A Boss is a Boss!

When I take a long time to finish,
I am slow,
When my boss takes a long time,
He is thorough.

When I don't do it,
I am lazy,
When my boss does not do it,
He is busy.

When I do something without being told,
I am trying to be smart,
When my boss does the same,
He takes the initiative.

When I please my boss,
I am apple polishing,
When my boss pleases his boss,
He is cooperating.

When I make a mistake,
You're an idiot.
When my boss makes a mistake,
He's only human.

When I am out of the office,
I am wondering around.
When my boss is out of the office,
He's on business.

When I am on a day off sick,
I am always sick.
When my boss is a day off sick,
He must be very ill.

When I apply for leave,
I must be going for an interview
When my boss applies for leave,
It's because he's overworked.

When I do well,
My boss never remembers,
When I do wrong,
He never forgets.

[Source: eMail Forward]

It's a dog's life!

A butcher watching over his shop is really surprised when he sees a dog coming inside the shop. He shoos him away. But later, the dog is back again. So, he goes over to he dog and notices it has a note in its mouth. He takes the note and it reads "Can I have 12 sausages and a leg of lamb, please? The dog has money in its mouth, as well."

The butcher looks inside and, lo and behold, there is a ten dollar note there. So he takes the money and puts the sausages and lamb in a bag, placing it in the dog's mouth. The butcher is so impressed, and since it's about closing time, he decides to shut the shop and follow the dog.

So off he goes. The dog is walking down the street, when it comes to a level crossing; the dog puts down the bag, jumps up and presses the button. Then it waits patiently, bag in mouth, for the lights to turn. They do, and it walks across the road, with the butcher following him all the way.

The dog then comes to a bus stop, and starts looking at the timetable. The butcher is in awe as the dog stops a bus by pulling its left leg up and gets in it. The butcher follows the dog into the bus. The dog then shows a ticket which is tied to its belt to the bus conductor. The butcher is nearly fainting at this sight, so are the other passengers in the bus. The dog then sits near the driver's seat looking outside. As soon as the stop is in sight, the dog stands and wags its tail to inform the conductor. Then, without waiting for the bus to stop completely, it jumps out of the bus and runs to a house very close to the stop. It opens the big Iron Gate and rushes inside towards the door. As it approaches the wooden door, the dog suddenly changes its mind and heads towards the garden. It goes to the window, and beats its head against it several times, walks back, jumps off, rings the door bell and waits at the door. The butcher watches as a big guy opens the door, and starts abusing the dog, kicking him and punching him, and swearing at him. The butcher surprised with this, runs up, and stops the guy.

"What in heaven's name are you doing? The dog is a genius. He could be on TV, for the life of me! "To which the guy responds: "You call this clever? This is the second time this week that this stupid dog's forgotten his key."

Moral of the story.....
You may continue to exceed on lookers expectations but shall always fall short of the boss's expectations. It's a dog's life after all!

[Source: eMail Forward]

eMazing e-India

We often postpone to-do tasks just for the reason that we do not have enough time to do different things; especially tasks that require us to stand in queues and loose precious office hours. But with every one becoming tech-savyy the scene is changing pretty fast in India.

I knew that the e-Governance model in India would definitely turn effective one day. But I guess things are turning rosy sooner than expected. I have recently heard a lot of real-life experiences to validate the above claim.

The mass usage of the e-Media (read "internet") has urged the government and other players to venture into Internet solutions as a platform to deliver their services. For example services like public grievances, railway ticket booking, police complaints, passport application, etc., have gone online. No wonder India is the largest producer of Software Professionals in the world. Everyone from a 2 year old kid to the granny next door are e-savvy and access a variety of such services online.

I know many friends, who have lost their mobiles in their recent past. Many of them do not care to lodge a complaint, as they do not have the faith in the system and the vital time that is required for the same. And here is a story that would inspire you to lodge a complaint against it and win. Click on my friend's blog for more info on a real life incident. This correlation should justify the subject of this topic.

And to share a personal experience, I got a slot for giving in the passport application at the Passport Office in Bangalore for my wife, through this link. The link gave us a confirmation file number along with the slot timing as 3:46 PM. It also suggested us to be present at the passport office ten minutes prior to the given timing. We were there exactly at 3:35. Exactly at 3:46 PM, we were called onto the specified counter and within 5 minutes, the whole process was over. It was a pleasant surprise and I was amazed. Even after reaching home, I could not believe that such precision was exhibited at a government office.

Times are changing and changing fast.

