Few ways to identify a Commited collegue
Monday, 9 November 2009

  • You have never see him out of office
  • The places he is most found is the work desk , meeting room , coffee macine
  • When he speaks about the project, he is at top of his voice
  • He is on every forum and community related to the domain you work on
  • When he is done he would sit at other desk and watch what they do, help them
  • The first and last email you get at work is from him
  • He is there in sun , rains and winter
  • You think you can sleep well because he is there to handle any emergencies
  • You get a chat message or an email in the middle of the night on how you can do something better

What else can you think of? I will add more when I get some sleep for this week.... I plan to sleep 15 hours this week ;)

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Path to Organizational Success - Be Demanding?
Sunday, 8 November 2009


Everyone of us is demanding, very demanding... we want good salaries, we want regular promotions, we want everything that someone can offer and someone cant... We crib for what cannot be offered more than what we get already... in other words we are too demanding.. I am sure when the Managers discuss this they discuss the same... Eventually I think its not too bad to be Too Demanding... But it would be worth for an organization if you change the perspective...


Demand from Yourself than demanding from Others....

I spent my weekend running through the TED India Live streams on a vulnerable Internet connection that kept dropping... one of the speakers Nandan Nilekani spoke about India's future in this TED India event... I link it to the demanding paradigm.... if we have to see the future of India to be great in the future tech world, we need to be Tooo Demanding... Yes too demanding with ourselves.... Too demanding for every thing.. and it doesn't apply to Organization it applies to individuals who are in place as leaders , managers and also Team players...

Imagine working on a new product where the Management expects a product out in the least time... Yes the Management is already too demanding... Project Teams in such cases start to fail, sometime they sustain other times they too become Too Demanding but for reasons that fall on the other side... Both Teams and Management have a good goal in mind... but the expectation is a killer here... If we have to help in this case what will happen if the Project Team becomes too demanding with itself not just in developing a product in time but also a product that can change lives of everyone involved?

To make the future of our company, our nation.. we have to be Too Demanding, but for:

1. Innovating - Demand to much of Innovation from yourself

The key to success of any Team is the amount of Innovation the Team brings into the Project and the organization. Innovation here really means on how you see a Value Proposition through an idea that can change the lives of your users in the best possible way and in turn change the lives of your sales Team?

Imagine in the era of Photo sharing when some guys innovated Video sharing ... what we see in the MeMe (Me Media as Aaron Cohen always called it) has reached enormous journey already...So get your Teams together... Ask them a question... What have you Innovated? What would you like to Innovate? And what do you need to do it?

Involve your team in process of Innovation... make them go find ideas that can change the way the product is used. A simple way of doing this that I plan to implement and what came to my mind while I am writing this... Put an Item on your Story board... "Most Innovative idea of the Month with the person's name who ideated next to it.." Appreciate the effort and try to bring the innovative Idea to implementation... keep a track of all such ideas generate a leader board... help organization understand and get the Idea funded. Be too demanding from your Teams and As Team players demand too much of innovation from self...

2. Ensuring Quality - If you cant turn the quality chart up who can?
Yesterday while I was having a quick chat with Yogesh our Architect over some code quality elements he made a comment saying that "I am not accepting this quality code, even from myself" I was amazed on the commitment. He stayed until late evening on a weekend just to make sure that he reviews every line of code a developer has written and added comments to refactor the code. Is this not to much demanding about Quality of code you do? Imagine if every developer makes the same statement for himself...I am sure we would have some real quality Softwares.... what it would result in is of course what can help our company finally grow...

3. Optimizing usage of self within the Team

I am assigned X , Y and Z... but I had some time on my plate and I did A B and C, can you make D happen now and this can maybe help us more...

I can only write Server Side code, but I have some skills in UI technologies, databases and some of the config tasks... I may be a Jack of All... but the Team can find me handy when X Y or Z are not there...

Get yourself into a arena where you can optimize every skill of you that can help the project teams. explore yourself and the technologies when you are not sleeping, watching TV , spending time chit chat with unknown faces on face Book.

This can make a multi value Individual and a multi value Team.. and when you have a Team that can do anything and every thing... is your Sales Team going to sit quiet?

4. Productivity - Improve it by 100% every day
Can you? You cant? Well you can... and you dont need to keep the counter to infinite... but Imagine.. today you cover 5 story points... cover yourself to achieve 5 the next day but with JUnits and some tests covered... darn you have increased by 100% already?

Next day cover 6 story points and some documentation... add it with the JUnits and 6 story points with the next day... reset your counter to 5 story points again end of week.

