Leadership review
Farooq Zevqarth
Chief Information Officer · India
Highlights
34 years
Information career
June 1992–October 2026; fictional continuous appointments
38 colleagues
Technology function
Five leads; nine external specialists counted separately
₹5.6 crore
Annual technology operations
Separate ₹2.4 crore approved change programme
7 plants
Enterprise service portfolio
31 MW thermal cooling capacity; engineering outside CIO authority
A letter from Farooq Zevqarth
I want a digital service to preserve the business decision it carries. A receipt should not become a commitment because a screen uses a reassuring word. A source archive should not become a usable handover because the files are present. Our technology function has to understand what a colleague or customer will rely on before declaring the service complete.
I grew up in Bhopal and studied computer science because I liked the discipline of making a process explicit enough for someone else to follow. I completed the degree in May 1992 at the fictional Vezqarmi Institute of Technology and began work in June. Over thirty-four years, the question has changed from whether an application follows its specification to whether that specification preserves the decision the business believes it is making. A correctly processed event can still carry the wrong meaning for the person who receives it.
Farooq Zevqarth
Chief Information Officer
Strategic priorities
01
02
03
04
Performance
Priority outcome 01
In 2018, while leading enterprise platforms, I approved a customer-request interface that displayed confirmed when a submission reached the system. The technical acknowledgement was dependable, and the programme wanted customers to receive an immediate answer. Harish Deqvarti asked whether the word would be read as acceptance of the requested cooling service. I relied too much on the internal understanding that commercial and operating decisions followed separately. The customer did not necessarily share that understanding. A review of ninety-six requests found seventy-four with the required business acceptance and twenty-two without it. The system had received all ninety-six, but receipt and acceptance were different events. I recommended correcting the status account and funding ₹46 lakh of response and redesign. The customer-service sponsor worried that a more qualified answer would feel slower and less helpful. I agreed that the service should be clear and timely, but it could not acquire authority by choosing a more reassuring word. The revised account stated receipt, the pending business decision and the responsible next step separately. Qualified customer, legal and operating owners reviewed the implications of the earlier messages and the actual circumstances of each affected request. My team supplied the record and corrected the interface; it did not decide contractual consequences or engineering feasibility. Fourteen of the twenty-two later received acceptance, five were declined and three remained pending. The cohort therefore ended the review with eighty-eight accepted requests, five declined and three open. Those dispositions did not establish that cooling had been delivered or that every consequence of the original message had been settled. The repair required additional work and a less effortless customer answer. I retained my responsibility for approving the initial specification rather than describe the issue as a wording mistake made elsewhere. Next time I would ask the authorised business owners and representative customers what each status permits them to infer before approving it. An application can perform its specified task correctly while the specification gives the recipient a promise the enterprise has not made.
Priority outcome 02
A 2022 review examined a contractual source-deposit arrangement for five enterprise service components maintained by a supplier. The programme had treated the existence of deposited files as a practical route to maintain the service if the relationship changed. The archive was present. A controlled examination by authorised technical colleagues could reproduce three components under the stated conditions, while two depended on external services, build material or rights that the archive alone did not establish. Possession of source was not the same as a complete maintenance capability. Procurement wanted to close the review because the supplier had delivered the agreed deposit and additional work would prolong a difficult negotiation. I asked the commercial and legal owners to examine the actual rights and obligations while the technology team demonstrated the proposed use. We did not assume that a failed reproduction proved breach or that the company was entitled to every external dependency. The question was whether the continuity proposition management believed it had acquired was supported by the arrangement in place. We retained a ₹1.1 crore review and transition programme and approved ₹24 lakh for six months of continuing supplier support while the two unresolved components were examined. The three reproducible components remained useful evidence within the test conditions; they did not prove that the whole service could operate independently at production scale. The unresolved components stayed inside the management account, with technical, commercial and legal owners for the next decisions. No supplier exit or independent operating capability was announced as complete. The choice gave up a convenient closure statement and added overlap expenditure. It also exposed work that would otherwise have been discovered only when the supposed fallback was needed. I would test the intended maintenance route while negotiating the original arrangement, using a representative exercise with the responsible owners. A deposit can be valuable, but its value depends on the use the company is entitled and able to make of it. The evidence should describe that use, rather than let the existence of an archive stand in for an assurance nobody has demonstrated.
