Thinking Loud

Business owners are resilient

2020-05-14T04:39:00.002-07:00

As a software consultancy owner, the state of digital transformation projects was scary at first going into the pandemic. I had a doubt that clients would pull back on their budgets or cancel the projects altogether. I had no idea what to expect. Thanks to my mentors who always pushed me to keep a runway, fortunately, survival was not in question. But would I be able to grow my business or scale it down?

Since the time it all started, we lost a few clients, and we found new ones too. Every week since then we've been talking to more and more digital transformation leaders eager to take advantage of this time to grow their business. We're talking to new potential clients almost every day. We're hiring developers and looking at possibly hiring another project manager and a product designer.

If there's anything I learned over the past two months, it's that business owners are resilient. They'll do anything to turn any situation into an opportunity for growth.

We're now well into May and busier than ever. I think the initial fear of COVID-19 and its impact on our business has decreased a bit and we've found a new normal of sorts and are now able to focus on recovery and growth. It's not over yet, but I certainly feel more confident than I did two months ago.

Culture Matters

2012-01-08T03:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes working for a big company we get so busy in executing orders we forget to think about REAL human values.

Steve Jobs has passed away

2011-10-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs, a visionary and creative genius passed away today. World has lost a legend. My sincere condolences to his family.
Tribute on Apple.com

Poke The Box

2011-05-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

I always believe that all of us have an urge to "do work that matters". I also believe that we all have at least one, all, or something similar to these aspirations

a brilliant idea
a dream we believe in so much
a desire to take an initiative; we know will benefit a lot of people
a strong desire to change something
a new friendship
or a new relationship.

Even then, most of us feel that we are stuck at the starting line and just wait for the right moment to arrive. This small manifesto, by Seth Godin, can give you the small push needed to start something, start something now, without waiting.

What Does It Take to Create an Opportunity?

2011-04-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

Ajay works in a software development center in India, they call it captive unit. His team is distributed geographically; half of the team is in USA and half in India. He is with this organization for quite a long time and until recently never thought to leave it. Well, definitely for some reasons. He considered himself well paid. He earned respect from his colleagues for his work and intelligence. More than anything, he enjoyed his successful STATUS among his friends and family. Recently, he started feeling to do something more. Ajay knew that his definition of “more” was not something very fancy like his organization’s Mission-Vision statement. But he was clear that he wanted to do something UP in the value chain, where he can perform some creative work and challenge his comfort zone to learn new things. He was hitting the ceiling within the boundaries of work; he was doing for past couple of years, almost of the same complexity. He was worried that if he keeps on doing the same work his growth was at stake. And, in spite of adding number of years in his experience, he would just repeat the same work every year. He questioned himself, 10 years of true experience or 1 year of experience 10 times?

Ajay always aspired for creating something meaningful. This is true that with the prevalent offshore/onshore model, the system never prompted him to look at a bigger picture. He was so busy in cutting the stone that he started forgetting the cathedral. Despite working with a very talented team of learned people, who were very much aware of the One Team concept, he was always required in the later stages, like coding, maintenance, and support, of the projects. In his own style, bit sheepishly, he tried to convince, people in position, that it would help projects if he was somehow got involved in early stages too. You guessed it right; he couldn't make any impact. On one occasion he was told the TRUTH that he didn’t have the required skills. Ajay considered this as a catch-22 situation; he didn’t get the right kind of work, due to lack of skills; and he was not skilled, due to lack of exposure. He even considered himself as a pawn in a system where he doesn’t have sufficient influence. Whatever he tried, he found it tough to become part of the decisions making, where he believed himself able to contribute and made an impact.

Ajay was not happy to be in the habit of complaining and whining about the system all the time. He was fed-up. Somehow, he figured out that blaming his bosses and doing nothing was not going to help him. He figured out that people in other industries and countries also share his pain and his situation. As he genuinely tried to make himself aware about his situation, he stopped crying about the policies, the government, the nationalist theory, and everything of that sort. It really helped him once he realized that his state is not just an outcome of off-shoring or outsourcing, it’s everywhere. It happens when people don’t take their own responsibility. And one day, he did the right thing. He took his own responsibility. He took the plunge.

