Rolling Rocks Downhill - Chapter Two

(chapter 1, table of contents, chapter 3)

I made my way to my office in Wyx-Fin's HQ, just off the Watt Bridge High Street. It was 6:05 a.m. when I sat down, and as predicted, the floor was empty and would be for most likely another hour.

My office sat in the prestigious sea-facing corner of the building. But since my department was relegated to the sixth floor, my sea view was blocked by a thoughtlessly placed parking garage. I docked my laptop, switched it on, and started to wrap my head around Phil's news while it booted up.

Wyxcomb group had invested heavily in FPP. No one said it out loud, but it was one of those bet-the-farm investments you hear about; it was high risk, but if it paid off it was supposed to save our subsidiary. I wasn't privy to the numbers, but I knew one of our operating assumptions was that we would be first to market and would experience what our CEO called *First Mover Advantage*. So Phil's news was going to upset a lot of people.

I'd start the ball rolling by calling Eleanor Scharlau, our chief financial officer, who would only want to know one thing: Could we match Chaste's April date? I'd say we could, but at a cost. We'd have to slash the product again, refuse all change requests and work more overtime than was healthy. I'd advise against that, of course, and she'd say something about commercial realities forcing unpleasant compromises on us and we'd both end up agreeing we would match the April date, but she'd have to cough up more budget to cover the overtime. She'd then talk to Mark Richmond, chief marketing officer, and together they'd talk with our CEO, Halifax Gibbet, who'd hem and haw for a few days before realizing he had no choice but to inform his masters in Group HQ, in Malm?, Sweden, that we were no longer the only horse in this race. Or something like that.

Before I spoke to Eleanor, though, I needed to get my story straight. I opened FPP's latest status reports and checked that nothing significant had changed while I was in Singapore. I looked first at the internal FPP status report—the one freely available on our internal network to any staff who were interested—and, as I expected, it said the project was progressing on schedule, moving towards an April 1st launch. It described that date as aggressive but achievable, which was our code for *This date isn't really feasible, but we need to keep the pressure on our staff, otherwise they'll slack off*. I then opened the latest management-eyes-only update, which stated we were tracking towards a launch well after April, probably around October or November.

So nothing had changed. April 1st was nine months away, but as the project stood we were predicting we would need at least six months more than that. If we wanted to launch on April 1st for real, then the product needed some serious pruning.

I glanced at my laptop's clock and noted it had switched from Singapore to local time. Normally it would be too early to call anyone, but this phone call was forgivable. I dialed Eleanor.

She answered immediately. "Steven. This is early. What's up?"

When I first started working for Eleanor, we'd quickly come to a working arrangement. First, she told me, I was the computer guy and she was the accountant, so as long as I didn't ask her too much about accounting then she promised not to ask me too much about computers. Second, she liked to manage by exception, so I had a free rein. We'd never discussed the third point, but I'd very quickly figured it out myself: She didn't like people or small talk all that much.

I skipped the small talk and broke Phil's news to her.

"Can we beat them?"

I skipped the negotiation, too. "Yes, I believe so, but it'll be very, very tight. We'll have to make the usual compromises."

"Of course we will," she said, cutting me off and clearly not wanting to hear any details. "Come up and see me sometime ..." she went quiet for a moment, "around noon. That'll give me time to start lowering everyone's expectations."

She hung up, and I opened my calendar and cancelled all of that day's meetings, making room for my attack.