And you become a Project Manager!!!

One stormy windy night, when lightening strikes the roof, you are deep in sleep with a dream that takes you to a deathly hallow... sound of serendipity all over your ears, voices of shallow deaths all over the world.. a dark cloud starts covering the world and with a bang there strikes a lightening right at your left foot... gives you the power of a Knight and makes you take the oath as a Templar.. there with a bang the time stops... and there

"YOU BECOME A PROJECT MANAGER"

Well not really... its not that dramatic, nor that simpler to be a Project Manager... but then how does one really become a Project Manager?

1. You take your vision to the next level and give every project participant a feel of ownership of the project.

2. You tell them what, when and how of the future of the project is going to be.

3. You communicate effectively and timely.

4. You communicate to your team and alert them when they are going to make a mistake.

5. You stop them to think, You kick start them to march

6. You share the same page with every one on the project

7. You make them believe that it is achievable

8. You make them execute in the way it is most beneficial

9. You think every moment of time that 1 line of code you would want to write

10.You start staying over night to plan tasks for others for the next day.

11. Your list of TODO is always bigger than the size of your monitors

12. Your mailbox is full of unread emails

13. Your calendar buzzes you every 2 hrs about a meeting that starts in 15 minutes

14. You buy gadgets to ease your job, You dont use it because they are an effort to setup.

15. You think of Orange , Green and Red all the time

16. You start your day early and you end it late.

17. Weekend is a extra day you get to complete the pending tasks

18. You are always busy, when it comes to friends and family

19. Until the moment of failure, you believe you will succeed

20. You drink coffee like water, and water like coffee

21. You think Lunch hour is the best hour to send the pending email responses.

22. You think meetings are a waste, when they dont expedite the project

23. You always feel you are short of resources

24. You think you need to know what's involved and what's not involved in the project.

25. You started to like this word DONE.

If you see the above few symptoms in you, You bet you are turning to be ONE HELL of a Project Manager.... but wait.... remind yourself of those things that takes you away from been a Project manager....

1. You hold a weekly status update with the Team and next day you fire a email to check status of your Team

2. You call in , walk to , or chat with one of your team members 5 minutes to 5 about something very critical that you told him/her that you wanted to discuss in the morning

3. You schedule multiple meetings with your Team members who are on tight deadlines. Just to ask same questions.

4. You cannot make a decision and you think that pushing the decision on others court will get you away from it.

5. You want your Team to think out of the box and code and develop fast, even if requirements are not defined or present.

6. You think every one is wasting their time, and everything was supposed to be completed yesterday.

7. The only thing you want to hear is "It is Done"

8. When one person in your Team quits, you think the task can be handled by the person next in the alphabetical order

9. You like to change the resources, scope, budget but not the time

10. Quality means BUG FREE to you

11. You have a meeting with Project Teams, just so that you can summarize in black and white on what you want them to do.

12. You look and ask for only those options that you know are not feasible

13. You assign someone 2 tasks at the same time 1 with highest priority and then check on the other task every day

14. You think you are the one working hard than anyone else.

15. You switch on teams tasks depending on the angry emails you receive

16. You compare the planned date Vs the Actual date

If any of the above symptoms are nearing you, You need to get into a meditation mode and think of Project Nirvana... because these things are just going to turn your project into a miserable experience....

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Are your Best Guys in Action?

Lately reading the Technical Interview I took from Suresh and to my earlier post regarding the Diminishing Software Quality I am really really sad when I look at the way the software's are developed and manhandled afterwords... A simple question I ask to myself looking at the IT Industry boom in India is "Are the Best Guy's doing what they are Best at?" ... Surprised to listen? I myself feel NO.. The Best Programmer in a Technology within a Year wants to be Technical Lead, A Technical lead wants to be an Architect or Manager within a few months and a Manager wants to be a Delivery Head , Delivery Head to be the VP and the VP to be the CEO... Well No one really thinks beyond a CEO do they?

