Travelling Again

For the fourth time in last 2 years I find myself yet again in Munich. Though the earlier three trips were a month long each , which in itself I felt was long enough . Tó top it up this time around I have travelled for 3 months..... Earlier the difficult part of the travel used to be the food, even now it's bit of an issue but not that much, as I have got used to it. But then now the most difficult part is to be away from my family.....

I absolutely wonder how expats work abroad away from their near and dear ones, need to take a clue or two from them....

Perception Management

The other day my Boss rightly defined Project Mangement. He said project management now a days is more about perception management. Where in ideally you don't want to brush off anybody the wrong way at the same time you wish to ensure that your issues are reported or highlighted. Indeed a fine line to walk..

Germany Visit

I seem to have got some liking to Germany. Because I have travelled to Europe only twice and both times the only country I visited was Germany. Anyways this visit was a slightly longer one.

I would say I am an naive traveller and at times don't do too much research before visiting a place. Hence I thought of creating this blog post which would shed some light on some things about the place I lived in Munich and Stuttgart. may be it could be of some help for Indians visiting these cities.

Unfortunately I don't get too enticed with sightseeing ( that too alone) so I might not be the person to tell you which are the best places to visit in Munich & Stuttgart.

As far as food is concerned if you are looking for a some Indian restaurant then Rosenheimer Platza is a good place. When you get down at this S Bahn station walk towards Hilton hotel in Munchen (Munich). Then walk further on the road along side Hilton towards Rosenheimer Straße. On this road you would come across three Indian restaurants: Bombay Tandoori, Punjabi .... and Ganesh. I had tried the food at Bombay Tandoori and Punjabi.... I found it to be quite good ( you will have to ask them to make it a bit spicy). But obviously considering it's Indian food in Germany it comes with a price factor.

On the travel front you are somebody travelling from India to Stuttgart then you would have a change over at Frankfurt. In my opinion catching a flight from Frankfurt to Stuttgart won't be a good option. Predominantly because this would be a small flight (domestic), so one might have weight issues. Considering he or she would have carried around 30 kgs owing to the ealrier flight in which they arrived to Frankfurt. So the best option would be take a DB Bahn train. You could book your DB Bahn right from India itself before you start your trip. This could be done using this website http://www.bahn.com/i/view/GBR/en/index.shtml.

Further details to follow, untill then tschüss ....

Touching Video.. Meals Ready

For the ones who have been on the highways in Kerala and some of the highways in Tamil Nadu would have seen this scene in real life as well. Hopefully after seeing this video we would think twice when we come across such a person again..

Organic Veggies @Trivandrum

The other day while we were on our hunting spree (looking or flats), we went to Pothencode, preetty off track from Trivandrum town. Infact the place we went was another 4 kms from Pothencode town.
This place was right close to Shanthigiri Ashramam,.

This is when we accidentally stumbled to an organic vegetable & Fruit outlet. The outlet was run by Shanthgiri Ashramam (AFAIK) and the vegetables were grown in their own farms. To my suprise these organic vegetables were actually much cheaper than the usual ones. Not only that but they extremely jiucy and tasty, be it carrot, pineapple or anything else.

By far the best organic vegetables I have had till date, must place visit to buy vegetables/fruits, though can't be visited regularly owing to the distance from Trivandrum town.

Interesting Facts

Stressed when spelt in reverse is desserts :-)

IT Companies and the Bench

These are overall very testing times which the IT industry albeit the entire industry is facing. I could actually feel this since I am myself working in the industry. Now-a days if you are on bench then that definitely means that you are looked down by the management and the HR personnel. Even for the guys who are on bench it’s a really anxious time. Every atleast 2 to 3 people come to me stating that they are desperately looking for projects and have been in bench for last 2 to 3 months etc. This is in sharp contrast to things as they were about 9 months back wherein we had people who were on bench  for more than a year and yet where not so desperate to get into a project.

Clearly an indication how the industry pendulum has swung in the last half a year or so. Each time something of this kind happens I believe to some extent this is for the benefit of the industry and would help them become more lean and competitive and at times revisit their business model as well. Atleast that was a clear affect of 2008 recession, where in IT companies for the first time were forced to come out of their complacency, it was the first time where in IT companies where forced to look into their bench and see how better the bench could be used.