I know you are curious to know how Ajay is correcting his situation. It took a while for Ajay to figure out, which may look like a very simple thing to you, that all he needs to do is to START DOING SOMETHING, without worrying too much about the result and outcome in the beginning. He is ready to make mistakes while he tries to figure out his true call. As a first step, he started noting down his dreams and fears. And from there he took another baby step by creating a Portfolio of his UP IN THE VALUE CHAIN work, which he started sharing with his friends and colleagues. Ajay is confidant of doing something meaningful. Now, he is a journeyman, he doesn’t complain, he is achieving his goals, piece by piece every day, he is happy, moreover he is interested in experiencing the answer rather than just sitting and blaming his situation. He is not trying to know the answer before starting anything.

Are Your Lights On?

2011-04-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a day when things didn't go your way?
Have you ever felt that you solved a really tough problem but, other than you, nobody is excited about it?
Have you ever wonder why obvious problems were not so obvious to your boss?

Most people do, and some do almost every day. "Are Your Lights On?"
explains the anatomy of Problem, top to bottom. This book provide enough clues to understand the problems of problem.

The book playfully instructs the reader first to identify the problem, second to determine the problem's owner, third to identify where the problem came from, and fourth to determine whether or not to solve it.

If you are keen on becoming a more effective problem solver and looking for some food for your thoughts, I believe you are going to appreciate this cult classic.

This book is also a good collection of valuable Rules and Quotes. I got some of my favourites.

“If you can’t think of at least three things that might be wrong with your understanding of the problem, you don’t understand the problem.”

“If a person is in a position to do something about a problem, but doesn’t have the problem, then do something so he does.”

“In spite of appearances, people seldom know what they want until you give them what they ask for.”

Let me know if you want to talk or discuss about this book, if you've read the same one!

In Search Of Problems

2011-04-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

"The truly original mind is that which finds problems"

Isn’t it fair to assume that everybody wants to do something good, something meaningful? And too often, we find ourselves stuck, simply STUCK. At times, we may feel that what we do at workplace is just a routine work. Sometimes entrepreneur inside us become alive and our heart aches to start something on our own. Or sometime we just get bored with things in hand and really need to do something new. That’s when we should search for the problems, lying unsolved around us.

" A Problem is a difference between thing as DESIRED and things as PERCEIVED "

This is true that world is full of problems; problems of every sort. Even then, its not always easy to figure out something, where you can put your heart. One thing, I believe can work, is asking people you meet, what they are working on and whether they can share their number one problem. I trust this will definitely lead to something meaningful, something your heart can resonate with.

Liquid network

2011-03-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

Man has invented lots of amazing things and coffee is one of them. Throughout the day, whenever I need to slow down and re-energize, a cup of coffee comes to rescue. I really love the sight, and smell of the coffee.

Luckily, I got a beautiful cafe just next to my office. I experience an overwhelming amount of inspiration and creativity. I bet, there’s something magical and alluring about the place. People are charming and engaging, and the vibe is a perfect blend of stylish and carefree. It’s quite brilliant!

Sonu

If you are in Gurgaon, don't forget to visit Cafe Day on Ground Floor, Paras Twin tower in sector 54. Ask Sonu to give the coffee of your choice and he will give you the best one in the town.

And if you are looking for some company to talk about anything under the sun just drop me an email.

My agenda for this weekend's Agile meetup

2011-03-23T04:48:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of time and energy to go to any community event, meetup, or conference (If it's not happening at your place!!). There must be some solid reasons and agenda if you are going to attend one.

I've attended few events in the past and tried to be as attentive as I could be in all those sessions and presentations. But I don't remember much from those sessions. All I remember is the wonderful, passionate people I met and the inspiration I derived from them.

This time too, I am trying to focus on what resonate with me well, the one on one discussions about the things other people are working on. Listening their insight on the projects and problems and to see if I can be of some help. Or hangging out with somebody cool at a cool place.

Although all this isn't very natural to me, as I think I am a bit shy, going to try anyway. And I wish this weekend event is going to support individual interactions and conversations that really matters. I also wish, at the end, people will remember me for some meaningful conversations.
P.S. Nice people at Kronos Systems are hosting Agile meetup on 26th March, 2011. If you are interested you can email to rawat.as@gmail.com.

Rejections are not that bad!!!