Priority outcome 03
Before a wider customer-portal release in 2023, twelve invited representatives examined six defined tasks each, giving seventy-two task attempts. The review included different ways of navigating and reading the service, including keyboard use and enlarged display. Fifty-four attempts completed as intended and eighteen did not. The supplier demonstration had looked straightforward, but it was performed by someone familiar with the application. It had not established that the intended users could reliably complete the same work. The programme sponsor wanted to release with a help page and address the findings later. Customer-service colleagues were concerned that people would have to seek assistance for tasks the portal was being promoted as making simpler. I supported a ₹34 lakh programme of design, implementation and repeat review before broadening the release. Qualified design and accessibility specialists examined the barriers; the CIO's role was to keep their findings in the release decision, not to issue a legal or universal accessibility certification. A repeated examination of the same defined task set recorded sixty-eight completions and four unsuccessful attempts. We retained those four and an assisted service route instead of announcing that the portal now worked for everyone. The result described this bounded review, not every customer, device or future version. The twelve representatives were not treated as a complete population, and the improvement was not converted into a quantified reduction in support cost or an assumed increase in customer satisfaction. The release took longer and required continuing support alongside the digital route. The sponsor had to explain why the improved result still carried unfinished work. I considered that more credible than treating the help page as a substitute for examining whether the task could be completed. I would include representative task review before a polished demonstration fixes expectations about readiness. A customer service is not complete merely because its designer can move through it fluently; management needs evidence about the people expected to rely on it and a responsible arrangement for the gaps that remain.
Priority outcome 04
A 2024 enterprise-platform consolidation proposed changing eighteen scheduled finance and management-reporting jobs during the March closing period. The technology team had completed its planned checks. Finance identified a different dependency: the same people and records were needed for closing activities, and the proposed transition could consume six working days of attention and reconciliation at the point they had least capacity to absorb it. The release date had been treated as a technology milestone before the business calendar had been fully examined. The programme lead argued that postponement would extend the old arrangement and undermine the date already communicated. I accepted that cost but asked for a joint account of which jobs could move and when the receiving owners could validate their work. We delayed the main transition by five weeks and approved ₹47 lakh of bounded overlap and support. That amount was additional programme expenditure, not a claim that the delay had prevented a quantified financial loss or changed the company's reporting obligations. Fourteen jobs later moved through the agreed examination and were accepted by the responsible business owners. Four remained on the previous arrangement because their dependencies required more work. The final account kept fourteen and four separate; the programme did not describe all eighteen as completed merely because the main release had occurred. Plant-control systems and cooling operations were outside this enterprise consolidation. Finance retained responsibility for its closing account, while my team remained accountable for the technology transition and the evidence supporting acceptance. The consequence was a less tidy programme timetable, extra cost and an unfinished group of jobs with named owners. It was preferable to declaring technical readiness sufficient and transferring the reconciliation burden to colleagues already carrying a critical business period. I would bring the receiving team's calendar into the first release plan rather than ask it to accommodate a date after the technical work is complete. A deployment can be ready in one account and still be badly timed for the enterprise that has to use it.
Priority outcome 05
In 2025 we planned to retire an older enterprise interface used by twenty-four customer organisations for service notices and request-status exchange. It did not control chillers or operating equipment. The initial plan relied on a published retirement date and messages sent to customer contacts. I asked for evidence that each organisation had a workable transition route, because successful delivery of a notice did not establish that its receiving team understood the change or could complete the work in time. The platform sponsor wanted to stop supporting the old interface on the announced date and argued that customers had been given sufficient notice. Customer-service colleagues identified a more varied position. Sixteen organisations had completed the agreed verification, five had scheduled transition work and three still lacked a dependable plan in our account. The latter group was not automatically described as refusing to cooperate; the unresolved circumstances needed individual follow-up. Commercial owners reviewed the relevant commitments rather than let the technology timetable decide them. We approved a twelve-week extension costing ₹62 lakh for the defined older route and support work. The sixteen verified organisations could proceed under their agreed arrangements. The remaining eight stayed visible as unfinished transitions, with five scheduled and three without a dependable plan at that review point. We did not claim that the extension itself completed their work or that every old interface would be retained indefinitely. A further retirement decision required current evidence and the appropriate business approval. The extension added cost and reduced the simplicity of the platform story. It also stopped a notice-sending metric from standing in for customer readiness. The lesson was to establish the evidence required for retirement when the change is first proposed, including who owns unresolved cases and how the commercial account will be examined. An enterprise can reasonably need to retire an older service, but the practical and contractual path to doing so should be explicit. Our technology function should not declare the transition finished by moving the unfinished part outside its own system boundary.
Stakeholder voices
In this fictional account, Farooq made the continuing dependency in the source-deposit proposal visible. He brought the support cost and unfinished components into the decision instead of letting possession of an archive imply independent capability.
This demonstration quote reflects my operating relationship with Farooq. He acknowledged his approval of the request-confirmation wording and kept cooling commitments with the authorised owners while the customer-system response was corrected.
Outlook
A technically reliable acknowledgement may carry a stronger meaning for its recipient. Enterprise systems need a clear account of the business decision behind each status.
Read the essayPossession of code can be valuable without establishing independent operating capability. A credible supplier arrangement needs evidence about the use the company expects to make of the deposit.
Read the essayThe end of a service has a receiving side. A retirement decision should account for the organisations still relying on it, their alternatives and the cost of a bounded extension.
Read the essayAn invitation
Selected enterprise-information discussions and a possible first outside contribution, subject to preparation, current employment and relationship review.
office@farooqzevqarth.example