My interactions with my nephew have provoked thoughts of wisdom on many occasions. One such occasion happened recently. If you were an Indian you would know about the Indian roads and what it takes to cross the roads. There is only one thing Indian road users believe in. More than God, they have the break! This same belief is what enables people to cross roads; because the minds have to work instinctively and real time.

My nephew who is ten years old has started to help his mom to get groceries and stuff all by himself. The last time when I was with him over the weekend he was going to buy groceries from shop. I asked him how you will cross the main road (that always has high traffic with town buses and trucks driving as though they are part of F1 race). He said I use a strategy. I asked him what that is. He said there is always one or more who cross the road. He said he will just walk along with them. I smiled and then he thought for a moment and asked this question, “What if others wait for someone to start crossing?” I smiled and told him if you take the first step, then you are leading and the rest follow you. It stuck me after I said that, probably that’s the only difference between a leader and a follower. A leader is confident of when to take the right step forward and the followers believe in the leader and follow the steps of the leader.

Read my other Foundation Stone posts.

Everyone knows in this industry you are in a rat race. The more you are ahead in the race the more you are wanted and the lesser you are a commodity. Even if you are not ahead in the race it is important you are still in the race. If you are new to the industry then obviously you have to start running and you will be in the back. But it is important to keep running. I was inspired by a TV talk show where a wise man told a joke and explained the inner meaning of the joke.

There was a marathon going on and there were people watching it. A villager who didn’t know about the Marathon asked a person watching the Race.

“Why are these people running?”

The person replied “The first person who reaches the target destination will get a prize”

The villager then asked, “Then why are others behind him running?”

The question the villager asked is thought provoking. Why should others keep running? - For several reasons. The person who is running ahead could slow down because he has lost his energy, or the people following could gain more speed and could come ahead. The point is nobody stops running just because someone is ahead. The hope and the confidence that you can make it to the top list is what keeps everyone running. Also in a marathon, you look upon who is running ahead of you and you are not bothered about who is following you. Set your target with someone who is ahead of you than trying to compare with people who are behind you. The basic point here is not to stop but keep running. You can be a commodity and running in the rat race but it is better than standing still.
Read other Foundation Stone posts.

If you consider and compare the projects that we execute today vs what was done ten years back, the complexity has become higher both in terms of the problem as well as the solution around it. Partly this complexity attributes to the complexity of the requirements, IT explosion and complex integration needs, and also the frameworks and tools that help in solving today’s problems rapidly but at the cost of certain other factors like huge learning curve, assuming one understands the basics and principles of software engineering, need for rapid application development etc. The root cause in falling systems usually ends up with a crack in the wall, something obvious and simple thoroughly overseen and attention given to something else. Here is a short and humorous dialogue between Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson that is an analogy to the above.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went camping. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they lay down in their tent and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged Watson awake

“Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “What does that tell you?” Holmes questioned.

Watson pondered a while.

“Astronomically, it tells me that here are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.”
“Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.”
“Chronologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.”
“Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant.”
“Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.”
“What does it tell you?”

Holmes was silent for a minute, and then spoke.

“Watson, you ass. Someone has stolen our tent!”

Have a great week

A river when it is a river is never stagnant. It keeps flowing. Until it reaches a pool or a greater river which then flows and reaches the ocean. A river flows until it reaches a point where water is stagnant. The definition of stagnant as I search, gives me,

• dead(a): not circulating or flowing; “dead air”; “dead water”; “stagnant water”
• not growing or changing; without force or vitality

If you look at it from a career perspective, it is easy to get into being stagnant. One doesn’t need to do anything beyond what he is expected. The person will be in the flow but at a point will become stagnant, in more business terms a commodity. You are no more worth than millions of others who are in the pool. Standing out or being uniquely recognized and becoming successful is to swim against the commodity pool. As you keep moving against, you will raise to a lesser commodity pool.

Taking the same analogy of a river, if I have to take the example of river Ganges, it has many tributaries flowing through many cities North East India until it reaches the Ganges Delta and flows into the Bay of Bengal, north eastern part of the Indian Ocean. But the source of Ganges is a 19 mile stretch glacier in the Himalayas called the Gangotri glacier. The origin of yet another major river in India called Cauvery is Talakavery, which is a spring. The source of any river is unique and distinct.

To reach success and growth in career is to swim against the current, to constantly grow and change and not be stagnant. Growth is not possible until one exerts additional effort to do things beyond what is expected. When one tries to do things beyond what is expected, there will be hurdles and blocks as in the current that pushes the water in the river. Sure, swimming against the current is difficult, but when you make it you get towards a point, a unique identity and are in a pool of lesser commodity.

So what did you do/learn beyond what is expected out of you?

“Walk that extra mile” - often we have heard this phrase to emphasize that it is not enough to do something just enough, but go one step farther. The context is generic, doesn’t matter which field, the difference between being good and being great is the extra mile. Better said than inspired you say? Watch this movie “212 The Extra Degree” and if you could not resist watching it again and again, join my club. Though what matters most is the action, inspiration is just a trigger.

Thanks to Hari Shetty of Jiffle for pointing this link.