2011-02-15T21:57:00.000-08:00

"Thanks for Applying. After reviewing over 350 amazing applications, I have to confess........ "

I received these lines recently from Domino Project. For those who haven’t yet heard about this project, Seth Godin, along with Amzon, initiated this project to reinvent the way books are created, purchased, read, and to help great authors to connect to the readers in need of their ideas. I am excited about this project as I really feel the concept is very natural and people are going to accept this new form of book reading and writing. So, when I got an email stating that I can be part of this project, I applied immediately....and got rejection few days later.

You are right, this made me sad. But I know, rejections are part of the life and trying to learn to accept the rejections. I thought about this rejection a bit more. And I got few reasons to not to be sad about the rejection.

The Domino team didn’t make me wait endlessly. Most of the time people don’t share bad news and you just end up waiting endlessly, which is bad. I am happy to know that Domino team is good and care about people.
If I truly care for the project, I should be happy to know that they got more talented candidate than me.
One more reason, they send me a free copy of Unleashing the Ideavirus. You can also download this book from here for free.

So, if somebody said no to you, don’t get upset. If possible figure out the pluses. After rejection, anything positive, no matter how small it is, tastes too good.

Interview Guidelines for Freshers

2011-02-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

Fly High

Isn’t it true that hundreds and thousands of articles, on the same topic, already exist? Then why I want to crowd the space more? I’ve got two reasons to do so:

After I published Thoughts on Interviewing freshers, few people wrote me back. They shared their valuable experiences, both good and bad, while applying the thoughts mentioned in that article. It was their feedback, which I believe would help a lot of people preparing for interview.
Most of the technical forums, where Google searches are pointing for the keywords like “how to prepare for technical interview”, “what to read before interview”, are missing the point. I could easily figure out a pattern, a negative one, coming out of these “homework” guidelines to fresh engineers. Almost everybody, I interviewed, appeared to follow the same advice, as there was similarities in the mistakes.

Here are few things I can suggest.

Your Resume is important: Good interviewers prefer to ask the questions based on what you already know. And your resume tells what you’ve done and learnt. So, first thing first, get your resume straight.

Mention only what you know and have learnt. Adding things, which you don’t know or not confident about will only get you into trouble. A candidate mentioned a web application project in his resume. When asked about which application server was used, he replied that it was a team project and he didn’t work on that part. No prize for guessing, his answer didn’t work for him!!
One candidate highlighted “Agile” in his resume. Later he confessed that he did this just to add few good keywords in hope to get his resume filtered. Your resume doesn't become eventful by mentioning false things. A solid resume is one where you mention the things you have done yourself. Likewise, many candidates add acronyms, without knowing details about them, for the same reason.
People tend to over emphasized their hobbies. Chances are that your first prize in the dance competition not going to help you much. My take is, if you have plenty of relevant things, like you have done a web site for your uncle’s business, contribution in a open source project, or participation in some technical forum, then mentioning your extracurricular activities will look good. But if it is the only thing in your resume.....better avoid.
Ideally, the first thing one should do, just after enrolling in any degree course, or something of that sort, is to have a resume in place. As you learn and do new things, keep on adding those in your resume. Also review your resume at regular interval, this will give you a good feedback about your progress.

Answering Interview questions: The secret recipe to be hired at any good place is to remember that most of them are interested in your Learning ability, Problem solving skills, Attitude to work in a team, and your Creativity. Your aim is to either build or look out the opportunities, during the interview, to demonstrate these skills.

Again, the first advice is to be honest. While answering questions don’t make up the things. If you know something, explain it-concisely. Otherwise tell clearly that you don’t know.
If you know something partially, just say so along with a permission to give it a try to figure out the possibilities. You can impress the interviewer by your thinking capability.
While trying to figure out the possibilities, according to the above point, ask questions from the interviewer. If you are able to ask Valid questions you get another opportunity to impress the interviewer. While working in software field, where things are changing so fast and there is always something new to learn, you will need help from other experts. It’s known fact in our industry that people struggle taking help and asking relevant questions. So if you demonstrate this ability, you are heading in the right direction.
Don’t cram before interview. Actually, don’t cram ever. Nobody is going to offer you a good job just because you know all the definitions.
Everybody recognizes the fact that you are a fresh graduate and it’s acceptable fact that you don’t know much. It’s more important that you understand this part too. Lot of candidates pretend to be “knowledgeable”, I believe, because they believe that it’s expected from them due to their credentials (the degree course they have attended, the courses they have taken, and so on). Software development is a craft and it takes years and years of practice to master this craft. We accept the fact that it will take some time for you to know everything.