Looking aback I really feel that a team member who is best at coding is pushed to designing (The management Sales BUZZ WORD "GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES" sucks here), A Web Designer been asked to be a Animator because the company has got the project and they want to show him his growth prospects, A Technical lead who never thought outside beyond technology is asked to do People Management and poorly enough an illeterate (I really am talking here about everyone who are not business blooded) is asked to run an organisation.

After you have a read of this can you go,check and let me know if you think:
1. The Best Guys are doing what they used to do best and with evolving and surprising results?

2. All who are a part of your Team are there just because they are best at what they are doing?

3. Growth for them is designed in such a way that it is directly proportionate to the Aspiration and the exposure to achieve the aspiration?

4. People are not pushed to do things just to keep them within or make them run for a Mirage?

5. You are doing something you are Best at?

6. You are doing something for a long time and yet you want to do because everytime you do the same you think you have learnt more?

Huh? So many dammn questions and the answer is just one... "Diminishing Quality" So what to do about this? Lets make our Growth Planners added with a spice of an entity that tells us what we are best at, Let our employers know what we can do best for them, Let our resumes show what best we can bring to the given organisation and finally Let us take a Pledge that we will CARE ABOUT THE SOFTWARE WE DEVELOP Not for the sake of it but for a reason that can help the Software development Industry achieve the goals for what it was intended to have started...


Regards
Sameer Shaikh

P.S. Please do not take a Pledge just becuase you want to seen, Mean it.

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Rewards : Do they Motivate?

"I am been awarded as the Employee of the Year" - Ramesh
"Oh wow.. I am sure that will bring a lot of big money to you in the coming Appraisal" - Inner Ramesh
"I guess so.. but so far nothing seems to be working" - Ramesh
"Is it.. maybe then you should look for a change?" - Inner Ramesh
"Yeah I am feeling the same..." - Ramesh

OK so before you stop reading this post let me explain This was the conversation I heard on my split way to a IT Restaurant(its always full of IT professionals) today. The reason I call Ramesh and Inner Ramesh is because Its the same guy having the conversation and How I know ?? So the lines between are been edited where I was conversing.. Yeah try and read betwene lines now ;)

OK so do you really think awards motivate you? Long back I heard from a developer that we are not been awarded.. He really meant that his work was not fully appreciated... It really took time for me to understand on what he means by Appreciation.. mainly because it wasnt clear on what does appreciation mean for him... I felt the following things mean appreciation to him:
1. Monetory benefit
2. More Quality work
3. Public Appreciation
4. Hike in role
5. More responsibilities
6. More involvement

Later when the same guy was awarded with different awards.. his expectations changed.. he expected that the rewards he had been getting are going to earn him a big big appraisal, finally when the D-Day came in it was not to his satisfaction. I realised what is wrong here and I can really tell to some extent how Awards can De Motivate you:

1. Award = Money = P.A Growth = P.M Hike = Immediate change in the Salary, that is the general understanding of the average developer I feel here. You dont get a new Pay Slip with this award you get De-Motivated.

2. Award if its a temporary monetory benefit: I remember in my previous organisation I heard Maruf getting rewarded with a 20K for been the employee of the quarter.. it just took a few days to take that off from his mind and he was back to the routine again.. meaning the pressure is back and it hurts, "So what a Big Deal if they re-payed me for my hard work and anyways its Taxable". De-Motivating?

3. Award if its more Quality work : I realised that when handling the experienced Team... more quality work is considered to be as more responsibility but not more pay raise... eventually Award converts to be a De-Motivator.

4. Public Appreciation: It can motivate a few not all... specially people like Albert not sure if he is updating his profile. I remember when he was awarded in front of the 200+ crowd including employess and families, it just took a day for him to call the award a Bull Shit, Reason? that's my Duty. The second level of people want to get recognized in public If they dont get that every time they get disappointed and of course De-Motivated

5. Hike in Role : An Award drive you to think that with this award you ar bound to be the new Lead, manager, CTO, CEO or what not... wondering with the awards one receive in a lifetime in an IT company he should become the PM of the Universe ;) considering one role change with every award;)

6. More Responsibilities : These people resemble the one above, they might or might not love the work but they want more responsibilities. If more responisbilities come in its good or the Award was just a raddish.