I am sure not only you will have a greater value of achievement but also a greater deal of dependency on tight projects...

5. Setting and delivering expectations

We all fail here... We dont set the right expectations with ourselves when we start... for instance a developer when starts on the feature starts with a mind that this is too difficult to achieve in the stipulated time... even if you tell the developer that a feature that was estimated for 1 week he is given a time of 1 month to finish... Always monitor 2 levels of expectations... 1 that you keep with your Lead and another that you keep to yourself... we usually mistake by keeping higher expectations with leads and lower with self... reverse this. This will have a severe impact on how and what you deliver...

The next top 5 will come next.. But if you start on increasing on your demands with yourself now.. even if people call you too demanding.. can actually help you achieve your actual demands easily ;)

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Project Success and Team Values

Values always drive success, Success in any form. A Team without values is not possible, or in sweeter words no Values no Organizational success... so where do these values come from, where do they go and how they affect the success of any project?


Too many questions... too little time to answer... but let me answer these questions for you today with some more questions... if you still dont get an answer we discuss it further...

"I think if we change the Document Info tab to a common area we can use it more effectively not only will users get an added benefit, but the code will also be cleaner"

Puneet had this discussion with us on a healthy weekend..

Stephen said "So much of Javascript on the login page is not good, we loose benefits like SEO, heavy logins, general login values "

Rhushi says "Dynamic menus are the way forward, we dont want to put lot of if else in the presentation layer"

Yogesh T says Our first phase should be driving the important features we can achieve, later should target the features and code refactoring

Well I am not saying that these are the only values of our team... our values lay beneath the statements made above....

1. How best can we do things that our users will love it....
2. We are up to remove every barrier that can make our product less valuable
3. We are ready for today , tomorrow and several days after tomorrow...
4. We are up for changing what we did in the past to improve them always...

So many discussions we have every day, each of the discussion bring up a different value which is unique... I like it, I love it.. these are the things that drive us to success... these are the things that are letting us build a team that can sometime in future do what we want to do and what we never thought of doing...

Today I see these values are what determine our project success... These values can drive the organizational values and then later these values can bring organizations to greater value......

What statements does your team make, that can bring a light to your customers future


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Of Teams and Mediocrity II
Friday, 6 November 2009


Tanveer said :


Well, Everywhere this is the same thing going on...it is because of impotent recruitment process.
A Interviewer don't want to hire a person better than him, a manager give preference to a candidate from his community, People who refer candidates set out as well as break out the interviewing process.
That is what people say that only because of few team members this project is actually driving.
So finally you left with one choice i.e. - 4th choice.

Does Mediocrity start with someone joining or even before joining? The answer is Yes to a certain level its about the hiring process... but finally the mediocrity takes its path only with mediocre team... In a previous post on How to find the right guy I mentioned some things about hiring process... but thats not the core of mediocrity...its the environment, culture , its the surrounding that pornshows mediocrity...

Ending Mediocrity is the only choice if You, Your Team and Your Organization has to grow... YOU is the important part in finishing mediocrity... I write more details about the same as you follow this post... but the question is can you end mediocrity? Well No you cant... The Leaders can to a certain level.. but the values of the Team can definitely kill it....

"I am up for it, lets make it work"
"We did a good job, I think you were fantastic in it"
"Hey Guys I am gonna make this work over the weekend so you dont waste your Monday on it"
"I love Facebook too, but you know I love to make my product better than it"
"So what if I get paid less, I love my Job "
"Lets finish this and then go for Lunch?"

When you start hearing this it means that the end of mediocrity is introduced... its the Team that can kill it.. and we all leaders and managers have to play a role in it... How?

Sense it , Feel it , Penetrate it and Remove it...

Well I am not defining the procedure to seduce here, instead its the way you choose to handle mediocrity...

Sense It
1. Find out all the behaviors that lead to mediocrity, dont think of how to change them... just observe them.
2. Individualize the behavior, a Team can have a common mediocre behavior but there is a lot of individual set of items in it.
3. Pull out the common points , plug them into individual elements.

