Category Archives: Thoughts

Reflections on “Queen”

Organizations and Leadership, Thoughts, ,


QueenMoviePoster7thMarchAs with every good movie, the story and characters of “Queen” have subtleties you can reflect on, in different contexts. If you have watched the movie, read on!

Right Person in the Right Place
Whether it is casting Kangana Ranaut as the innocent yet liberal Rani or Lisa Haydon as the wild yet affectionate Vijaylakshmi, or Rajkumar Rao as the suave yet creepy jerk – each actor has been hand-picked to fit their role perfectly. This meticulous job at casting does half the director’s job, with each actor naturally cut out for their character. Actors can adapt, but with natural fit one can get a sense of comfortable flow.

The Past Casts its Shadow
We come across characters whose thoughts and behavior today are driven by their past. Rani goes into her own past often, and learns about past lives of several characters. Taka’s attempts to forget, Oleksander’s desire to do his own bit, Rani’s suppressed self and the joy of new-found freedom – characters perceive and respond based on their past. The past is a prism on to the present.

People and Circumstances
While going to visit Roxette in a shady area of Amsterdam, Rani comments that this is perhaps the wrong place – obviously a little unsettled by the environment. Once she meets Rukhsar (aka Roxette), she recognizes a person making a living the best way she can. And in that moment, she understands in her liberal mind that the person and place are different. Circumstances are not the same as a person.

Life has to Go On
An individual, a family, a team, an organization, a country – every now and then each of these have to leave the past behind and move on. The plastered hostel walls are a way for residents to leave a piece of their soul behind when they vacate, so that they may move on and renew their soul without any baggage of the past. You have to respect yet bury the past when it is time to change.

Accepting Differences
Rani meets people who are very different from herself. The bohemian free-wheeling Vijayalakshmi, the pole-dancing Rukhsar, the male friends who live with her and accompany her to a kink shop – these are all new people from a very different world than hers. Yet she connects with them at a deeper level. The people she rejects are the socially acceptable superficial people she knows since years – Vijay and the rest of his clan. Shared human values triumph over language and nationality and other artificial differences.

Craftsmanship
The Italian chef, Marcello, treats his food as his creation, one that has his spirit and soul. It is work born out of love, not for money alone. Rani’s attempts to change it to suit her taste causes him to react strongly – he loves his creation so much that he cannot tolerate disrespect or disfigurement! You react only when you are emotionally invested in your work, else you are indifferent to opinions. Craftsmanship and pride go together.

Money and Value
Marcello does not want Rani’s money for food she didn’t like and didn’t eat. He tries returning it right away, unsuccessfully, but remembers and returns it next time he meets her. Money that comes without any value being delivered is just money, not worthy money. Whereas money is just money when it is used (as Roxette expresses about the money she sends home), it may or may not be worthy when received. To desire only money we are worthy of, and truly earn and deserve, is character.

Quality Speaks for Itself
When Rani’s gol-gappas become a hit, one can trace it to one individual asking for a trial. And while the immediate reaction was disappointing, he goes on to enjoy it – so much so that he asks for repeats. Quality speaks for itself, and is helped along by word-of-mouth, and soon her stall is thronged by customers. Sounds far-fetched but anyone who has had gol-gappa/puchka/gupchup) will agree whole-heartedly! Good stuff can stand its ground.

 

Now let us take our musings one more step. If you were leading an organization, a team, a mission, yourself…
How would you ensure people are in just the right role where they can bloom and flourish?
How would you appreciate people better based on their past life experience?
How would you separate your view of people from circumstances?
How would you shed the past when moving in a new direction?
How would you recognize and accept people very different from yourself?
How would you build a desire for, and a sense of, pride in work?
How would you create a sense of self-respect – money is to be earned not received?
How would you make quality stuff the world wants more of?

And if you could succeed at the above, wouldn’t you have built a superlative unit?

 

Enough said, hope you just enjoyed the movie!

 

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Common Sense vs Bureaucracy

Thoughts, ,

An organization gets bureaucratic with age. Meaningless rules and policies are thrown around, often ignoring common sense. I came across an instance recently, and wondered what we were thinking.

One of our years-old, loyal clients worked with a specific team for few months. Things were done and sealed, and when they shifted their back-end from a local server to the cloud (who isn’t doing that nowadays?) some things stopped working. The client reached out to the technical lead they had interacted with.

He was met with a curt “the developer is working on something else” – and of course policies forbid us from having him help on anything else. No remorse, no work-around, no investigation, no solution. More importantly – no empathy or understanding of the customer situation.

