Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 15Development of line interface at subsidiary (1999)
These contents translated a serialization article carried by ITPro IP telephony ONLINE published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Jump to the original (Japanese).
Shinji Usuba
General Manager
eSound Venture Unit
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd
IP telephony was beyond common sense 10 years ago. The experience during the development stage of VoIP, from the activities involving handling of voice over LAN to the commercialization of VoIP gateway, was described in the previous series. In this series, the innovative changes up to the acquisition of franchise under the name of "IP telephony" is explained from the viewpoint of a single engineer involved in the product development with faith in the possibilities of VoIP.
After making sure that the first VoIP gateway product for Europe was completed, I was assigned to an affiliated company of OKI in May 1999. At the time, OKI was in charge of product concepts and basic designs of new products and the affiliated company was in charge of detailed designs and application designs of products completed with basic designs. In other words, developments involving relatively new technologies were conducted by OKI and near-end designs and verifications were made by the affiliated company. Although developments were close to products, I was still disappointed since I felt distant from the development of the latest technologies.
My role at the affiliated company
Photo 1 : Developed line unit
I was assigned two roles at the affiliated company. One was the maintenance design of small and medium capacity PBX products. The other was the development management of component parts for IP-PBX line units (hereafter "LU") developed by OKI at the time (photo 1).
The former involved model transfer of a PBX that was developed in 1998 called CTiOX to the affiliated company along with an associate that had been transferred at the same time as me. The latter line units accommodate a line interface existing on past PBX (interface for conventional analog telephones and station line trunks, which some rudely refer to as legacy units). The units were developed mainly by OKI and were then consigned to the affiliated company. VoIP-LSI as the core of the unit was developed at OKI and application development was conducted at the affiliated company based on this VoIP-LSI.
Although I missed not being a part of the latest product development, there was another part of me that needed a break from all of the madness since 1995. At OKI, there is a system called a refreshment vacation and the thought of taking a vacation did enter my mind. But this small expectation was marvelously betrayed. I experienced something like no other in my entire history of development.
At the time, Sub-Team Leader Koji Kondo was in charge of organizing LU development. His tanned face left quite an impression when I first met him, but I also noticed something else. For some reason, his eyes almost looked sad. The reason became clear during my welcoming party in a conversation between the Department Manager, my supervisor at the affiliated company, and Koji.
The troubles of LU development
At the time, there were doubts inside the company concerning full commercialization of IP-PBX due to the technical difficulties. Persons responsible for development do not accept work in case commercialization of the product within the set deadline cannot be met or the quality cannot be guaranteed. Delay in delivery or quality issues will lead to the loss of trust from customers, let alone inconvenience to the Sales Department. In such cases, the period and method of commercialization are reviewed and a substitute plan for development that can be handled responsibly is created.
This is the stance necessary for the development administrator holding responsibility of QCD (Quality/Cost/Delivery), and accepting work haphazardly is simply irresponsible. The development of the line unit was an extremely risky development project since the critical VoIP-LSI component was not completed yet. To my surprise, I discovered that Koji was organizing the development under the guidance of the Department Manager since there was no team leader that would accept the job. I thought to myself, what did I get myself into?
Decision to become the LU development lead
But things were not all bad. Many of the engineers were young and motivated. There were 12 members in the team and half of them had been with the company for less than three years. Although it was my first time working with most of them, the workplace was filled with positive energy. Despite the lack of experience as a downside, their will to work was assuring. I also agreed to the Department Manager's belief of training new recruits with hands-on experience. In my past experiences, I have learned that in the end, the passion and motivation of the members, and the will to achieve something regardless of one's skills are the most important.
I communicated constantly with the members of the development team. My philosophy is that you must first gain understanding of the others before you can set a capable goal in order to produce results within a limited time. You must work from an equal perspective. If you look from the viewpoint of a supervisor, there is no output toward the expectations. If you look from the viewpoint of a subordinate, you are caught in a dilemma of results not being approved no matter how hard you try.
I myself experienced efforts not bearing fruit and I have seen the same occur to many others. And I wanted to avoid such a needless situation. Although I may not completely understand the feelings of members, I decided to thoroughly communicate with them. I especially remember talking with Koji during late hours, sometimes lasting until dawn.
The reaction I felt was assuring that despite the difficulties, these members could accomplish the goal. The main reason was the positive attitude of the team toward work and the feelings of unity. As issues of IP-PBX, I believed the LU accommodating conventional line interface was technically the most difficult though there still was the development of component parts such as the CCU, LSW and IP-TEL. I was stimulated by the challenge of this technical difficulty. That was when I decided to take the lead for the LU development of IP-PBX.
... To be continued
