365 Days of Stories - Day 22: Another Turnaround Story – A New Product, High Stakes, and a Failing System
- Partha Sarthi
- Mar 11
- 2 min read
Let’s talk about another turnaround story for an enterprise account. We had spent almost a year customizing our new product and migrating data from the previous vendor. One month before go-live, I joined the account as the account owner. The team was small—15-20 people—comprising 6-7 developers, 4 testers, 2-3 operations folks, and 2 DBAs.
In the first month, I focused on understanding the technical and business details while UAT testing was ongoing. The project went live, but the outcome wasn’t great. 🚨
💡 The Reality:
📊 Expected SLA: 99% of transactions should be processed within T+1 days.
⚠️ Actual performance: 60-65%.
⏳ Backlog: 1 month.
The first month, the customer was silent, assuming it was just initial hiccups. But by the second month, things still weren’t stable, and patience started to run thin. The issue was escalated to the customer CEO level, and when that happens, the stakes are high. Time is limited. It’s make or break.
A Few Key Challenges
👩💻 Out of 6-7 developers, only 1 had 10+ years of experience. The rest were juniors with 2-3 years of experience.
🚨 To make things worse, the senior developer and a couple of juniors left post-go-live, leaving us with mostly junior developers who lacked a holistic understanding of the system, especially with financial transactions.
The Sr. VP Meeting
🗣️ The Sr. VP of the department called us for a meeting. Me, my CEO, CTO, and COO all went in. The message was clear: Fix it within 2 months, or we cancel the contract and roll it back to the previous vendor.
After the meeting, I’ll never forget the conversation at Starbucks. ☕
Our CEO turned to the CTO, COO, and me and asked, “Guys, it’s time for you to prove your worth. Tell me how we get out of this situation.”
After a long pause, I said, “We don’t have anyone who understands the product inside and out. Someone needs to get into the code, understand the core issues, and fix them. That’s the only way out.”
Then came the next question: Who’s going to do this?
I said, “I can do this, but I need someone to manage the customer. I can’t handle both—customer and code.”
💡 My CTO agreed to take over the customer side as the account owner, and I moved to the code.
The Fixing Begins
💻 I dove into the code, identifying the major bugs that were affecting the system. It wasn’t easy—there was a lot to tackle, and the time was limited. But I didn’t focus on everything. I prioritized the biggest issues.
🚀 After a month of focused work, we managed to fix a few top issues. The SLA improved from 60-65% to 85%. The customer was slightly more positive, but the problem wasn’t solved. There was still a long way to go, but we were on the right path.
What’s Next?
📅 The journey doesn’t end here. Stay tuned.
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