As it’s known fact India is fast loosing it’s cost advantage thanks to our increasing salary costs and because of other developing economies which have ventured into the market. Hence it’s extremely important that management of these companies start looking at a different business model rather than relying just on outsourcing work, because we are losing ground real fast over there. I always though that a recession or a slow down definitely is an opportunity for lots of companies to rethink their strategy and invest some in unexplored areas, kind of a blue ocean (strategy). But from talking to people in the industry and friends the reaction from the IT companies have been mostly knee jerk. Where in instead of checking out where to invest the bench resources and utilize them best, the attitude mostly has been to do everything possible to reduce the bench strength. The point that we are missing here is that if somebody is on bench that doesn’t mean he is not skilled enough or non-employable. There are bench managers in all of these IT companies, who I think have a very important role in this. Because they have knowledge of the whole spectrum of people available on the bench hence probably they help form a bigger picture. Especially for bigger companies there are so many tools that we use or processes that could be automated that could be done using these bench resources, but then that needs some investment, which in this case could be seen as a sunk cost, since it doesn’t generate a revenue upfront. But in the longer run has the effect of bringing in implicit cost benefits.

These will ideally be a win-win situation for the employee and the employer. Otherwise what’s happening today is that the employees are forced to cross skill or get into projects where in they don’t exactly like or don’t fit in. This might work in the short run, but once the market scenario improves these people would be the first one to look out for opportunities and ofcourse our standing in the market as an employer also takes a beating.

Quick Chocolate Cake Recipe

Well while I was reading a blog last week, it mentioned about a chocolate cake. That led to a temptation in my mind for the same. I ended up Googling a quick microwave chocolate cake (Eggless) recipe.

Came across multiple ones but then decided to stick to one, instead of taking bits and pieces from different recipes. Believe me it was a real quick one, the entire stuff was done and ready in about 15-20 mins.

The ingredients were:

Maida 1 1/2 cup
Sugar powder about 1 cup

Baking powder 1.5 tbsp
Baking soda 1tsp
Milk 1 Cup
Butter
Salt
Dry fruits

In a bowl mix milk and sugar well, add melted butter to that. in a separate bowl mix maida, baking powder, baking soda and salt ( to taste). Mix the earlier milk sugar solution to this. Beat really well, make sure there aren't any lumps. Get a microwave vessel coated with butter and pour the batter into it and add the dry fruits as per liking. Keep this vessel with the batter in the microwave for about five minutes initially. Then pierce a knife and see if nothing sticks to the knife your cake is baked and ready.

Are we (IT in India) on the right track?

Well this post is just about my rumblings from my experience in the IT Industry :-( What makes me feel sorry is that lot of (IT) companies in India prefer to play it safe. In the sense rather than intellectual property they go behind constant flow of revenue. Which basically implies that most of the well established IT companies also don't prefer to risk it out to invest there resources into a product development, rather they would prefer to go in for a service contract with their customers which would atleast ensure them a constant revenue inflow for next few years. Part of this could also be because of the prevailing market uncertainties which is making them act double cautious. Having said that, personally i do believe that we (Indian IT companies) some where in the future would be faced with a situation where in we will have to start investing in developing products rather than just providing services. Because today, thanks to the rising salary costs, India is fast loosing its cost advantage to other competitors like Philipines which are much less costly than us. It would be very interesting to see how Indian human resources are prepared to face this challenge.

Importance of Process: Atul Gawande's Checklist

Atul Gawande works are Harvard Medical School and writes for the New Yorker as well. He is also the author of the famous book " The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right".He quotes umpteen examples where in he empathizes the importance of following a process, doing a thing repeatedly every time in the same manner. He is the surgeon who introduced the concept of checklist in the medical field.

Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty," Gawande says. "It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong." At the heart of Gawande's idea is the notion that doctors are human, and that their profession is like any other. So doctors as well miss stuff. He realized that they could as be inconsistent and unreliable, and in their case it could result extremely dangerous because a life could be at stake. That's when he visited Boeing to see how they make things work, over and over again they fall back on checklist. The pilot's checklist is an important component not only for take off and landing, but also during emergency situations where in they have very little time to take decisions, checklists come in handy.

