Open Up, DON'T Cover Up

Today, I happen to hear one of my customers talking about my product that I work on. There was whole bunch of developers and testers (of the product) hearing the speech. He was sharing his pain points with the product and various releases. Since he works on the field, he also brought out the advantages and points to improve. Since there are so many pain points (which is obvious since he wanted to know the solution), the people who engineer it were giving more information about the technology, product and features in various releases.

During the course of the presentation, we just heard his pain points (of course it was moderated very well). I learned a priceless lesson today. When you are talking to the customer don't cover up. Give the fact and educate him. He understands and appreciates a lot because his focus is on solving the problem.

With your customer, "Don't cover up but Open Up".

I Must Fail

Today, it was a great experience to see someone failing and everyone around her was holding her up. On seeing that I wanted to fail because such a failure was not really a failure. Tonight there was a singing competition in Vijay TV for kids. I think, one kid (a singer) was eliminated. The views of the judges were impressive. The playback singer Mano and Malkudi Subha were the judges. I was quite impressed with the way they handled the situation. Being in the position of judging talent is very tough.

The judges said, looking at the girl who was eliminated, "you came as seed and you are going as a flower, you blossomed here". WoW, what a word? You must see the kid's eyes go bright, her mom's eyes go bright, audiences were smiling like sunshine and the entire arena was awestruck. What a way to give a feedback (on the other side, and in the corporate world, the monkeys that are paid to give feedback deliver it in a pathetic and insensitive way). Both of them rightly pointed out that the girl has transformed in the competition and the girl was trying something extraordinary. I learned two important lessons in my life.

Never shy away from trying extraordinary things.
Never hurt someone who is trying to be extraordinary. Praise her and take her as role model.

In a nutshell, I feel that I must fail because it is fine to be a failure rather than a mediocre success. It is another good night sleep and tonight I feel so much happy on learning important lesson about failure.

Indian IT Industry is Dying

It was the time when India had huge English speaking population who speak better English than the other developing nations in the region like China. Today, China is no more a China that was 10 years back. Not only China, the entire region is likely to take position in providing services not only in back offices but also in high end technology like research. The growth of other countries in the region is first threat to IT (that we cannot do much).

Looking at the education in India, it seems like we are heading back. We focus on quantity and but back in quality. We are not able to scale well without compromising the quality. Today, the average cost of an engineering degree in a self financing college sums up to 0.3 million rupees. However, the return of investment for the students is very little. The students are not able to get jobs. The industry picks few of them and trains them to do low end back office jobs. The companies select them because of "low cost" strategy.

With the current state, even within India, there are small companies that are willing and ready to do outsourced work at the half the price of bigger companies. Within no time, there will be someone who is ready to offer services at much reduced price. With this trend, in couple of years, many of the big companies are ready to hit a huge margin pressure and which will be downfall of Indian IT industry. Few companies that are trying to act know by thinking on creating IP. It is too late now. But better late than never.

This is the right time that we stop scratching the itch of making big money by providing low end back office work. We need to move up in research/development and the investments need to come from the organizations. If you are in IT industry and if you read this, go and ask your management what are the plans to invest in research. Investing in research/innovation makes sense than giving you double digit hike.

So, it is highly critical that we, as a community, rethink about outsourcing. This is time to move up (or at least try to move up) providing high end technology services. Else, Indian IT industry will be a history.

Software Design - Puzzle #1

You are sitting in a boardroom of a famous gaming giant. They have invited you to discuss about the design of their next product - a strategy game. The game is "Konquer" in which a king tries to rule the entire world and takes the world towards prosperity. The gaming giant is planning to give the responsibility of modeling classes. Here is the requirement one

Since the area is very large, the king is trying to split his kingdom into more manageable parts. He needs idea on making his entire region into more manageable regions. The requirement is that you have to come up with list of regions and model them into set of classes. After this, the king goes for the hunting asking you to meet him after two days to discuss your ideas.

With this example, we will learn few object oriented principles that leads to better software design.

Core Values - Looking Inside Vs Looking Outside

When someone say about "Core Values" or "Human Values", what do you think? Is it a thing to look inside or do you look outside? Let us take a recent example. By now, you would have known about a spiritual guru who is in very serious allegations. You would have also heard media, disciples and general public abusing him. Many people think that his acts were shameful. We react sharply when others slip. But when we slip, it is just a slip and we know how to make up.

This shows that we have a serious integrity problem. We look for core values from others when we do not have the ability to display strong core values. We complain about commercialization of political system, spirituality, education system and yet use those without any regrets. You cannot expect "core values" from others unless you display it by yourself. The "Core value' is not a commodity that is available in market. If you have it, be proud that you have it, follow it and live with it. Don't expect back. The "core values" is individual phenomenon and it has to be looked inside first.

I m Writing for Tomorrow

For a simple fact, I know that I m very poor in thinking and writing. Few years back, I was poorer and few more years back probably I was useless. I have grown from useless to poor which is great achievement. I write for tomorrow. When I say I m writing for tomorrow, I mean that I m practicing to be near perfect and I m practicing the art of taking failures and obviously in right sense. I know that I will succeed - one day. Because, I strongly believe that every dog has its day.