It's long journey.

Many interviewer prefer to ask abstract questions rather than pure technical ones. Some times they give you puzzles. The intention is to see your problem solving skill. You should focus on understanding the problem quickly and demonstrate the approach you are taking to solve the problem. Some time the approach you are taking is more important than the result itself. This is a window to show your creativity too.

Overall the message is to be Honest and show What You Know, with Confidence. Good luck!!

P.S. Are you a fresher? Register here for more cool tips and other useful things.

Agile or No Agile, build something Usable

2011-01-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

Whether you and me like or not, few bad things are going to exist in our, otherwise beautiful world. If we wish, we can call those “harsh realities”. Harsh realities, like, the poverty, political chicanery, long and boring power point presentations, and many more other things along with the challenges in the field of software development.

Organizations, or most of the organizations, will remain inflexible. There is going to be policy for everything and you can’t go against it.
People are not going to embrace uncertainty. You know, one must know, in advance, the end date, resource count, etc.
It’s not going to be possible for the Project sponsors to be committed throughout the development cycle. They really have far more important stuff over giving you feedback all the time.
It’s going to be a challenge to learn better ways of development, when you are already spending nights in the office, either meeting the deadlines or fixing some high priority, critical issues. Moreover there are going to be family commitments!!
It would be tough to convince management to change a crappy tool or technology once they have spent so much on it.
Communication gap is going to.......be there.

This list can be as long as one want. My intention is not to list all those but to say that, for whatever reasons, adverse conditions are going to be there. Any methodology, including Agile, don’t claim to cure all the Harsh Realities by just following few practices. It’s like someone saying, if world embrace his religion all the misery and warfare will come to an end.

So rather than killing ourselves to choose and pick any specific methodology let’s put all our energy in solving the end user’s problem. We need to clean the house ourselves, as most of customers don’t care how we develop the software. They need something which is usable. By having the right customer centric mindset we can deliver something usable.

Why I like Gerald Weinberg?

2011-01-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

Gerald M. (Jerry) Weinberg
http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/

Most of the employer provide no, or very little training when they promote people into management and leadership roles. I was also, sort of, on my own to learn the skills to perform my new assignment as Project Lead. While searching for something relevant to read, google pointed me to Gerald Weinberg’s Becoming a Technical Leader.Though I was dying to get this book, I had to wait for around a month. Dorset Publishing, the publisher of most of Jerry’s book, was not having any presence in India. It was 2005. I believe, even today, they don’t sell their books in India. Any way, I got the book and that’s how I was introduced to Jerry.

Since then Jerry’s writing are my best companion in my journey to understand the field of Software. In the beginning, when I started working as project lead, I was not able to understand that why my direct reports, once close colleagues, no longer seemed to respect or even like me. Jerry came to my rescue by making me understand fundamentals of my new role. He reminded me that I can no longer act as an individual contributor, my sole purpose is to develop my team members into promotable staff. He helped me to understand people’s behaviour and my relationship with them while guiding me to the process of taking charge of my own development.

Through his entertaining writing style, which appeals to my sense of humor, he introduced me to Problem Solving leadership. I always feel inspired by his writing. Jerry’s writing induce thinking. While reading his books I found myself, again and again, stopping and thinking. Co-relating myself with his situation, and trying to absorb the learning from his knowledge and experience.

Jerry is really remarkable and influential software and systems pioneer. He is wise. I wish to meet him someday, till then reading and re-reading his books.

Thank you very much Jerry.

Thoughts on Distributed Team

2010-12-09T04:29:00.000-08:00

On one hand budgets are getting tighter day by day and on the other business demands are growing. This is a big challenge for every business. One of the way to deal with this situation is Strategic offshoring; currently the most common and popular one. As offshoring or global sourcing has evolved from a tactical to strategic role, distributed teams are everywhere. And it’s happening for the rights reasons. High-quality yet low-cost skilled resources, round the clock availability, and flexible scaling due to greater talent pool are few of the benefits hard to ignore.

When distributed teams are omnipresent, chances are either you are already part of a distributed team or you will be at some point in the near future. For most of us mortals, it’s a real challenge to work in a distributed team. And some time frustrating too. Geographical separation has so much effect on team dynamics that everybody in the team seems to forget the basic tenet of working together. The Basic Tenet, which suggest, Shared Goals, Transparency, Team Spirit, and Respect for each other, looks too good to be true. I believe that’s why it’s tough to find Joy and Enthusiasm in most of the distributed teams.