Atul came up with a very similar 2 min checklist for the medical fraternity. Today it has become a norm for lots of hospitals across the globe. He also quotes statistics which proves the success rate of following a checklist.

The second of the examples notable in his book is that of a patient who came with a stab wound and it wasn't very serious, but his situation detiorated very quickly. "About 10 minutes later, he crashed," Gawande says. "When they got him open they found that the wound had gone — this is a pretty big guy — straight through more than a foot into him, all the way into his back and sliced open his aorta. And so afterwards they asked a few more questions of the family. 'How did this happen?' 'Well, it was a Halloween party.' 'What exactly went on?' And then they learned that the guy who had stabbed him was dressed as a soldier carrying a bayonet. And if they had understood it was a bayonet, they would have thought about it quite differently."Gawande uses this anecdote, a simple miscommunication with the potential to cause so much tragedy.

I just feel both of these examples one emphasizing the use of a Checklist and the other on the prominence on communication applies to any industry at large. Even to our very own IT industry. Where in lot of times there is a strong push to follow the process but there are lots of managers who would resist the implementation of a thing like process or a checklist, they would say they are already doing fine and this is a definite overheard. But statistically there is already enough evidence on the net about the benefits/savings of using a checklist/ following a process.

A part of this resistance is ( as Atul states in his book also) has to do with our unwillingness to accept our weakness, that's human nature. And the second point is we need to accept that we are fallible only then we will be able to adapt to such things.

To wind up, one of the very simple checklist items they had was to have very body in the room made short introductions before the surgery and this brought down the complication and mortality rates by 35%. "Making sure everybody knew each other's name produced what they called an activation phenomenon," Gawande explains. "The person, having gotten a chance to voice their name, let speak in the room — were much more likely to speak up later if they saw a problem."

Quotes..

Quote1: Takes Risks, If you Succeed you will lead. If you Fail you will guide.


Quote2: Great Minds discuss Ideas Average Minds discuss events And Small Minds discuss people. by Eleanor Roosevelt.

SCRUM Productivity Metrics

Sharing a short white paper that I have prepared on individual productivity metrics in a SCRUM project: As Peter Drucker once said “What gets Measured, gets Managed”. It is an old management adage that is accurate even today. Unless we measure something we don't know if it is getting better or worse. You can't manage for improvement if you don't measure to see what is getting better and what isn't. In that pursuit this short write up lists some of the individual performance metrics that could be used in a SCRUM project to identify the kind of performance a team member is putting up and identify areas of improvement and areas where in he or she is performing well. Though it is a known fact that SCRUM in principle gives prominence to teams rather than individuals and sticks to the principle that “You stand as a team, You fall as a team”. But on the contrary if one needs to manage, he needs to know what the weak link in his team is or he should make sure that his team members are improving with every Sprint or he needs to know how he could manage his resources in the SCRUM team, as these individual performances would ultimately stack up to the team performance. Hence Metrics comes in as an inevitable way to achieve this. As in most cases the metrics discussed in this write up as well needs to be measured relatively, vis-à-vis the individual’s earlier performance and/or vis-à-vis overall team performance. Individual Performance Metrics The details of the individual metrics suggested in this write-up are mentioned below: 1. Earned Value (Story Points Completed in Sprint)/(Story Points Estimated for a Sprint) The Story Points committed by a resource in a Sprint would be known mostly by the Sprint Planning meeting and the Story Point completed in the Sprint would be known at the end of the Sprint in the Sprint Review meeting. 2. Efforts per Story Point (Total hours worked in current Sprint by a team member)/( Total Story Points completed in current Sprint by the team member) Ideally as a team member works on more and more Sprints, over a period of time his understanding of the product and the technology used should improve, which in turn means that the effort he used to complete a Story Point should see a declining trend over a period of time. This metric is an indication of the learning curve of the individual resource. 3. Actual Effort/IEH (Actual Effort Spent by the resource in this Sprint)/( Ideal Engineering Hours(IEH) of the resource in the current Sprint) This metric is indicative of the extent to which a resource is occupied. This metrics should ideally be used in conjunction with the earlier metrics. 4. Defects per Story Point (Total number of defects in a Sprint recorded against the stories worked by the team member)/(Total Story Points completed in the current Sprint by the team member) This one is more of an individual quality metrics than a productivity metrics. Pre-Requisites The measurement of the above four metrics requires SCRUM projects to record the Story Points assigned to each and ever user story or task. Recording the efforts won’t suffice as efforts assigned to a task are only indicative of the time required to complete that task and doesn’t take into consideration the complexity associated with the task. Also IEH for each team member should be recorded during the Sprint Planning meeting. Illustration This section tries to depict some examples of the ways these metrics could be interpreted and used in a SCRUM project. 1. Illustration of Earned Value Metric The below chart (Chart1) depicts the earned value of a resource across the 7 Sprints he has worked. Here X-axis indicates the Sprint number and Y axis indicates the Earned Value figures. As required he has shown gradual improvement in the Earned value. But then this chart stand alone doesn’t give enough information. Hence we plot Chart 2.