A common set of mediocre behaviors are :

1. My Job role doesnt define this
2. I did my task and now I go home, so what if he is stuck
3. I think its not something that is easy, it has X, Y and Z problems.. I would solve them only like others do...
4. I work longer, I should be paid more? or I work less...
5. I am the only hard worker here? why???
6. I think they are not so good...I can do it in 5 mins they take ages for it.. so I would too take ages

Feel it

Now since you know whos and whats of mediocrity target independent elements...feel them, be with these problems... try to understand individual reasons to problems...

sometimes you may hear...
1. The last train home is at 5, I have to go
2. I cant work long hours, I have family to take care at home
3. I have never worked on it before and thats not my interest area too
4. I was looking forward for XX , but I got YY and that doesnt motivate me
5. We used to work differently , here it is different so I cant be very productive

Penetrate it

Now since you know the causes and reasons of mediocrity.. try to penetrate it...

1. Pick the Best lot , put them on worst tasks
2. Pick the worst lot , put them on the best tasks
3. Be with them, let them own it and see what they do...
4. Bring them into situations of war of the lords and see what they do and how they handle it...
5. Show them how you do it, and what you do.. let them follow.

Remove it

Now its time to get rid of mediocrity.. but there are lot of precautions to be taken..

1. Introduce them to step into the processes... One at a time.. if you start multiple things in one go you will be killed...and the Change will be mediocre itself
2. Tell them what needs to be changed... and why and how it will benefit them
3. Be specific... let them understand what needs to be achieved..
4. Get suggestions, Get recommendations, ask your teams to suggest...
5. Confront non-performance. Make sure your team knows that continuing in the old, mediocre behavior is unacceptable. Enforce this if needed..
6. Ask for feedback and also involve them in change processes.

Prepare yourself to celebrate the change in Mediocre behavior.. remember you also need to explain the Team on why they dont get some facilities.. its only because they have to get rid of the mediocre behavior.

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Of Teams and Mediocrity
Tuesday, 3 November 2009

The Last post I wrote about Teams and trusts I missed a critical point that I would like to cover now... Mediocrity within Teams... You may have seen this often, very often, you may have done it or experienced it... you may be a part of it or you may hate it... Mediocrity has always being a killer in Teams... a few examples :


1. You step into a new Project , a New Team and when you start for work on day 1 you see that all the guys in the Team are busy heads down in Facebook..

2. You take your desk and see around, you see every one busy with themselves...

3. On day 1 you see your watch and find its lunch time, you step out and find all the colleagues sitting and sun bathing for hours during lunch time

4. You see someone not finishing tasks on time and yet not facing consequences

5. You see Team members not following rules

6. You see Team members not following disciplines...

What do you do when you see all this?

Here is what I have seen...

1. Some Join the lot
2. Some crib about it and then join the lot
3. Some choose to do the same in a different way
4. Some want to change it, but cant because the tree with roots cannot be changed and then give up
5. Some Quit
6. Some enjoy this and do it forever


What do you do? Or What will you do?

As Managers
As Team Players

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Why Track Features than Tasks?
Monday, 2 November 2009

Over the last 6 months of rigorous development effort and the subsequent time pressures on the Team... We had to revise the Prime Directive... not only that we moved away from tracking tasks and User stories to track features... Core reason being that we realized a lot of time gets spend when you track tasks ... a simple example is here....


To develop Message as a feature....we split it into User Stories and User Stories into tasks.. then in Iterations we try to control, manage and track tasks... eventually the bigger picture is always lost when you track the micro items..

So Ideally sending a Message notification within the app can be broken into logical pieces as:
1. List Incoming Messages
2. List Outgoing Messages
3. Create Message
4. Add recipients to Message
5. Add Documents to Message
6. Forward
7. Reassign
8. Import
9. Export
10. Print

Then we split the High level User Stories into detail tasks ... like:

1. List messages where you are recipient in To
2. List where you are on copy
3. List where you are in to/cc through a group
4. List overdue messages
5. List from favourites
6. List with sort capabilities
7. List with filters

At a certain level you go more deeper and define ...

1. List messages where you are recipient in To
A. Define JSP
B. Define Grid
C. Define XXX Classes
D. Define Query
E. DAO
F. Blah Blha

eventually the deeper the task break down the better for the developers... but do the deeper task break down really help the Product Owners? Answer is NO.. they dont. A Lot of time developer break down of tasks are irrelevant to Product Owners... or to Project managers too... what counts is the progress on where we stand at the end of the Iteration in terms of features.... by count, by functionalities or by usability...

What works and why ?
Track Tasks in the beginning of the project,thats where you would want to know the momentum and velocity.

Track the features towards the end of the Project - that is what will tell you if you are moving right direction mainly towards the end.

I wont help if you know that 10 of the 20 tasks are completed, but it will help when you know that Messages on a whole works with the following features and the following features are yet to be ready?

Be Agile? Evolve in phases of projects...


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