Zakro deserved his nickname because he constantly used incorrect, misspelled form of his name in documentation and in e-mails. Zakro's dyslexic writing style was only one of the factors that contributed to the general impression of his "competence" and "professionalism". Not only was he misspelling his name, but he also was doing the same with his job description. When writing to Dembelian clients, he described himself as maNNager of Dodoni computing.

Profile of mannager of champions

Zakro graduated in political science and at the beginning of this legend he was between 35 and 40 years old. On many occasions he used to say that during his career he managed hundreds of software projects, so he considered himself an experienced project manager. The only problem was that he couldn't convince anybody to buy that story. Each new employee in Dodoni computing was sooner or later faced with dilemma: "What is Zakro's role here?" Because he was the only person who didn't write a code, everybody expected him to act as a real program manager and to organize development process. The former Dodoni employee Senka Lukavich, when asked the same questions by her friends, answered the following: "Well, you can't say that Zakro is doing nothing. For instance, he reads newspapers on the toilet for at least half an hour. Good manager must always be informed of new events and facts. Also, he has some entrepreneurial skills. For instance, he uses company CD burner to copy and sell warez to his private customers, mostly students. The rest of the time he surfs the Internet, sometimes asks people about the status of the projects, goes out to buy supplies (coffee, toilet paper) and that's all. Sometimes he writes documentation but he is very thorough in that, you won't see him writing more than two pages a day. Many times he leaves before 4 o'clock - he knows that everything goes smoothly so why should he bore himself waiting the official end of the working day?".

The big question: Is Erich completely blind?

After the newcomer learned the real truth about Zakro, he immediately asked himself: "Can't Erich see how incompetent Zakro is? How can he tolerate to have such a parasite for a manager? Isn't it obvious to him that projects fail and that he looses profit and staff mostly because of Zakro's incompetence?" Well, almost all employees in Dodoni tried to find answers to these questions but nobody succeeded in such an attempt, at least not to our knowledge.

One of the theories why Erich was not seeing the real Zakro said that it was because the champion mannager was very witty and successful in hiding his inefficiencies. Demagogy, politics and unscrupulous lying were the only skills Zakro got from those "hundred projects" he allegedly managed. If project went well, he would take all the credit for it. He didn't hesitate to copy documents from other developers and present them as his own or to say "I managed the project" when all the hard work was done by somebody else. On the other hand, if something went wrong, he blamed programmers, not himself. Taking responsibilities and learning on mistakes is not a virtue of real politician, and Zakro was really one of them.

"Brilliant" analyst and telepath

One of the fields in software engineering he thought he knew something about was requirements analysis. We could fill many pages by talking about the projects where requirement analysis was done by Zakro and where it resulted in many lost hours of programming, because he completely missed the point. One of his most annoying habits was that he had never asked the client for requirements he didn't understand. He thought that it would be embarrassing to show that he didn't understand something, because the client would think he was a poor analyst. He also didn't want to upset Erich whose policy was "Do not ask clients for each detail you don't understand". So Zakro introduced a new discipline in requirement analysis - telepathy. If you don't understand some requirement, instead of asking the client, try to guess what client really meant when he said or wrote that requirement. If at the end of the development it turns out that your guess was completely wrong, then blame stupid developers for not doing the job right, not yourself.

On rare occasions, when he took the courage or when his telepathic powers were too weak to read client's mind, he returned to classic discipline and wrote mail or used the phone to clear up the problematic requirement. Unfortunately, his mails were written in such a poor English that it would take hours to decipher the real meaning of the text. Good for him that some of the clients also used the same sloppy, pidgin English, so surprisingly they could understand the writer's intention.

Soul mates

Another popular theory about Zakro's success in Dodoni said that in fact Zakro was not so clever as he seemed, but rather Erich was so naive and stupid that he believed every word Zakro said. Many Dodoni employees, including Bojan, believed in that theory and hoped they would be there long enough to expose Zakro and prove to Erich how incompetent his manager was. After many conversations he had with Erich on the subject and after even subtler hints he gave him about Zakro's competence, Bojan finally gave up because it was obvious that Erich wouldn't take a bait. It was obvious that there was something more between them than just a pure owner-manager relationship, because every other person in Erich's position would fire Zakro long time ago.

What was the reason for Erich's tolerance? Were he and Zakro connected by some bonds of non-business nature? Or, maybe Erich owed Zakro a big favour? - these were the questions Bojan and other employees asked themselves but they've never found an answer. If they had Zakro's telepathic skills, they probably would. Anyway, to many of them who escaped from Dodoni it didn't matter any more, however even today it would be very interesting to know the real answer.