If you are ready to accept this paradigm and take small small steps it’s possible to have a well-distributed team, performing at the same level as co-located ones. Here are few learning, observations, and thoughts, I believe can help while working or forming a new distributed team.

The goal is to build empowered, distributed teams with a shared vision, shared goals and shared responsibility aligned with the business goals.
Knowledge workers are motivated in an environment which allows them to take responsibility. Build an ecosystem, which provide a concise set of strong principles to stimulate intelligent, and responsible behavior. This will empower them to make the right decisions.
Create a common Hiring Standard. People know what it takes to be part of this team. Hiring the same level of talent at both locations creates trust and respect. This improves the quality of the communication.
Not everybody is fit for distributed team. There is no harm in being choosy while picking up your team members. A best fit brings more than just technical skills. He brings communication skills, proactive approach to problem solving, and an eagerness to learn, to a team regardless of location or culture. Skills can be trained, but they will be meaningless without the right mentality.
It’s natural to have ‘us-them’ relationship in a distributed team. But to successfully achieve a Shared Goal the whole team needs to work together as a homogeneous, interdependent group. Identify the factors contributing for the ‘us-them’ mentality and eliminate them.
Any solution that includes isolation of tasks or responsibilities at one location is not acceptable. Isolated knowledge will break communication and slow the team down on the long run. It actually contributes to create ‘us-them’ feeling.
Everybody value open culture and relationships based on equality and offshore knowledge workers are not different. Challenges due to different time zone, cultural differences, linguistic distances, and physical distances can be overcome by openness, transparency, equality, and sharing of work.
Establish equality while distributing the work. Team members at both locations need to have an equal say in software architecture and design Architecture is a team activity in which all members are expected to participate. The traditional model in which an onshore architect lays out working instructions for offshore developers is simply not done. Architecture and design decisions are described in living documentation, such as a Wiki. This allows the whole team to access and update them easily. All decisions are documented meticulously, complete with the reasoning behind it. The documentation also includes alternatives explored. Discussions involving multiple team members ensure that knowledge about the decisions is shared between locations.
It is important to share the same set of Standards to make sure equality in the team. Establish an agreement about the standard communication processes, tools, and working methods. The focus on forming a single team and on how people communicate most effectively brings the best out of team members, no matter where they are. Synchronizing according to the same standards and tools for development, collaboration and knowledge-sharing is very important. Keep on improving the working standards during the project. Don’t cast the standards in the stone.
At any cost co-locate the team in the initial phase. It helps to build a shared context and shared ownership. This step definitely helps to get the right start. The team is distributed afterwards.
Apart from initial co-location, team members should travel in both directions at regular intervals throughout the project life-cycle. This not only strengthen the personal bonding among team members, but also helps to refresh the shared context; the core of the One Team philosophy. Benefits of travel outweigh the cost. Moreover, if the person on the other side is someone you know personally, someone who shares your context, your way of thinking about problems, your working culture and technical standards – and that person is someone you respect – then distance is no problem at all. Afterwards the team members’ understanding of the other location’s cultural dynamics and strong personal relationships will overcome the barriers of distance in communication.
During travel on a project, the first priority is to share, to learn and to build relationships. Relationships formed enable team members to see each other as individuals and to focus on similarities.
Traditionally, offshore knowledge workers are limited to a microscopic view of the complete project. This limits their decision making power, hamper their daily work, and most of all dull their interest which eventually kills creativity. In an effective team everybody needs to know the bigger picture to make their work efficient and valuable. Geography can’t be the deterring factor to have a unified understanding of the project.
Progress measurement should be transparent. Everybody has a clear sense about where they are heading and it helps to create ownership.
Regular team meetings are very important where the whole team evaluates the good and bad happened so far. The intention is to remove waste and to improve upon communication, process and technology.

I can sum up all the above thoughts by saying that forming a single team, we need to create an environment of rich communication, shared responsibility, and same goals. This is an environment where associates do the same work and are dependent upon each other for the team’s success. This is an environment where team members strengthen each other. This is an environment where Joy and Enthusiasm is everywhere!!

Thoughts on Interviewing Freshers

2010-11-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

Tidbits of making sure that
● We get the future leaders of our organization.
● We get the right fit according to our organization's culture.
● We get the perfect match according to the nature of work we do.