Chart 2 compares the progress of the same resources vis-à-vis the average earned value of the rest of the team. Such charts could be used to derive conclusions as to which resource is mainly responsible for bringing down the overall team’s performance, which could eventually be followed up by a detailed investigation to know the exact reasons and thereby the corrective actions. Say for e.g. is it that the resource is under skilled and requires training or has some motivational issues etc. Looking just at Chart 1 we could have concluded that this resource performed badly in Sprint-4. But then when we consider Chart 2 we realize that the entire team had a negative trend in Sprint-4, which helps us come to the right conclusion that in Sprint-4 it was not necessarily an issue related to this resource alone, but something pertaining to the entire team which brought down the EV. This could be because of unclear requirements, or due to some other dependency. 2. Illustration of Efforts per Story Point Metric Consider the table shown below (X-axis represents resource names, Y-axis represents the Effort per Story Point) which depicts the Story Points completed by each team member in a particular Sprint and the total effort the team member had spent in that Sprint. Now in the first look it might appear that the resource AR is better than PN since AR has completed more Story Points as against PN. But a look at Chart 3 clearly depicts that PN seems to be more efficient than AR, as PN takes lesser number of hours to complete a Story Point. Ideally owing to the learning curve. Resource Story Points Completed Actual Effort Spent Effort / Story Point BH 24 46 1.916667 PN 16 38 2.375 AR 18 48 2.666667 SP 10 20 2

Similarly we could also use this metric to plot ‘Effort per Story Point’ for a certain resource across multiple Sprints. This will shed light on whether the resource has shown improvement in his productivity across subsequent Sprints. (E.g. Chart 4). With reference to Chart 4 the resource has shown improvement across the release except in certain Sprints (E.g. Sprint-4) which if need be could be investigated as to what was wrong in Sprint-4, which could yet again help the SCRUM Master/ PM know if this resource is good at certain kind of tasks and not good at some others, or he needs some training in certain parts of the product which he worked during Sprint4 etc.

Tirupathi Devasthanam: Goes Green

This was an interesting article which was sent as a forward. I found this really noble because India is a land of temples and a temple leading by such an example is a real great thing. Quoting the same from BBC:

Green temple: India's Tirupati Temple has adopted a range of green technologies - and the shrine is now trading carbon credits Surrounded by seven hills, high above lush green forests is the temple town of Tirumala. Continue reading the main story Special Report: The Technology of Business Can shipping go green? Mall v internet: Mid East goes online Authors going it alone and online Indian internet seeks the masses New tech horizons coming in 2012 Technology and business in 2012 The crown jewel is the dazzling gold-plated temple of Lord Venkateshwara. Located in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, this is not just one of Hinduism's holiest shrines, but also one of the richest. It has an annual income of $340m - mostly from donations. Between 50-100,000 people visit this temple every day. This puts enormous pressure on water, electricity and other energy resources. Now the temple is using its religious influence and economic might to change the way energy is used here. Sustainable sources Developing reserve forests around the temple to act as carbon sinks, the management has transformed the environment. They are promoting the use of sustainable technologies and hope to influence public opinion. LV Subramanyam is the executive officer of the temple trust. "While we currently use a mix of conventional and non-conventional energy sources, our aim is make the place more reliant on sustainable sources of energy," he says "Most of our devotees are progressive. In a religious place like Tirumala, we can set the example by going green. Probably the impact will be much more than normal government advertisements or publicity." The community kitchen feeds thousands of pilgrims every day Inside the temple complex, a large multi-storey building is dedicated to just one thing - cooking free meals for pilgrims. Several cooks work in tandem stirring large pots of rice, curry and vegetables. Nearly 50,000 kilos of rice along with lentils are cooked here every day. Open all day, this community kitchen is the biggest green project for the temple. Located on the roof of this building are rows of solar dishes that automatically move with the angle of the sun, capturing the strong sunlight.