7. More involvement in everything ;) You cant give me? I am upset.

Well this is not all... I really see more than these reaosns where Awards can De-Motivate.. eventually I feel that the Awards are seen very closely tied up with Monetory Benefits... Be it temporary or long term... I think it needs an innovation in awarding the Team individuals..

Next way to move forward - > What should an Ideal award be Like ;)

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Principles and Practice

Yesterday I heard the Lift Man in the office premices talking to one of the collegues on how to operate a lift.... whoa one lesson a day, and I know some operations already ofcourse with some access keys ;)

So the point here is how we confuse or differentiate in the 2 so very easy and often used terms called "Practice" and "Principles". Too often we don't understand what they mean and quite oftenly we derive them as we want... Now why the Hell is this topic in the PM Blog?? of so here is the reason why... 3 things I always feel are very important part of the Agile Teams... 1. Practice 2. Principles and 3. Values.Lot of you might or might not agree, but honestly I have heard wrong meanings so many times... I thought I would really clarify what it means: ...

Practice :- Something that we follow as routines, tasks that are repeated again and again and again ...

Principles :- Something I would say a set of ethical actions or laws defined ... obviously the dictionary.com would mean it as a Leader .... but the context we are using it doesnt really fit that to be described as a leader ;)

OK... so coming back how does the marriage between them works? So a practice is really something that is being carried on the basis of a defined principle... dont understand? To make sure you get the work done complete and in time you define a set of rules that needs to be carried away (that's principle !!!! Now you know?) and to achieve this goal of completing things on time you make sure you practice the principles that are laid down...

Now why I thought of writing this? Today I was trying to ask Savio about using the DB Units or Cactus with our application (they are extended from the JUnits and something we are trying to move towards to achieve the test Driven Development) and he made a statement that really triggered the feeling that there is something missing... I am copying the chat as it is
"Savio says : If we are thinking seriously of get the unit-tests working, then we need to first move the unit-tests to use a DB and to get rid of the mocks..."

It might not make right sense to you if you read it as it is .. the meaning has a deeper breadth.... To me it means that if you want to Practice the Unit Tests correctly .. you need to define the principles correctly .... Wow... what a success this is... The Fact that such a tricky thing is understood in such a clear word... what he said later is below:

"Savio says Only after that should we think of moving up stream and getting extensions like dbUnit and Cactus into the picture..."

Now it probably makes it clearer.

So the Rule of POLY BOLY says that Practice the principles and make sure that the principles are evaluated... only then Practices can produce something that can effect positive values...

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com

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Time to call it Ufffffffffffffffffffff.

The whole of last 2 weeks was like sailing in the boat of problems which was fired by waves of issues, one after the other none of them new. I had to hold this blog for 2 weeks, and now I have to amend it just so that I can put it on a right time, Guess this is the right time….

So coming back to when to call an Ufffff (you call it "stop it" or "Enough" or anything else). I realized that sometimes certain mistakes are repeated, one, two, three and many more time... by the same people differently or by different people in the similar fashion... be it Software development or any other damm piece of profession, to be honest people repeating the mistakes… are not a problem ... it's the management who is the problem here....

How?
OK so here it comes…. Last few months (since I am here with my current employement) (We) had been talking about the Quality in the programming, and in spite of calls and discussions every 2 weeks for the last 1 year I somehow feel that the team makes the same mistakes and gets ignorant about the quality… nothing new... I am sure if you are into a Software Manager you must be facing the same issue…
"Dammit why the hell they dont understand" that's what Prince told me when I was at bolt's office...