Myths Busted
● Every other company claims they hire the top 1%. What about the remaining 99%? Do you believe they don’t get any work? And by the way, which company get the top 1%. What they really do to achieve this? When everybody is claiming that they hire the top 1%, the statement “We hire top 1%” looks like a myth. Or you can better call it a syndrome. A syndrome to live in fantasy land. Any good organization should not pretend, and believe in hiring somebody who will be happy embracing the culture of the organization along with having a potential to be REAL 1%.
● Every other company is hiring on the bases of what people have already done. And you believe you should also hire a fresher having a ‘real’ project to his credit. It’s a myth. A myth if you agree that our academic world is having some serious limitations in producing “Ready to be Productive” resources. The focus is more on theory rather than application. Their syllabus is not revised for long. And list can go on. I’ve met numerous good students, having a great potential, struggling to find a good break because they don’t have a ‘Real’ project on their resume. People are rejecting them because of that reason only. Sometime these struggling stars land up at sweat shops where people exploit them endlessly. Till the time we correct the system, believe in building the Fine Product out of good RAW material.

How?
● Remember the Maruti Suzuki’s A-Star ad? A candidate bombarded with questions which he can’t answer. At the end he just stands up and question the interview panel whether they are interested in finding out what he doesn’t know or the things he knows. The real need is to listen what they know, not the things they don’t know. I’ve set in lots of interview panels where interviewer tried very hard to impress the candidates. It should be opposite, let them impress you.
● I ask you, The Mighty interviewer, to embrace one fact. Although a tough one, but it’s true that everybody does a variety of work, Boring and Exciting. Everybody, along with some pretty exciting stuff, does some boring stuff. Isn’t it a fact? Finding somebody, who genuinely believes that every interesting things has some boring part, is really tough. One of the nuggets I can share with you, to get the best match, is by having a look on their marks. If they have scored pretty well in the subject considered boring, along with the other subjects - considered exciting, chances are that you are closer to the right fit. So, if a guy tells you that he doesn’t understand why they teach a one semester Civil Engineering course but scored sufficiently good - give him an extra point.
● Believe in NEAR past over very OLD past. Remember the mutual funds ad, where in the end they say, “Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance”? Evaluate what they are today. But there is no harm in touching their recent past. Don’t go very far, but see what they have learned recently. Believe me if somehow we get everybody who has learned something constructive in the last 6 months and that too with fair degree of understanding, our job is done. Help them to figure out what they have learned recently. Also question how they have learned. You can push them to talk about the shortcomings they see in their learning and what they want to do the next.
● By now you are either liking me or hating me. And it is happening because I am able to express myself. I am able to share my thoughts and experience with you. Isn’t it a good idea to have the fair degree of communication skills in the candidate you are going to hire? If he has that, he will not create confusion by doing what you’ve never asked him to do. Ideally, he will never waste time, because he knows how to ask questions. He will help you to reduce the Re-Work (I guess 50% of our work is re-work, due to miscommunication happen at our workplace). Create a very abstract scenario, like, how the software of lift, elevator, works. Don’t tell him anything else; just see the quality of the questions and how he advances. See his capability of clearing the cloud of abstract.
● Am I suggesting that you should not ask the technological questions? No, no way. But here is what I want to say. Every technology is having some building blocks, some basics. Please help him to express his understanding. Like, what his thoughts on object oriented language, or how the polymorphism help a programmer. And please, please, no definitions. Cramming doesn’t harm but it’s not our intention to hire somebody for this skill.
● Figure out he is the guy with ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ or ‘Eyes Wide Open’. One of the key ingredients for any successful team is to re-invent itself from time to time. And it happens with having curious team members; people with ‘Eyes Wide Open’. It is important to know and UNDERSTAND what’s happening around you, both inward and outward. You may like to confide to your trade, if you wish; it’s perfectly alright. Check out if the guy hold any opinion about good or bad about something relevant? If yes, you spot on.
● Don’t you like to have a cup of coffee over micromanaging the things for your staff? Hummm? It can only happen if you pick somebody who can work independently and self motivated. I know, I know, that you know it already!!! O.K. here is one of my ways to figure out this; ask what they do in their leisure time…….can you figure out some constructive pattern?…….yes….again you are hitting the bull’s eye.