I was invited for a guest lecture to the computer science students of the “Hindustan Institutions“, Coimbatore. The head of computer science department and my friend Rangaraj had been discussing for quite some time about collaborating education institutions with the industry, for the students and teachers to get some perspective of current trends.

The problem that exists today in India is the wide gap in what is taught in colleges (only with respect to computer science related courses) versus what is expected in the software industry. On one side is the outdated syllabus that majority of the subjects are either not being used in the industry or outdated. On the other side is the lack of training, grooming and guiding students on the expected soft skills when they enter the industry. While we could keep complaining about the education system and point finger at the Government, it is not going to solve this problem. We cannot blame the teachers in the colleges as well, because they may not be exposed or aware of the industry needs. The ideal solution is the industry start collaborating with the education institutions. All of us have gone through our system and faced the reality of expectation mismatch when a fresh pass out from college joins a software company.

So my friend and I decided, we would kick start this process and start off an awareness session. So I prepared a mindmap on points that students should focus on the technical side as well as from the soft skills side and work towards those points. I also covered some points on preparing for interviews.

In fact this session is an awareness program not just for the students but also for the lecturers. These points are only triggering points and are not solutions. This presentation is a starting point, more of such sort has to happen focusing deeply on each of the points I was mentioning and definitely this industry can help the education institutions to guide and build a better tomorrow for the students as well as the industry.

Click on the photo for a larger image of the mind map. Have a look at some photos taken during the lecture in Flickr.

This post is part of “Foundations” series of posts.

In software architecture, defining and implementing Non Functional Requirements (NFR) impact the degree of satisfaction of the stakeholders of the system. Non functional requirements determine the Quality of Service (QoS) of the system. QoS has a huge impact on the quality of the system in terms of how well the system is able to satisfy the behavior (functional requirements) of the system. To achieve the QoS, the implementation of the NFR depends on how SMART they have been defined, where SMART refers to, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realizable and Traceable requirements.

QoS is not only applicable for architecture but as an individual for all of us. It determines how much of quality of service we provide in what we do. Hence working harder is not enough but working SMART’er is very important. Let’s define SMART in terms of an individual’s quality of service.

• Specific - One should know what are his/her roles and responsibilities clearly. Specific also refers to Scope here. The more you deviate from the scope of work, the more confused you will be and will lead to chaos in planning, prioritizing and executing. Simply put you don’t want to be “Jack of all trades, master of none.”
• Measurable - Completing a work is one aspect. The other aspect is how effectively the work has been completed. That would require defining a quantifiable objective that can be measured in what has been done. This leads to benchmarking yourself and determining where you stand in terms of effectiveness in what you do.
• Attainable - Defining a goal for the task you are performing and making sure that it is achievable is important to confidently proceeding in performing the task. Clearly differentiate between what is possible versus what is not possible. Time, Money and Resources are the three quadrants that play a crucial role in identifying what is possible versus what is not.
• Realizable - This defines what is expected out of what you are doing. Essentially this is the end result of what is being done and what the stakeholders expect out of your work. Remember there cannot be any task or work without stakeholders. Even if you are working on something that you are going to use, you are still a stakeholder and would have expectations. I am sure you would want something best for yourself. So if the stakeholder is someone else they too would want the best outcome.
• Traceable - There is a lesson to learn in everything we do. These lessons build the experience and expertise factor. Tracing back what is done, what went right and what went wrong will result in a collection of what to do’s and what not do’s. Remember making a mistake is OK but repeating it is not OK. A mental imprint of events that affect our emotional mind is there with us throughout our life. But that may not be always the case in the tasks that we do in our career. Hence keeping a document of lessons learnt might be very handy as you move ahead. That could also become a reference for others to use without wasting time going through the same mistakes.

There are some professions where physical effort is more needed than the mental effort. These professions could be more mechanical in nature. In such environments working harder may be sufficient. It is not the same case in software industry where mental effort plays a major role than (almost no) physical effort. While working harder is important, it is just not enough to be successful and to grow. What is needed is to work SMART. So don’t just work hard but work SMART.

This post is part of “Foundations” series of posts.

“Life’s not a spectator sport. If watchin’ is all you’re gonna do… then you’re gonna watch your life go by without ya.”

That was a dialogue by one of the Gorgoyle’s in the movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame“, a Disney classic movie. Everyone is caught up with work, personal work, career work. How often have you said “Time flies by”? How often have you answered the question “What are those initiatives taken by me to go beyond what I am supposed to do?”. If you are unable to list any to that question convincingly, then probably the above dialogue is for you. Start thinking what is that something you can do on your own more than what you are currently doing. It could be as simple as learning something new, creating a tool that would automate some manual work in your organization etc. These are small things that provide you that competitive edge over anyone else who just stick to what has been assigned to them. Think about this. If you are applying for a job, what are those significant value adds you have that you can talk about beyond your experience and projects. In this fast paced world, what the industry needs are people who can take the driving seat than just take the ride. If you are always a spectator, then you will see your life go by without you very soon.

PS :- This post is part of the Foundations series.