I had an Audit to my work scheduled for entire day. As we all know audit is on activity which is quite exciting for the guys who audit and pain in the neck for the Auditee. I was quite tense because irrespective of my focus to do the things right, I come across lot of arguments with my internal auditors more than the external teams. Last time, my customer of the Offshore Development Center (ODC) asked me to share the entire Network diagram to improve the access from our ODC to do a deepdive and improve the speed of access and work from ODC. There were challenges in the speed and the customer was facing issues in getting the deliverables fast. At the same time, the network was owned by the Customer and hence we didnt have freedom to explore and area of improvement. Customer had no choice but to do on own for the rectification. We wanted to share the network diagram but my internal process administrator asked me to share the diagram with password Protection. He however clearly communicated that I cant share the password. Surprised and I asked about what is the reason for not sharing the password to view the Network diagram owned by the recipient, he replied in a brief and caustic reply "As per Policy". I was just furious and requested on how can i than share the details of ODC network. He was very calm and replied "It is your issue, Process Administrator is not bound to respond on Business activities". Please dont ask me on how I managed but it was quite challenging because I needed to manage the Customer's Fury while we had to meet the "Policy".
By the time I reached office, I found Sikhandi seriously reviewing the Invoicing Process. The set of data that he was checking was Invoice Line Items for a big Invoice in a spread sheet. Sikhandi was doing something with his calculator. I asked him "Good Morning Mr. Sikhandi, can I know what are you verifying?'
' I am checking whether the totals are correctly done by your team' Sikhandi replied.
"the sheet is password Protected and all calculated cells of the spreadsheet are locked. I can explain about how we protected the data and made sure only calculated amounts are populated by the tool'
'But Mr Khaderao, I need to check whether you are doing right or wrong'
"Agreed. Can I show the famulas we applied and the protections we made?'
'I already checked.'
'than what are you checking now? I am checking if the totals are correct or not'
Than I found that Sikhandi is entering each amount of the Invoice line and calculating the sum of Invoice Amounts to make sure Excel did the sum correctly or not. Great. this is quite Process Oriented approach! Checking whether Excel is doing the Sum right or wrong????
While I was wondering about what to say, Sikhandi's assistant Kripakar came and said 'I found there are too many guys having admin rights in your team. We will stop giving the Admin rights from now'
I replied to him "there is a reason on why we are requesting for admin rights to some of the team members it is not even more than 1%".
'But the people with admin rights will install unauthorized software, can enable the USB drives and streal the data .....'
"Dear Kripakar, we know this. But the guys to whom we provide the rights are quite responsible. '
'No, Any slippage can happen by any one'
"Sorry Sikhandi and Kripakar, it is like switching off electricity because people can die of electric shock. Many times we need to respond to the speed expected by the Customer and these previleges are quite critical to act fast in certain development projects"
Sikhandi interfered 'how can you ensure these guys dont do anything wrong?'
I sighed with relief. For a change Sikhandi came to the right point.
'Dear Sikandi, this is exactly the point I also want to discuss. Let the guys have the privileges based on the justification provided. But let the IT team monitor what are they doing. I am sure the IT guys should have the intelligence and tools to track the desktops of my team. even if there is one slippage, I will sack them'
'that puts lot of work for my team'
'That must be fine mr. Sikhandi. Denying these previleges will increase the work for more than 100 people in my team if they need to go through your team to run the routines, installations and what not. it is work for your team and my team with lot of delays. My proposal will ensure the guys will do the right work in short time and if they do wrong your team is there is alert and take action'
Disclaimer: I have been writing the blogs in the style of story telling based on real incidents but with some fiction added to emphasize the message. Hence I request not to make any conclusions to derive facts based on the posts in these articles
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