Obviously the irate client voiced his displeasure. Things were done and all it took was a couple hours. But it left a very bad taste in the mouth.

Why was this necessary? What was on the minds of people? That once a project is over we are not responsible? That a customer should be made to pay for every small thing? That avoiding a headache is better than understanding what the problem was? That policies are useful to throw around as excuses?

Why am I relating age to this? Well, think of a young group of hungry people. Would they dare to imagine saying a curt “No” to a loyal past (and potentially future) client? Or would they go out of their way to fix the problem at hand?

Often, clients prefer Mindfire due to our age (almost 15 years!), our stability and proven delivery. Buf if we lose common sense – the hunger to do the right thing – clients should go to younger hungrier (albeit riskier) companies!

Of course we don’t want one customer to pay for time that goes toward solving someone else’s problem. But isn’t it common sense that if something has gone down, a solution has to be found promptly? But do we have strait-jacketed developers who won’t put in an extra couple hours (night? weekend?) to help a situation? Or will the current customer say no to some hours being transparently redirected, with appropriate discounting if necessary?

Solutions are hidden in plain sight. Excuses are also conjured out of the same thin air.

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there is no such thing as a free lunch

Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Thoughts, , , , , , , ,

Today as I dug into my plate of piping hot chicken biryani and let the rich aroma of multiple spices fill my nostrils, I realized one thing. It’s true, many authors have written volumes on the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL) but then they haven’t worked at Mindfire Solutions. I am sure they haven’t coz if they had then they would have known that lunch is actually FREE at Mindfire Solutions!

First of all let’s know a bit about the concept of free lunch. This term is quite popular in economics textbook and finds its origin in the saloons of United States where it was a tradition to provide free lunch to customers who bought at least one drink. Most of the times the food was high in salt which compelled the buyer to buy more drinks later on. Hence the term TANSTAAFL has economic implications in the sense that even if it appears free there is a hidden cost to the person or the society.

A you read further you will realize that for the free lunch served at all the three centers of Mindfire Solutions (viz. Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Bangalore), it only wishes for employee satisfaction in return. A brilliant idea to perk up employee enthusiasm, free lunch is an initiative to let them do their thing (i.e. custom software development) without having to bother what’s for cook for lunch that day. Mindfire Solutions has a diverse population of software professionals who hail from different parts of India. And we all know that neither cooking is everyone’s cup of tea or searching for eat-outs in the middle of the day, every day, is a good idea to many. So to ensure a hassle free life and in turn better attention towards work (that’s always there!), Mindfire Solutions offers all its employees the option to sign up for the free lunch program.

The next thought that comes into mind is that, if it is free then the food may not be of great quality. Well let me assure you (trust me, I m extremely fussy about my food) that the food is of decent quality and tastes good as well. The caterers are strictly chosen, tried and tested so that any lapses can be forestalled. Caterers are dismissed almost immediately if there are any issues found with regards to taste or quality. Also the spread of items is not the same everyday and is changed regularly to bring in more variety to everyday food.
What started as a mad rush for food initially (because people found it hard to believe it is true) has tempered down a lot since the past couple of weeks. People are more organized now and there is hardly any ruckus in the cafeteria. However there are some rules that Mindfire lays down as well. The first and foremost rule is that wastage of food is a criminal offence that has to be avoided at all costs. Also as long as one eats at the cafeteria, one gets food for free. But when people sign up and do not inform that they will not be eating on a particular day within a specified deadline leading to food getting wasted, well, in that case they will have to pay. The free lunch is not included in any one’s individual CTC as it is an organizational initiative. Also if someone chooses not to avail the free lunch facility, it is not reimbursed either monetarily or through Sodexo coupons. So it is a case of “either you have it or you don’t” coz food is a matter of personal preferences.

Mindfire Solutions Cafeteria
Most employees I have interacted with have praised this initiative by Mindfire Solutions and thank the organization and its CEO to have released them from the drudgery of cooking lunch/finding a place for lunch every day! Gestures such as these are a reassurance and certainly leave an impression on the hearts of the employees. Isn’t it?

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Mindfire Premier League 2014

Thoughts, , ,

We all know that everybody loves a good game of cricket. The game is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of Indians in particular that almost everybody is drawn into it. Amateurs and professionals alike, they play it everywhere. Be it in the nook and corner of a street, an open playground, in the close confines of a room, in the virtual world on a computer screen or the well maintained turf in a stadium, the game is omnipresent. It is this cricketing spirit of its people that Mindfire respects and encourages as well.