Long back I heard a story from Henry Cobb about a Donkey who used to carry some scrap everyday and used to spill part’s of it on the way to the Masters house. The Master did drive the donkey off the path, made barriers to the load so that it doesn’t spill ... But it changed for a day and then the same old story… He had no other choice than whipping, but things never changed for years and years… The moral Henry wanted to give was that if you do the same thing again and again you get into a habit... what I derived from it was the Master never went and analyzed why this happen …simply because he too had a Project Manager’s brain…

The Donkey tells me that certain mistakes remain rectified only till the influence is there … which doesn't means that till the developer thinks that his code is being reviewed he will not make mistake with the quality… it means that till the fire to build the quality code is present in the developer the code produced is quality … the moment this fire gets ceased… I mean urge towards quality consciousness is off the mistake comes into action…

Same thing happened to the cricket … when we started playing cricket for the first time in the organization there were a bunch of guys… the moment there were matchsticks that don't produce flames cricket was off… Thanks to Natwar and Saket that this is being enlightened again….

So the whole point here is that repeated mistakes will come all the way along... all the Management has to do is to think of avoiding the scenarios...

I am sure you have the next How??? ok so I am not coaching you here until you pay me a few grands or promise to subscribe the blog ;) just kidding....here are things that can be done to avoid / tackle repeated mistakes...

1. Make sure that the Objective is in front of the Eyes all the time...
2. Make sure that it is being talked and followed up so that the feeling of the objective been alive is there.
3. Embarrass the odd ones out and publicize it so that everyone understands that mistakes might go un-noticed but repeated mistakes will lead to embarrassment. (This really came up when I was talking to Kari about this in one of the Demo where we were silent spectators...)
4. Cut the root not the branches… meaning cut the causes of the Build breaking not the developer's doing the builds…

Well these are not all…. I am sure all through next few months I am going to face bigger issues than these that will cause bigger than Ass pains… But I am preparing myself for it.... A New Lesson to a repeated problem...

Do you have another How ????

I am preparing a board to list down the Mistakes that we(The Team) makes everyday (at least the ones we catch) and try to work on them, of course there should be the Mistake (wo) Man of the week so that their is a celebrity status to the legends. The plan is to have a Story board of mistakes on a common area so that every one sees it… and the Actions taken on them ... nothing more can get your celebrity ranks high in the company...

Next week I will try to post how this board will look like ….

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com

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Monday Morning.... Yuck?????

I recently landed up on this community on Orkut "Monday Sucks" and it was fortunate that there was no surprise… the community is full of Monday Haters… darn… Students, managers, Developers, Executives and a whole bunch of people saying why they hate Mondays…



Well it doesn't really take a community to tell you how much you hate Monday as you see lot of calls being made everyday when it comes to a discussion on a Monday … I don't know all or most reasons exactly why people hate, but I surely got a few things worth mentioning that can make your colleague not hate Monday:

Let your Week not begin with Monday: That is one reason our Sprint starts on Friday…I understand the most boring phase of a WORK LIFECYCLE is the beginning phase (Doesn't apply to you if you are a PP), and that's what every one of us think, Monday is the kickoff of work…

Avoid Meetings on Monday: Most of the Update Meetings happen on Monday, the first fear that comes to an employees mind is … "Damn… I got to update my Boss... and Hell I am not prepared…!" Or "Wish there was no party on the Friday night I would have finished some of my work on the weekend", actually lot more. No Meetings and Updates on Monday morning help release some pressure from the employees ;)

The Beginning of the Day should be 1 in the noon? I will get some stares from Kari (My Boss: D) for this… but I believe lot of guys are up until late even on Sunday nights… Be it a Family Function or a Dinner, or some auspicious occasion or a Bday party… starting late will kick off the thoughts of "Mom don't wake me up this early"

Light as a Feather, Smooth as Sush's cheeks: Mondays should be shorter and sweeter and the day should really begin with some sweet faces around…. It sounded funny to Mark (My previous employer) when I asked him to keep Interviews for BPO section on the Monday afternoon hours…

Well this is not all lot more you can do to get your Monday work as a Saturday… Just that you need to get out of the High School ;)

Regards
Sameer Shaikh

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Success is in ????????????