Dream Big (Zero Defects)

Ever dreamt of building a software with "ZERO" defects? Well, that was precisely the learning that I had out of the training that I underwent the last couple of days. I was excited about the training for many reasons. I was learning a lot of new things in terms of leadership, quality ideas and it was not the normal Quality training where the trainers talk only numbers and forget how to incorporate the daily engineering activities into it. It was a fresh initiative taken from the folks at Motorola, Bangalore and it was really good. They drove their point very neatly with team exercises to emphasise the learnings and they did it without using big-time conceptual words like Six Sigma and Black Belts.

Across organizations and the average software engineering pool, Quality is related to filling up the final audit sheet with bogus numbers so that the numbers do not look too good and at the same time they do not look too bad as well. Managers tend to stick onto deadlines and push the quality aspect out of the window. Reasons could be like improper estimation, go-to-market kind of projects where the customer has all the say.

So, Quality is considered to be an overhead. We forget to understand the concept that building a quality product in the first place could have saved us a lot of effort and cost in that incurred in the later stages. If we tend to believe that we cut the villain (read “D E F E C T S”) at the early stages itself, we could have a smooth ride and the numbers would automatically fall in place on the audit sheet.

Here is a brief summary of the learning that I had. All the below aspects are the day to day routines that we come across, it is nothing drastically new. But the key is in believing that “Zero Defects” is possible and setting it as a goal on an individual space. Without a team belief and team discipline to bide by it, it would be difficult to achieve the same.

<- Dear reader, this content has been deleted for official reasons. Though the basic idea behind the content was to share knowledge, it was pointed out by my employer that it might be a case of letting out confidential (training) property. Though the deleted section was an outline of the recommended practises, I respect their view and am bound to remove it. I am sorry to all those who visited this link especially to know more on specific software quality engineering practises. - Kamz, 14 June 2006 ->

I now believe in whatever that has been shared here and would encourage you to follow it as well. It will definitely help – be it an individual or be it a team. I guess as a team we could and we should revolutionize the average processes followed in the software industry.

The Wright brothers had a dream. And they achieved the dream by continuous learning and improvement of processes. Let us dream that each one of us could write a zero defect code and achieve that through continuously evolving software engineering practises. Happy Software Engineering!

Rejuvenated!

I forced myself to write somethig here today. Oflate there has been lot of happenings and the blogging part just blew away out of my sight. The reasons are multifold. Don't come to conclusions that I have had an opportunity to work on some intersting stuff. That link is still missing. I guess it doesn't happen that easily here. From January, I have not had much of work and I hate that. Work satisfaction has touched a new low!

To come over the idle mind pattern, I tried reading and learning new things. In the process got onto a few Microsoft certifications. But even that cannot keep your motivations high for a long time as it requires solid concentration and discipline. Though I enjoyed the postivness out of it in a different way, it did not act as a major source of getting revitalized.

Recently, I have joined a fitness club at my locality and have been re-discovering the sources that could kindle the kid feeling in me. Sports! Though I always knew it, it was a revelation that it could drastically have a positive effect on my approach towards a normal day. If one gets to do what one has a passion for, it rejuvenates the whole thinking process. For me it definitely helped.

I reach the skies and thump my fists as I win some hard fought rallies. Wow! What a feeling. Suddenly, I love life! I feel younger! Back to making cranky sounds and feeling happy rather than posing the moody long face as though life had nothing interesting to offer.

I just hope that this feeling lasts for some time tough. Wish me luck!

Sunset at Nandhi Hills

With a lot of complaining and pressure from my wife for not having the attitude to explore the city (I call it as the zest to roam around the city and to while away time), I was forced to accept to the proposal of visiting Nandhi hills which is around 70 Kms from Bangalore. My brother had earlier suggested Okenakkel, but we had to withdraw from it for the reasons of bad road and the travel time.

We started at around 3:30 PM in the afternoon and reached Nandhi hills by 5:30 PM. We parked the car at the Sankey junction and walked about a KM to the top of the hill. After reaching there I thought it was worth having gone there that evening because of the scenic beauty and the fresh air that the place had to offer us.

The Sunset was awesome, with a surprising element attached to its foreground. There were three guys who were parachuting (not paragliding) amidst the hills. I was wondering from where they might have taken off. It could have either been from one of the hills around or from a flying object.

Though we did not have enough time to explore all the tourist spots over there, we came back with a pleasant "nature"al experience. We though we must again make it to this place some time in the winter and get lucky by getting to see the sunset as well. Here are some of the pics that I clicked. I experimented with the last snap by applying a few filters.