Mindfire Premier League trophies
Want to know how? Then here you go. For all its employees who practically eat, sleep, watch and play cricket, Mindfire Solutions’ Bhubaneswar office organizes a homegrown version of IPL every year. A tradition that started in the year 2008 and famously known amongst the Mindfireans as Mindfire Premier League, this is a much awaited event for both players and spectators alike. Although the event is mostly held in the month of February, the preparations for the D-Day start off more than a month in advance.

This year saw three teams viz. Lions, Cheetahs and Panthers fighting for glory at the Kalinga Stadium cricket ground on February 8.

Match details:
There were three qualifier matches of twelve overs each. The match details are as follows:

Qualifier match 1: The first match was between Lions and Cheetahs. The Lions won the match and chose to field first. At the expense of 4 wickets the Cheetahs scored 93 runs. Sudhansu Panda from team Cheetahs scored 31 runs which helped his team immensely. The Lions conceded defeat by scoring a total of 87 runs at the loss of 3 wickets.

Qualifier match 2: The winner of the first qualifier match i.e . the Cheetahs were to meet the Panthers in the second qualifier match. On winning the toss, the Cheetahs allowed the Panthers to bat first. The Panthers could only manage to score 63 runs at the expense of 8 wickets. The Cheetahs easily achieved the target within 9.4 overs. Sudhansu Panda was again a star player by taking 4 wickets in this match.

Qualifier match 3: The penultimate match was between the losers of the first and second qualifier matches i.e. the Lions and the Panthers. The Panthers did a remarkable job of clocking 122 runs at the expense of 3 wickets. A major contribution towards this score was by Susangeet who played his best innings of 37 runs. The Lions were going through trying times put their best foot forward. Kaushik, the captain of Lions joined with Mainak to open the innings and the duo scored a flawless 56 runs before he gave his wicket away, a soft dismissal. A visibly injured Mainak showed great character and stayed till the end to ensure that Lions won the match to qualify for the finals.

The Finals: The invincible Cheetahs who had become the favorite MPL team by then played the finals against the Lions. Mainak and Satyaprakash from the team Lions contributed greatly to a decent score of 94 runs. The Cheetahs who had won the toss and decided to chase won the match in 9 overs and 10 wickets. Sudhansu Panda proved to be the star yet again by scoring an undefeatable 60 runs and was greatly supported by Kshirodra who scored 32 runs.

The Cheetahs proved to be an invincible team and won the Mindfire Premier League hands down. Undoubtedly, Sudhansu Panda walked away with many laurels which included three Man of the Match, Best Batsman of MPL-2014, Best Bowler of MPL-2014 and the Man of the Series awards.Indeed this winner took it all.

 

It would be unfair if we do not give kudos to the MPL core team for organizing a splendid cricketing session for us spectators thereby transforming an otherwise dull Saturday into a fun-filled one. The entertainment made sure our day was well spent. Last but not the least, thank you Mindfire Solutions for keeping the cricketing spirit alive!

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working mother's perspective

A working mother’s perspective

Thoughts, , , , , ,

My best friend who works for a prestigious firm in the USA told me that maternity leave offered by most companies there varies between 6 weeks to 8 weeks at the most. When I told her about the “unlimited maternity leave” facility at Mindfire Solutions, her eyes actually popped out. And no I m not joking.
The first time when I heard about such an arrangement at Mindfire Solutions which allows new moms to take care of their baby for as long as they want to, well, honestly, I really could not digest it. But then one has to live it to vouch for it. And that’s what happened with me.

The Arrangement:

While the flexibility of working from home is offered by many companies to help employees to give as much importance to personal needs without compromising on the professional front, “unlimited maternity leave” goes an extra step further. New moms and moms-to-be at Mindfire Solutions get the liberty to stay with their baby for as long as they want to and then intimate their date of joining at their own discretion. Such an arrangement ensures that the mother and child enjoy being together for the initial (unlimited) time period. Even after joining the office the mothers in many cases have the flexibility of working from home.

My Experience:

During my pregnancy I had consciously moved from a client facing, business development role to candidate side marketing role. This ensured that if in the near future I had to take a long leave (Trust me it happens in most cases and everyone is not the yahoo chief. LOL.) it would have minimal impact on the business side. As I was nearing my due date I suffered from extremely swollen feet that prevented me from travelling to office every day. It was then that I started working from home so that work did not get hampered and finish off with all the pending projects before I went on that really long leave. (Thank God for the flexibility that Mindfire provides!)

