Innovation happens in the Indian Government despite huge hurdles.
This app was developed by a team that does not have product managers, project managers, a UI/UX team, testers, build managers, a DevOps team, or even a proper requirement specifications document. It just has software engineers and managers in the team. At the Railways, a software engineer is a Swiss army knife who does everything from documentation to development to testing.
And now they are handling customer support also.
Embedded within the various comment threads are responses by engineers I've known for over a dozen years. Good dedicated individuals who learn things on the job. No, Railways does not believe in giving professional training to its employees. Heck, they don't even reimburse travel properly when sending employees on official travel.
It is heartening to see people who you've known for a long time, working as entrepreneurs - building new products on new technologies, end to end. Hustling is the word used in startup speak. At the same time, it is very disappointing. A run-of-the-mill delivery app with less than a thousand active users has 10x the skills and resources available to it than people who build sarkari technology that is used by millions. If the government were to outsource this work, it would spend crores of rupees on it. Yet, when it does this work itself, it can't even be bothered to hire proper customer support. In fact, even when the Ministry replies itself, I know very well who exactly it will call up within the engineering team to actually give the answers.
The railways is promoting this app in a big way. On stations across the country, kiosks are being put up and passengers accosted to install the app. But behind the scenes, I am sure that not a single new hire would have been made. Not even for tech support.
This app was developed by a team that does not have product managers, project managers, a UI/UX team, testers, build managers, a DevOps team, or even a proper requirement specifications document. It just has software engineers and managers in the team. At the Railways, a software engineer is a Swiss army knife who does everything from documentation to development to testing.
And now they are handling customer support also.
Embedded within the various comment threads are responses by engineers I've known for over a dozen years. Good dedicated individuals who learn things on the job. No, Railways does not believe in giving professional training to its employees. Heck, they don't even reimburse travel properly when sending employees on official travel.
It is heartening to see people who you've known for a long time, working as entrepreneurs - building new products on new technologies, end to end. Hustling is the word used in startup speak. At the same time, it is very disappointing. A run-of-the-mill delivery app with less than a thousand active users has 10x the skills and resources available to it than people who build sarkari technology that is used by millions. If the government were to outsource this work, it would spend crores of rupees on it. Yet, when it does this work itself, it can't even be bothered to hire proper customer support. In fact, even when the Ministry replies itself, I know very well who exactly it will call up within the engineering team to actually give the answers.
The railways is promoting this app in a big way. On stations across the country, kiosks are being put up and passengers accosted to install the app. But behind the scenes, I am sure that not a single new hire would have been made. Not even for tech support.