Do you believe in taking breaks?

2009-08-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

You must be thinking that how "taking breaks" is related to management or programming at all. Well, if your answer is "yes" for the questions, I am going to ask, you will figure out the relationship.

Do you think your project will go haywire if you stop thinking about it for a second, as you are involved in each and every detail of the project?
Do you think, in your team nobody is as skilled as you are for the work you are doing?
Do you blame poor design of office chair for your frequent neck and back pain?

Still reading!!! looks like, you've got at least one "yes" for above questions. Check, if you are burning yourself at a very high rate. Learn how to take break and keep on reading.

If you are a technology specialist in your team, or a manager, or on top of your group/team, you may prefer to work alone. Because, you think, you possess a very different skill or experience, that nobody else possesses. Believe me, reality may differ!! Reality may be, you don't want to share, what you've learned by putting so much of hard work. Or, you just don't want to give up your place. Whatever be the reason, it's not good for the business, it's not good for the organization. Most of all, it's not good for you. Your burnout rate is high.

To earn trust of your team, colleagues, or bosses, you need to be energetic. And to be energetic you need to recharge yourself. Otherwise a lethargic attitude will work like a slow poison and slowly kill the chances of success. Again, looks like, loss is yours.

By now, you and me should be on the same page that taking break is required for better business, better organization, and better you. By taking break I don't recommend that you stand up from your seat, walk slowly to the coffee dispenser....still thinking about the issue at hand....grab the coffee....and come back to your seat. Break mean, an escape from your current mental state or may be surroundings, and feeling more empowered and optimistic. A short walk at work and may be a cycling trip on weekend may clear your head and help to recharge you.

To enable yourself to take break, you need to trust your team, you need to plan sharing your special skills, you need to delegate more. To empower yourself, you need to empower your people.

And don't forget to teach this "Art" or "Science", whatever you prefer to call it, of taking break to your team, friends, dear and loved ones.

Connect Your Thinking Dots

2009-08-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Good Communication Helps!!

In a typical software development house where teams are not co-located importance of clear communication becomes vital. Due to not so effective communication productivity drops, building trust gets tougher, morale of the team affects, and so many other negative things happen. As a part of distributed team, where I lead the Indian team of software engineers, I observed few patterns.

We find it tough to explain complex ideas. We avoid speaking out at first place. Resulting in unexpressed ideas. Moreover, once we have agreed to somebody else’s idea, may be not so great, it becomes even harder to introduce our thoughts at later stage.
No planning is perfect and despite having all the work items planned few tasks arises out of discussions in team meetings. I observe a pattern here, most of the time these unplanned task are urgent in nature, believe me, and manager wants to finish it ASAP. Manager asks developer to squeeze this task in his schedule. Agile or No Agile, now its developer’s turn to speak out……c’mon speak it up.….please…….but for him articulating his concerns is bigger problem then spending nights in the office. He commits! You know the story afterward, missing deadlines, poor quality, hate for manager, and list is endless.
Apart from the side effects mentioned in above point one another thing also happens. I give you a hint. This ‘Another’ thing is very crucial for any team. Yes, you guessed it right, degree of Trust level decreases. If engineer is able to deliver after slogging he will blame his manager for burning him. Otherwise if he misses the date manager looses his faith in him.

I struggled with this problem for a while and finally decided to do something about it. It took a while to convince my team that this problem is more about formalizing their thoughts rather than having a command over a particular language. I tried the approach listed below. There is nothing new. Even then it worked well for me.

Form a group, at team or organization level. This group will meet once a week.
Group members will come prepared with a topic, which they will speak in front of group. Preferred topic should be non technical and imaginative in nature.
There can be a time limit on duration a person is going to speak. Also number of speakers can also be limited if your group size is big.

Now the tough part. There should be evaluator/s, which will help individuals with their suggestions.
Here I am not recommending giving Voice accent training to engineers. My recommendation is to create a platform to help left brain creatures to build up a good mix of right brain prowess.

As with any other initiative the success of this one too will depend upon the enthusiasm of the group members. Moreover there will be lots of other burning issues, which we needs to firefight for. As this task is important but not urgent it qualifies for the Second Quadrant of Stephen Covey’s four quadrants system explained in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Quadrant two is the one where true and lasting happiness resides and we should give attention to that. Right now, I can’t give you a model to calculate ROI but as you go along you will reap the benefits.