In a few months time I became a mother to a boisterous infant. And then owing to a serious medical condition I had to avail the unlimited maternity leave over and above the regular maternity leave. Now when I look back, I am extremely grateful to Mindfire Solutions and really can’t thank it enough for granting my request. Also as an extremely employee friendly organization, it has never hesitated to let me work from home as and when the need arises. The flexibility that it offers to me helps me keep an equal focus on issues both at home and work.
One can understand it better if one looks at this arrangement from the working mother’s point of view. The amount of freedom and flexibility that Mindfire Solutions provides to the new mothers goes a long way in easing out her extremely hectic daily schedule.
And I find that as I try to juggle between my two roles, my new one as a mother and my older one as an employee, the organization and its people-centric policies have lent me a helping hand to handle these new roles without much hurdles. Frankly for all these humane gestures, I would not really mind walking that extra mile for Mindfire Solutions.

(P.S. The accompanying picture doesn’t apply to me.)

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Do Industry Technical Certifications matter?

Thoughts, , , , , , ,

My first day at Mindfire and I already have an inferiority complex that all my peers, colleagues are Adobe certified. I have the experience in the same technology but not the certification. Which one is better? Or is there a better one? Or we need both? Not able to answer the question, first I decided to live in my comfort zone, with what I have and “prove myself with quality work”. But the second day again went with the same dilemma, looking at sample resumes that titled Adobe certified, in our company’s format.

Hmmm, I have the experience and knowledge, then why this hesitation of taking the examination for certifications? Well, these days when development platforms have syntax “help” and there is “Google maharaj”(Google GOD) for rescue, maybe I didn’t trust my knowledge enough and fear of not clearing the exam stood by me.I was still in two minds as I went back home, where my daughter was going to learn skating. As soon as she wore her skating shoes, she fell badly and my elder daughter said “Diya, get up! Dar ke agey jeet hai (popular advert slogan, which in English roughly means “to achieve victory, you have to defeat fear within you“) With a smile I realized this was my moment of learning from my kids, and decided to flush my fear and go for the certification. Hands-on experience certifies that I have the working knowledge to face a variety of tasks, which may or may not have training programs as prerequisites. At the same time, the certification itself would exhibit a determination and dedication to learn and improve.

A credential alone doesn’t guarantee real-world job skills, but in shortlisting and selection process, it increases the odds that the person is competent. With an ever-growing IT market, companies know competitive advantages help clinch deals and technology certified employees can be selling points. Following are some benefits of an academic credential, that I realized once I decided to take the certification and thought of sharing it with people like me who are still fighting to venture out of their comfort zone.

  • Broadens your knowledge scale: Preparing for the certification forces you to fill the gaps in your knowledge. There are some theories which you haven’t used in the actual projects and hence may not have detailed understanding of – the exam forces you to know these thoroughly.
  • Shows you the difference between your perception and reality of your knowledge. There were so many concepts that you know superficially but preparing for the certification makes them clear.
  • Earns respect of your peers: When my colleague had mentioned that he is Adobe certified, my first reaction was “Wow man!” – it makes you stand out of the crowd.

Having said this, I just don’t want to pass the exam with the easy means available, but by increasing my knowledge base. There are people who see certificates as badges to adorn on resumes – They are real assets only if you get them by working hard for them and are superficial if you have grabbed them through easier means.

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Avoid Offshore Outsourcing IT Project failure!

Thoughts, , , , , , , , , , , ,

In today’s world, technology can be influential in bringing nations together and on the adverse can destroy nations. Businesses these days are taking advantage of it to manage work across geographical boundaries and as a result minimizing their cost and effort. This is what is coined as the term “Outsourcing”. Though there are some worries in offshore software development work, still it is a widely accepted phenomenon by a majority of companies.

The topic of outsourcing continues to grab headlines irrespective of success or failure of offshore outsourcing projects. Companies have mixed response when it comes to feedback on their working experience with outsourced companies. Some companies might have had very good experience working with outsourced companies whereas others might have faced failure. Reasons may be many but identifying one or even a group of reasons is a tough task and sometimes impossible. A number of contributing factors cumulatively result in Offshore Outsourcing IT projects to fail. Some of the generic factors might be improper planning, ineffective management, inaccurate estimates or unclear objectives. But, apart from these, projects fail for some other minor but very influential factors such as communication, infrastructure complexity, culture and sometimes labor division. Let us discuss each of these minor factors to avoid mistakes and as a result avoid project failure.