The more of a Manager we be the more we loose on the leadership front… this I have noticed over a period of time while Project Managing…. While I think about all this I realize that this really has nothing to do with Manager or being a leader but rather with everyone be it a developer or QA or Manager… I think success is a radish that everyone really wants to achieve and for that they do anything and everything… I thought I would put up some points that can tell you where we fail in defining success:

Success is in:

1. Empowering the team to handle their tasks but not driving them to solutions….
2. Involving the Team into decision making and not defining what they have to do to achieve a solution…
3. Meeting as a Team to discuss problems and solutions not just taking it away…
4. Responding to queries and exploring solutions rather than waiting for them
5. Being Yourself rather than pretending to be someone else
6. Sharing the experience with everyone and not keeping things within fearing that everyone will be what you are….
7. Listening to what others want to say rather than pretending to know you know everything
8. Telling what you know and exploring the options within but not defining it to be the ultimate solution
9. Reflecting rather than being Opaque… so that other's can have a space to expand
10. Prompting rather than commanding so that everyone gets help wherever required… and still can balance themselves
11. Suggesting rather than dictating so that you learn what is in store with others
12. Connecting rather than isolating…. Like …How good it will be to involve the Developer while we discuss the requirement changes with the BA
13. Digging it rather than wrapping it with some make ups…. Like do you think that there is more of a problem in the solution?
14. Encouraging rather than hiding the credits… Like… This is something that was a problem since long… I am sure this solution will be liked by everyone
15. Focusing rather than deviating…. Like we discuss about all the issues in the company when doing a personal appraisal…
16. Being specific than generalizing like "Saket missed the bug which is causing the broken application" … rather than saying "QA missed the bug or dev did a faulty code to screw the app on a whole" (Sorry Saket that was just an example)
17. Marshalling rather than getting driven …. Like Agreed that this is a problem but for now our objective is to resolve XXX problem… lets come back to this when we have resolved it.
18. Challenging than accepting everything like "do you think that's the ultimate solution?"
19. Reading it to the bottom not just the heading

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Information………………

Every morning for years, at about 11:30, the City MIC telephone operator in a small town received a call from a man asking the exact time. One day the operator summed up nerve enough to ask him why the regularity.
"I'm foreman of the local sawmill," he explained. "Every day I have to blow the whistle at noon so I call you to get the exact time."
The operator giggled, "That's really funny," she said. "All this time we've been setting our clock by your whistle.

The moral of the story is that sometimes we rely so much on a set of information that we really forget to testify the originality and reliability of it. You agree or you don’t I see it as a SIN in Project Management. If you want to be a Good Manager you need to make sure that what you have is correct and testified, if not you have to take the pain to do it before actions are performed on it. The added pain you take will also help you be a curious, inquisitive Manager who wants to learn more than pretending to know or giving Bookish answers…

There was a question raised in the SEO caferatti that happened 3 weeks ago at the KP Barista where SEO Manager of BigBytes raised a question saying “I am subscribed to several forums and websites and a part of Global SEO community, yet reading and implementing all the changes is not getting me to a highly trafficked website”. The answer was clear the information he was subscribed to was either not true/ bookish/ not relevant for what he was doing / not a solution and still he ended up spending 3 engineers work on a strategy which was uncertified…. Good Managers take a added step before provoking the team to move in the given direction so that they don’t end up in the debt of Fatal mistakes on irrelevant information.

Where do you think you stand while you use the information process in your team?

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Want to be a Manager?

I thought this is something that would be of interest to a bunch of aspirants who see Management as the future… Luckily I had a chance last night to visit the M.G. Road Barista for a late cup of Cuppa-Chino ;) to add to my good fate I met Sridhar Swami an old mentor of mine working as a Management Trainer with a High Profile MNC. While the topic of discussion was Pains of being a Project Manager the topic took us to “Why You Choose to be a Project Manager”. While we were discussing I realized that if you want to be a Manager

1. You have to think if you are ready for it?
2. Is someone forcing you for it?
3. Do you really want to be there?
4. Is it the right time to be there?

