We Discussed. Please do the needful [Office]

Hi All,

If you are wondering what I am intending to write about... well... This is the most common statement you can see in my mailbox. This is actually the statement that pains us, but it is great fun to write about it and have a laugh.

To give some details...
This is the scene: I am heading a major execution / scheduled downtime activity / change process... a typical fish market scene... standing on the floor and shouting run-time instructions to your 10+ subordinates. Then my phone rings. A guy on the other side would say "Hi Shiv, I'm XYZ, and am handling ABC Project..."
Me: "Hi, but I'm busy right now, if it is not too urgent, shall we talk a bit later?"
XYZ: "Not a problem Shiv, I actually wanted a small clarification".
Me: "Sure, shoot".
XYZ: "For one of my activities, I need a smaaaal dump with details like blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... "
this is all that I can hear... I am in the middle of a major activity, as I said earlier.
Me: "OK XYZ, why don't you drop a mail with the details, I will analyse and take up your requirement"
XYZ: (quite delighted) "Why, Sure, I will do that... achcha secondly.... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... "
Now I get serious and interrupt...
Me: Sirjee, please put it all on mail, now I gotta hang up...
XYZ: "OK OK Sure... Take Care... Bye!"

After an hour, a mail comes. It is marked to you with a CC to my boss (who is a Group Manager -Associate VP), boss's boss (VP)... I get the first shock. Now the second shock... the Subject: "Reg. dump requirement". What a nice way of giving a subject to a mail. After 3 - 4 months, if I browse through the mail subjects, I will have no clue of what this mail is about. I will be tempted to delete it, or even to mark it as a spam!

The third shock... the mail body reads:
"Hi Shiva,
We discussed. Please provide the dump as agreed.
Hope you can give it by tomorrow as per our discussion

Regds,
XYZ."

I shatter... "we discussed?" I did not even have the time to hear...
"as agreed?" All that I asked for is a mail with details, so that I can revert...
"give it by tomorrow???" With my experience and what I heard out of what this guy said, I am sure that this will take at least a week to provide! Tomorrow? That too, "as discussed"???

By the way, where is the requirement in the mail? What is this guy's number? With the volume of calls that come in a day on my mobile, I can never trace back his number from my list of received calls...

Even worse, already about to pass, I can see my boss (who instantly read the mail) rushing towards me... "Shiv, have u gone mad? Have you entertained new requirements? We are already neck to neck... I want current project to be on line... it is worth millions... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... blah... " I think I have passed off...

Now jokes apart. Some serious message:
Many-a-times, especially in IT environment where there is a multitude of teams dependant on each other, this phenomenon occurs. Somebody in this complex cobweb would have done a goof up on his / her Project Network... a typical failure to realize a dependency. He / she is in a state of immense pressure to finish a milestone... it could be that his / her credibility or even job itself is in stake. These are the people who get pushed to do an act like the story I narrated above. Even worse, the guy who sits as the boss to characters like XYZ, justify this state and throw all blame on an IT team that is given a less than 24 hour timeline to deliver a requirement that would normally take a couple of man-weeks!

Do these people recognize that even we have a project running and even we have to deliver to our deadlines? How can they eat into our quality time of delivery on their whims and fancy? OK, if this is too much to ask, what is the point in writing a mail with ABSOLUTELY NO DETAIL, marking to the world, with an irrelevant subject? And not caring to give your contact number...

I do not say I am perfect. I am just in the receiving end today... who knows... I would be playing XYZ tomorrow with some other team in the chain due to my goof-up on my project network!

As such I am open to comments. Anybody who wants to write for / against my post above will be treated with equal honor and respect. Do go ahead, and speak your heart out on this issue, via comments.

Regards,
SKB.