PMP Certified!

The thought of doing my PMP certification crossed my mind for the first time almost a year and half back. But then I was never decisively working on this. Eventually lot of things around me gave me the inspiration to take up this certification. In the month of October 2011 i made the payment, but i took the exam date only in December first week.

Yesterday December 15th was My Exam, which by God's grace was quite easy as compared to some of the mocks that I taken earlierand cleared without much fuss. My preparation included:

Head First PMP
PMBOK 4th Edition
Rita PMP
then various mocks which included O'riely's , Rita's etc.
And ofcourse Rajesh Nair notes (spreadsheet) came in very handy. The last two weeks before my exam i was only referring to these notes and the questions after the chapters in RITA's book.

Overall a good part of the questions were short not having multiple paragraphs which in itself was a soothing factor Psychologically. But there were lots of questions with two very close options . I finished my 200 questions in about 3 hours and 15 mins and then spent about 40 mins of the remaining time reviewing the 40 odd questions i had marked for review.

Onam 2011 .... Pookalam after a long time ....

Deja Vu

After a long time tried my hands at pencil skethches, Indu as well joined in.. sharing the same..

Arthapedia

A portal launched by Indian Economic Service, to demystify some of terms used in the Indian financial market. The portal is still in it’s early stages.

http://arthapedia.in/index.php/Home_Page

Japan's Calamity

Well 11th March 2011 was a dramatic, rather unfortunate day in the history one of the most self sufficient country in the world. This is when the deadly earth quake stuck the Japanese coastline, which in turn triggered a Tsunami. Well since then you switch on to any International news channel and the only thing you see are the images of destruction.

Yesterday when I was watching one such news item in BBC there was an interesting thing shared by the correspondent. In the video footage they showed people standing outside a super market where in hundreds had queued outside the supermarket and there was this guy from the supermarket who was announcing that they had very limited stocks and one of the waiting consumers told the correspondent that in near by vicinity this is the only super market which has something with itself. Inspite of all these the interesting aspect was that there was no chaos at all. People were patiently standing outside in the sun in the queue in an orderly fashion waiting for their turn to come. Which as rightly mentioned by the reporter was a typical sign of Japanese culture of patience and forgiveness.

Further the reporter went on to say that most of the houses or shops were open since their walls had collapsed and lot of things were lying in the open, but still there was not a single incident of loot that was reported from anywhere. Quite an inspiring culture I must say.

Rumblings from my Job

Probably this is what an MBA does to you: I mean post my MBA I think I have become a lot more judgmental about people. Each time I meet somebody I try to fit in or her into a certain category. Anyways, my current role/profile has been quite instrumental or helpful in developing this attribute. Mainly because I spend a good amount of my time taking interviews, trying to judge people as best as I could in the shortest available time and also try to resolve different people conflict issues within the team. Not that these are not good things to do, but over the last 2 months I have kind of limited myself to these. Eagerly looking forward to times to come, probably I could get chance to do more challenging things which probably make me stretch my skill set as well.

Nokia E63

Nokia E63, I bought this phone almost 14 months back and to be honest it’s been quite a phone and I have found lot of its features useul. Its my first business phone and I found it quite useful. Though at times I used to see some issues like screen hanging, slow performance etc and off late automatic restart. Initially I used to think this to be a bug in my own piece and owing to time constraints I didn’t visit Nokia care.

Today the situation has become worse, my phone has hanged completely. The phone switches on but it does not respond to any keypad functions. Now when I conducted an extensive search on the internet I found that all these problems that I was facing are a known bug in E63 L and had been known to Nokia since long. I am completely stumped I am surprised how come a corporate like Nokia not solve this issue in its phone.. or may be it has already solved via some patch which I am yet to find.. will search more.