While I realized that many of us who are “Accidental Managers” (Wait for my post on this … coming over the weekend) miss some or all of them, lot many of them flow in the joy of being promoted till they realize that certain fatal things have already struck their experience (You don’t have to taste poison if you have to check if it’s poison).

A few of the simple things that will come to you when you are a New Manager:

1. Decisional constipation: If you are not used to take instant actions, be it actions or corrective measures, this is the first thing you will have to repair. Many of the early age Managers fail throughout due to the constipational way of working (slow and hierarchical decisions if you don’t understand me clearly).

2. I gotta kid : This doesn’t mean that you have to take the labor pains… several Managers face the issue where they end up estimating things considering own self… Albert Alexis told me once that he takes the “Practical Leadership” sessions in 7 days while his assistant took it for 11 days in his absence… This is where it will hurt you… estimate considering the resource expertise not your expertise.

3. Don’t go the Alexander way: Many new Managers want to do everything by own… you miss the leverage of Delegation and control when you do this at the same time you spend too much of time doing everything on your own… WTF is the team for dude? Alexander delegated and won, the other way didnt work for him.You can’t run all the miles alone.

4. Dictators don’t last long, Democrats do? Another problem New Managers face is that the excitement drives them to get into meetings where they dictate what they are expecting from there reporting members…. Darn… too fast too furious…. You are jumping in the hoping lane. Make sure that you give enough time for the members to settle down and accept you as your Manager. This problem occurs mainly if you are promoted against a peer’s likes.

5. People can’t be managed: You can’t manage people, so manage the work and expectations… don’t set ones that you are not sure or aware of.

6. Learn to Manage yourself than anyone: If you are a new Manager make sure you know how to spend time and where … to be Good in your kick off you have to start safe and slow.

While this was not all that we discussed I think I am always tempted to write more …. So before I really get into be a Management Coach, I am sure you guys got a different experience when you were new to Management.

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://pm-better-than-sex.blogspot.com
sameera.cmc@gmail.com

P.S. You may disagree with my views … don’t hesitate to comment as I am still looking for better mentors.

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Job Hopping : Where is the world driving you?

Last I met my friend Dhiraj after 3 months and asked him how his Job was going I was shocked to know when he said “It’s going Damn cool”… Yes I was shocked because in past he used to start cursing his company once he was 3 months old…. The second shock did not take much time when he said he had hopped the earlier firm and was with a new maestro this time it’s a company in the Health sector… so finally I understood that he had hopped 3 companies over 6 months and was holding another offer just when he is not even a month old….

OK let’s forget Dhiraj … but the fact that Job Hopping these days has become a fashion and to add more glue to it it’s the easy way to make Big money… Boy you don’t need to be mafia to earn a couple of Big Grands a month… just Hop companies every 2 months and you will get a fancied designation with a handsome 10-15% hike if some desperate service company who got a big project last month finds you, its possible to get a 40% hike there….

So the bigger problem here is job hopping is the best piece seen by the young lads who are screwing there careers for the sake of easy flow of money and some fancy designation…. I found a couple of reasons why people really hop the jobs (BTW when I say hopping I mean jumping across jobs when you are not even settled in the current firm)…

1. Your friend got a good offer in some other company (Only Money my Son).
2. You feel shy taking your Company Name because it is too small.
3. You get a fancy Job Designation.
4. You want to impress people with your career growth graph.
5. You don’t like the work you are doing.
6. You don’t like the people around (No girls/dude’s in my Office????)
7. You ended up in this company because you wanted to get out of the old one anyhow.
8. Your colleague was promoted and not you.
9. Your performance in this organization is not good and you think the next organization you can start afresh.
10. blah blha

Well these are the just few reasons I can really make out …. I am sure you will have tons of them to add… So while I see that people with lesser experience tend to hop more there is also a backend demon that tends the middle level guys to hop… simply see the way Indian IT is growing any person with 6+ yrs of experience don’t want to play a role lesser than a Manager, A Person with 4 yrs of experience wants to be a Project Lead and so on… this thinking is not so bad but it tends to be bad when a person not having enough experience ends up in a very very critical role screwing up the whole business…. See the way IT curriculum is generating IT aspirants… around 1 million every month? Interested in IT or not but since they think its big money they are here…

I don’t think we can change a lot of here at least the mentality cant be change so I thought I would just give you a jinx on the future problems. I remember Sarah (Our ex. V.P) telling me that we are looking for people who want to stay with us for long just not 6 months… No wonder why there were a bunch of interviews and a heavy H.R interview I had to face before getting in here… And for the same reasons we had being rejecting candidates looking at their profiles.

