Meet Nilamadhab — One Who Owns His Work!

Hey! Welcome to Zeta Scoops, an infinite-part series on the lives and times of Zetanauts who are modernizing banking technology globally.

In this edition of Zeta Scoops, we feature Nilamadhab Purohit , an Implementation Analyst in the Onboarding team, who took complete ownership & delivered a key product feature in record time.

Would you use a credit card service that sends you timely email reminders about your credit card bills, or would you opt for one that doesn’t? It’s a no-brainer that you’d go for the former. These emails are a crucial part of a credit card service — they ensure you don’t default on your payments because you forgot the due date and keep your CIBIL score healthy.

It is a crucial CRUCIAL aspect if a bank offers a Credit card service. So, when our client wanted to provide credit card services to its customers, it was natural that this feature was a part of the package.

A Fun Detour

Before moving forward, knowing how these emails are generated is important. There’s an intricate infrastructure that sustains credit card services. This infrastructure has several nodes working together to create banking experiences for you.

A Report Centre — a node in this infrastructure — creates a list of names, along with their respective emails, of folks who, for example, are delayed in making their credit payments. A different node in the infrastructure extracts these names and details, collates them into a properly structured email, and shoots it to everyone on the list.

These different nodes perform functions based on the scripts they are fed. A node with the script written for the “Username Change” function will perform its assigned operation only. Similarly, different nodes perform operations that are fed through their respective scripts. Most importantly, these scripts are written using Java(Java Script) for security and performance.

Back on Track

The DevOps (Developer Operations) team usually creates and ships the email reminder service, but this time, the feature was to be built by the Client Onboarding Team.

A comprehensive knowledge transfer kit was given to the onboarding team to help them navigate the building journey. The time allotted for this process was 20 odd days — a reasonably comfortable timeline. However, Nilmadhab felt this task could be completed well before the deadline.

Bit More That He Can Chew?

The one thing you should know about Nilamadhab — and, by extension, everyone at Zeta — is that he isn’t a fan of outstretched processes. If there is a chance of reducing time without compromising security and quality, that target is getting chased down.

Nilamadhab, hereon referred to as Nil because “it sounds cooler,” according to the man himself, took it upon himself to single-handedly ship this feature in less time than needed. Nil believed that the time allotted to the project could be reduced, thereby reducing the overall shipment time.

But the task at hand was difficult because:

1. Nil had never done this before!
2. The Knowledge Transfer kit the developer’s team gave was vast and comprehensive. Three sessions, about 2 hours each, would delve into different aspects and formats of document creation, such as data arrangement, data points, document formats, etc.
3. Nil wasn’t proficient in Java. He must learn to write Java scripts because that’s the infrastructure language.

The team leader considered giving the task to someone adept in Java, but Nil’s enthusiasm won him a shot.

Cracking this problem would require immaculate time management, understanding the Knowledge Transfer kit, and long hours of practice to perfect writing Java scripts.

The Plan & How It Fell Apart

Nil successfully divided his working hours to dedicate enough time to his day-to-day work and commit sufficient time to complete the Knowledge Kit. He decided to start his day by spending a few hours on the kit and end it with a few hours on the same again. What seemed like a straightforward solution was riddled with difficulties.

Nil needed to learn Java to practice writing scripts, which would take longer. Going through each session and practising what he learned would take 7–8 hours on average.

This wasn’t ideal for Nil because he believed reducing the delivery time was possible without having it spill into the night. This was, in a way, beating Nil’s mission, “If I am working for 18 hours a day, I cannot say that I finished a two-day task in one day,” says Nil. “The task took two days because the overall working time was not reduced.”

Nil was acutely aware of this situation. Nil found himself wondering if he had bitten more than he could chew.

The Comeback

With difficulty comes innovation. Nil sought to solve his problems with clever tweaks and better time management. Nil sought help from one of his developer friends. Nil would practice writing scripts on Java, and instead of spending time checking it himself, he would request his friend to do a check and point out his mistake. This significantly decreased his time on each learning module, but the overall time spent was still significant.

Being aware of the benefits at Zeta, Nil used the Continuous Learning Policy to enroll himself in a Udemy course and gave his Java learning journey a shot in the arm. He would spend an hour every morning learning Java and applying what he learned to his job.

“I followed that famous maxim: work smart.” reminisces Nil, “I had a mission, and I wanted to find the most effective and efficient way to reach my goal.”

With time, time reduced. After only a week, Nil could finish the Knowledge module within 4 hours — about 2 hours of learning and 2 hours of practising.

Once fluent and confident in writing scripts in Java, Nil wrote the scripts used to create email letters. The node responsible for extracting data from the Report Centre and sending it to the customers was ready to be shipped in 10 days — 50% faster than expected. The Quality Check guys approved the scripts and cleared the UAT (User Acceptance Test) in one go!

This story is not about providing a feature before the deadline but creating a habit to move faster, quicker, and more intelligently. Nil embodies Zeta’s ethos of continuous improvement and learning.

—

#WeAreZetanauts, and we’re always looking for folks to join us on our mission to build the next-gen banking tech. Click here to check out exciting career opportunities with Zeta.