When I fall, I never watch others. I used to think that others will laugh at me when I fall and that may probably be true. Those people never looked forward. And the people who look forward they dont laugh but smile with lot of hope simply because they know that I m at a striking distance. Their smile is sunshine.

Yes, I m writing my future with lot of failures. I know, failures are successes.

Have a Great Day

Solar Power from Sahara

Yesterday, I read in newspaper that a German based company is planning to generate solar power based out of Sahara desert by 2050. Also, the project claims that it can cater 15% of power requirement of Europe. This quite inspiring and shows the commitment towards saving earth. But the beauty that these consortium believes that it can generate power by 2015. Let wish the project a great success and let us follow in our homes/offices.

This is what we call big thinking.

But, why are we not thinking to generate solar power at homes/offices. In my aunt's home, they have solar power that runs two florescent bulbs and a fan. Is it a futuristic thinking? My uncle is a big thinker.

"Under the leadership" Disease - Grow up Guys

Leadership is again one of the most misused words. When someone brings results (even because of luck), we often say "under the leadership" we blah, blah, and more blah. Without understanding the meaning of "leadership", it is very pathetic and painful to see people (or so called leaders) assuming things on their own. I have seen and probably you would have seen many people around you who are just egocentric. The more they say "we", they more you find "I" in their words. Their "we" sound like "I". For them, the word "leadership" is pure material that buys them happiness, money, and promotion. What not.

When I see such people I seriously think that they will change next time. But the next time, they blabber much more (and in fact show excellent improvement in blabbering) about "under the leadership" formula. They fail to understand about leadership. Leadership is about passion, leadership does not know title, leadership does not see who sits in front of you, leadership is about making your people as heroes, leadership is about following when your followers are capable to lead, leadership is about integrity, leadership is about keeping up the words, leadership is about keeping up the time, leadership is about remembering your people when you are about to sleep (every day or forever), leadership is about empowerment, leadership is about listening, leadership is about being charismatic, leadership is about delivering, leadership is about working hard, leadership is about being accountable, leadership is about courage, leadership is about empathy, leadership is about coaching, leadership is about accepting others as they are, leadership is about silence, leadership is about big picture, leadership is minute detail. But surely leadership is not the commodity that you can sell.

Come on guys, grow up. Dont sell leadership for your personal mileage. The world is moving fast towards leadership innovation.

Weak Statement and Action - An Example

Today, it came in news that our Defence Minister Mr. AK Antony raised concerns on the threat of weapon's supply by US to Pakistan. He also requests US to make sure that Pakistan does not use these weapons on India but on terrorist. I am not a political observer (but I m shameful to say this). Being an Indian citizen, this causes so much concern to me.

Why USA must (or should) make sure that Pakistan does not use these weapons on India? If we are not able to make sure that Pakistan does not use those on us (read it "us - India" and not United States), how do we expect that USA will be able to do that. Is it something like a kid's play? I remember my friend's mom telling my mom to take care of my own business when I used to beat my friend. On a serious note, Mr. Minister is hoping that US will take action. He is so optimistic.

But, the general public would like to know is Mr. Minister serious about his statement.

Reinventing Myself - Asking Questions

I never thought that I would become such a waste. A couple of days back, when I was talking to my father about my childhood, he told me that I used to ask a lot of questions. He also told me (and I still vaguely remember) that I used to experiment a lot with electric switches and would be playing with 230V, 5A AC power.

Over a period of time, I totally lost myself. I did not ask questions and I did not experiment. Experimenting things and asking questions go hand in hand. When you have questions, we used to experiment and when we experiment things we tend to get a lot of questions. Experimentation together with questioning curiosity what is needed for life - may it be professional career or our personal lives.

The decisions come out of experimentation and outcome of asking several questions is certainly thought through and likely to yield more results. I learned it again couple of months back and I m currently going through a personal journey of reinventing my childhood. I hope that this journey will be fruitful and transform me.

Value - Only Word That is Cheap

Value is by far the most misused word in corporate world. When you are running a business, it makes sense when you say you want to create value. "Value" is a key ingredient to be successful. For me the term value in business is this. You and your customer did not sign something as a part of your contract, stated objectives or none of your competitors do that. When it becomes part of the contract or objectives it is no longer a value and when your competitors also create "value" the value that you create becomes basic expectations.

If you are so serious of creating value, it has to be part of your strategy, you have advertise it among your employees who eventually create value for your customer and you have to execute and review the progress sensibly. As "value creation" is over and above your base deliverable, during the inception phase, do not push things too much. Also, do not overdo things and particularly overdoing here will hurt.

Last but not least. When you create value, it is visible to the customers. You don't need to put them in every slide that you run in your organization. Do not blow things up. If there is no reaction from the customer, stop talking non sense and move on. When it comes to "value", what the customer experienced because of the value is more important than the value.

It is highly important that we understand "value" else the value becomes cheap.