Also since the IT is evolving lot of companies are getting into trade liaisons to avoid hopping some of the BPO companies in India have that contract, while other strong players of the IT world are trying to avoid Talent that is hoping… I think it is going to be more and more difficult over next few years for the Job hoppers to get through easily…The reason is clear... no one wants to waste there time on a resource that will runaway and the H.R. will have to struggle soon finding a replacements. It’s the H.R. that is and should be more aggressive on this front.

Before I have to quit writing as the post is getting too long I thought I will also share a few fallbacks that you will have to face sooner or later if you are an expert or Amateur Job hopper:

1. Lack of creditability. You can get in the organization easily but you won’t get the additional set of responsibilities just because people fear that you will leave soon.
2. Lack of Experience: You do the same things that you had being doing in previous organizations, I think every organization has the same set of things for everyone to start with…
3. You are a Technical Fool: Just not because you are there in the shortest period of time but because you haven’t learnt what you were supposed to as you kept hopping…
4. Visiting Card: You will have to change your visiting card and numbers often... one way you loose your creditability.
5. CEO: Ever dreamt of being a CEO… if Yes then Job Hopping will never get you there… No Management will want you to take that over if you have being hopping… Savio told me the other day that the CEO of one of his previous companies was working for the same firm for 25 yrs… Dammn I am ashamed I had being max for 31/2 yrs.
6. You can’t be an expert unless you are a born Smart A**Hole… Hopping leaves you only in one position “Jack of All King of None”


OK so this sounds no more than enough… but I would be glad to listen on what you guys think on Job Hopping?

regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com
http://pm-better-than-sex.blogspot.com
mailto:sameera.cmc@gmail.com

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Project Management - The Developer's Productivity Guide

Not much of my time is really spent on pairing with the developer for production development but I do spend some time howering around them for Business clarifications and other petty things.. For the last few days when I was really trying to understand the areas where the developers loose most of their time and the reasons for the Iterations not being enough to finish the features that they are working on, while I was trying to find all these things I really came across a strange thing...A Lot of foreplay and playoff happens when they are on the RAD tools doing the production development...

While me and Kari (My Boss) discussed about effectively using the RAD tools for development specially when we saw the way Savio (Our Tech Lead) organises them, it was something that we wanted our guys to really work on, however I see something more major here in terms of the productivity... ofcourse organising the development window is going to help but what about other things ? Imagine you have to continously refer to a Wiki page or to the Bug Tracking tool ? Or the Web Server Logs ? or the constantly buzzing PM who wants update from you on the IM window? Or your Sweet Heart who is the inspiration to you when you develop something ... or to that matter your Online date you were just hitting on in Orkut?

Yeah so the reason I say all this is that I see lot of toggles of windows when you are working be it any of the above or something not here... I would say in a whole 8 hr work period you would actually spend toggling windows and changing and switching and searching things for atleast 1 hr... You may for sure Disagree ... But on my Blog you are allowed to lol. So the conclusion is why dont we provide the developers with a 21 inch monitor .... or a more huge monitor so that the developer can really see lot of items in one go... (I am not in favour of changing the font size to the lowest to make this happen). So if you really have a huge monitor 21" or more it will for sure make a difference. On the other front the cost of the monitor is not so high (7000 INR + the 17" monitor we buy).

Though I agree that it wont increase the productivity drastically but the developer productivity will certainly be improved... what do you Industry experts say? While I prepare for the next Hurdle in the Developer Productivity?

regards
Sameer Shaikh

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