Serial Entrepreneurs?

Meeting with Mark Organ a few weeks ago in Pune was a kickoff to think the Serial way.. which honestly provoked me to think about the Buzz Kings and the internet Millionaires... So what is the reason I am writing this post here?

Well Project Management or to that matter any sort of Management is all about making things better than SEX, and Yes Making Money definately is better than SEX.. Hope yall agree..

When Mark termed the word Serial entrepreneur it honestly reminded me of Aaron Cohen and going a bit more insight I really see the way the serial entrepreneurs have bought a revolution in the internet and Media markets...

Heading backwards and coming the way forward we see
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis ahh you dont know them? Well heard about Kazaa? or to that matter Skype? well the revolution is right here then.

Or you see Mark Fletcher whose ONEList and then later Bloglines IS a big success..

Seeing all this it really triggers that be Sabeer Bhatia (You should see the NanoCity Project that is his new Goal after Hotmail?) Or a YouTube you can be as successful as the internet millionaires if you have a sweet short vision of making a revolution. It doesnt take a long time to reprimind me that "TechShepherds" should not die that easy.... Should I get on the same path with a different vision and destination soon?

Damm some VC's required... anybody out there?

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So whats the Problem?

With reference to my earlier post on Are we creating a Bug? and the strong opinion I carry about Negative Management (I am putting it sweet here so that you dont feel I am calling MIS-MANAGEMENT) In both the stories I find the biggest similarity... A WRONG APPROACH. So who decides the right approach? How to take a right approach? How to avoid creating a Bug? Or Natwar (Our Automation King) language Animator V/s Animation approach.

So the 2 things that tell me what went wrong in the earlier 2 stories are:
1. The right resource was not found..
2. The right action was never right..

think the right action is never instant... there maybe arguments on this but thats a personal opinion.... I have always seen hasty decision ending up into major crisis. secondly when I say the right Action is never right, I always mean that the Right Action has scope to be improved. For instance creating competition is must within an organisation and is the right action, however competition that can lead to insurgency can screw the business.

So we stand on How to be more effective?
How to take the right steps?

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Creating a Bug?

I always think that Management is all about investing keeping in mind the ROI. Eventually lot of the Managers today know investing but not sure if they understand how and where to generate the ROI from... Well the reason why my post hits the blog is a recent incident that happened... Around a month ago I met a mother of a kid from my son's nursery school and while talking to her I realised that she was planning to get her child out of the school to a new one because she thinks that the school is putting too much pressure on her son and she wants her son do some painting and dancing along with swimming. Lately when I saw her again while going to drop my son to the school we had a chat that hit my mind badly.... She wanted to invest some more time so that her son learns been a bit pressured to study and manage things out...

Goshh.... Well you don't need to meet a mother to know the problem we have here... darn.. I think it sheer BAD Management well in our day to day lives as Project Managers we face similar things... things that can hurt damm hard... wana know How?

Tom is a Manager by mind, Developer by heart, QA by lungs and a Leader by Ears and ofcourse a Dictator by attitude... To be honest he is Jack of All and King of None... His Manager Harry invested time on him to create a backup, while everything went fine.. the Jack attitude took Tom to mis understand and interpret things negatively... eventually it resulted into a Over head for Harry.... the final outcome of the investment was Tom was out working for another company in the same way he started with Harry...

So whats the problem here? Lets relate the 2 stories to find whats the ROOT Problem here...

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Positng Daily

Well my Wife's Astrologer told her that starting July first week theres going to be tremendous pressure on me and that I have to take some decissions before July to be safe and Happy....

I made up my mind to start doing things that can relive my pressure to the Least... So my first resolution is blogging daily... I am gonna start a series with situations that forms one of the objectives of my Blog this double quarter...

Keep an eye on this one....

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

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Thomas Power in India

A Long tourney Master of the social networking is in India. Yes Thomas Power is in Mumbai, India on the 25th July 2007 for a workshop on Social Networking and More.. for those who don't know much about Thomas Power or who want to know the details of his visit can go on to:

http://www.thomaspowerindia.com/

Regards
Sameer Shaikh
http://pm-better-than-sex.blogspot.com
http://sameer-shaikh.blogspot.com

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Software Outsourcing and the Diminishing Quality

It had been almost 8 yrs now in the Industry and experience is counting... more and more....Yesterday for some reason we had a discussion on the diminishing quality of software with outsourcing.. specially when the world is slowly moving from India/China towards Ukraine and other nations and remembering my last week Meeting with Twain Harris CEO,ATC LLC on the software quality they got out of the projects from the Chinese Software development Ally... One thing we can smell coming to us in future is surely LESS WORK.

Why the Quality is going down is a bigger question which I would leave the experts to answer while I really focus on writing some aspects I feel is killing the trust in outsourcing...

1. Transparency :- I remember when I was tied up with a front runner in the Hospitality sector while been with TechShepherds Software Solutions in 2004 I realised that when the Customer offered the firm to be the Development Partner for their Major Integration projects, It was lack of transparency that caused several of one problems which finally resulted in a breakdown of relationship. The way demands are rising today it is expected that a Software portal is developed in weeks time and goes running in production within coughing periods... Now it is easier to do that.. but not necessarily in the correct way... I was talking to a developer working on a KEY collaboration tool and unfortunately my first feel was he did not understand why he was building the software... How will this help the Company that is looking to make this collaboration tool be one of the front runners in today's collaboration Market? secondly I realised that the Company wanting to build the product and the Team that was developing the product met only once a few weeks to KNOW whats the Status.

This was for sure a killer since there was no transparency in both the sides... each side should have made things more visible.. be it development efforts, needs, objectives or time lines and finances.... Lack of this transparency is the root cause of a NO TRUST zone. No wonder the Company will surely choose to go away with this development partner sooner or later...

2. Honesty: When I asked Mike (Twain H. as he is popularly known) why he wants to shut out the Chinese Operations his answer was it is not working due to finances and a NOT FIT Team.. honestly I think No one outsourcing is so honest to take that call... How Many Managers have you seen that say that "The Development Team we chose was wrong?" Or " The Team we work with is not of the required Quality?" well I guess none... No one here Outsourcing company or company taking the deal commits on this. Another Big issue to the broken trust is the Effective Team in Action and the way Service Industry is charging... Since there is lack of transparency in the development effort the Customer firm never knows what type of Team and who they are working with? as a result a Development resource of very High Grade is presented to the Customer company while a development resource coming out of college really is working over it... Faking the Orgasms sometimes are better I guess not this...

While it is important to enroute the Knowledge of the Business Model in the development Team who will work on your Business critical product it is also important that enough Transparency is created within....

Though I feel that it wont be enough to write everything here.... I will split up my experiences on the outsourcing problems as a Project Manager in the later blogs...

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

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