Communication: We know that communication alone does not only mean language. While dealing with different teams across different geographies, it is obvious that communication would undergo other major challenges like time zones, location, distance etc. All these should be managed properly before the start of an offshore outsourcing project. Anybody dealing with an outsourcing project should previously finalize upon the modes and mechanism of communicating. By this I mean that, whether e-mails/Skype calls/video conferencing is sufficient or do they need daily status reports and other online facilities to monitor.

Infrastructure: A very important aspect of offshore outsourcing project is infrastructure. This not only includes physical presence but other underlying factors like facilities & hardware. The companies outsourcing needs to ensure that all the team members have adequate tools and access required to complete the work. Hence, they need to make sure that all issues related to privacy, licensing, intellectual property rights and trade agreements are sorted out.

Culture: Culture is an under-estimated factor for project failure but, it is very subtle and can affect offshore outsourcing projects to a great extent. Work culture is different in different countries. Hence it is imperative that, every organization should be fully aware of the outsourced location and its culture. Properly managing culture would definitely yield a successful project. One always needs to understand how people in different cultures behave to work with them as work attitude may differ from one culture to the other.

Labor Division: Sometimes work is divided among various outsourced companies by the offshore company in order to reduce money. But doing so will not reduce your pain. Instead, it will affect the project’s success, increase worries and also affect long term relationship. Evaluating companies based on their strengths and weaknesses irrespective of the price is rather a better and less risky way of allocating work.

In my knowledge, these factors are the most under-rated ones but are highly effective while deciding upon a project’s future apart from the other mentioned points of improper planning, ineffective management, inaccurate estimates and unclear objectives. Hence, these should not be neglected and taken care of prior to outsourcing a project.

Cheers,

Author – Suryakant Behera

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The Browser Wars 1993-2004 – Part 2

Thoughts

 

The Trial Part 2

Microsoft was asked to offer a version of Windows without IE. Microsoft replied that the company would offer the consumers either “one version of Windows that was obsolete, or another that did not work properly”. The judge stated “It seemed absolutely clear to you that I entered an order that required that you distribute a product that would not work?” David D. Cole, another Microsoft Vice-President, replied, “In plain English, yes. We followed that order. It wasn’t my place to consider the consequences of that”. Both the prosecution and the defense called upon the professors of MIT to serve as witnesses for their cases. Microsoft defended itself in the public “Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions … rival business firms did. Consumers of high technology have enjoyed falling prices, expanding outputs, and a breathtaking array of new products and innovations. … Increasingly, however, some firms have sought to handicap their rivals by turning to government for protection. Many of these cases are based on speculation about some vaguely specified consumer harm in some unspecified future, and many of the proposed interventions will weaken successful U.S. firms and impede their competitiveness abroad.”

Judge Jackson issued his conclusions that Microsoft had committed monopolization and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, and his opinion was that Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.

Ironically the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals anulled Judge Jackson’s rulings against Microsoft because in their view the Appellate court had adopted a “drastically altered scope of liability” so his suggestions were not viable, and also because of his interviews to the news media while he was still hearing the case, in violation of the Code of Conduct for US Judges. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals accused him of unethical conduct and opined that he should recuse himself from the case.

Judge Jackson’s response was that Microsoft’s conduct itself was the cause of any “perceived bias”; Microsoft executives had “proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. … Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing.”

The Settlement

On November 2, 2001, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Microsoft. Microsoft will have to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who will have full access to Microsoft’s systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance. This was to ensure Microsoft did not engage in “Predatory Behavior” directly or indirectly forming a “Barrier to Entry”. However, the Department of Justice allowed Microsoft to retain its code and integrate other softwares with Windows in the future. Nine states i.e. California, Kansas, Minnesota, Connecticut,Utah, Iowa, Florida,Minnesota, Virginia and Massachusetts and the District of Columbia did not agree with the settlement.

Andrew Chin, an antitrust law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who assisted Judge Jackson in drafting the findings of fact, wrote that the settlement gave Microsoft “a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other ‘platform software’ under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition. Microsoft now enjoys illegitimately acquired monopoly power in the market for Web browser software products.”

Microsoft’s responsibilities according to the settlement expired on November 12, 2007. Microsoft consented to extend selected terms of the settlement till 2012, but the plaintiffs made it clear that the extension was intended to serve only to give the relevant part of the settlement “the opportunity to succeed for the period of time it was intended to cover”, rather than being due to any “pattern of willful and systematic violations”.

 

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