in XYZ. ABC estimated that the client’s loss was under the frame of $8000 to $12000. This figure includes both tangible and intangible losses. On the other hand, the client company estimated that the losses of 18 hours shut down were $40000 to $50000. The company included the loss of delayed deliveries and fruitless visits of engineers at sites.

The third main stakeholder is Rahul as he directly deals with the client company have supervises Pawan Patel. In an ideal scenario, Rahul should not have appointed such a critical task to Pawan Patel without any supervision. However, Rahul’s reputation within the company and with the client’s company is at stake. Secondly, in the worst case i.e. Patrick finds about Rahul’s lie about ABC Company, Rahul could lose his job and reputation in the whole Indian IT industry. The fourth stakeholder is Pawan Patel as he was the one who created this whole problem in the first place. In case, everything is blamed on Patel he would get fired and then the team-spirit of other teams within the company will be broken and will create operational inefficiency. The fifth stakeholder is Harshit as he is the one who has given negative advice to Rahul and could get fired in case Rahul reports him to the Ethics Council. All stakeholders have different type of stakes within their companies.