The Fighter

The Fighter

I came across another wonderful quote:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.."

We ought to be fighters, with never say die spirit. We should never quit what we believe in. I am sure that - one thing we need to be successful is "Belief in ourselves". No doubt this is the most important one too ....

A Plea To Gandhi Jee

Imagine…a hut with mud walls and a thatched roof standing upright on the parched soil, supported with bamboo sticks. A bespectacled, old man in a white dhoti, aided by a wooden stick enters into it. He sits on the floor and looks into the web cam. The next moment you find his message of peace and love being seen by the people all over the world on the giant screen, on their cell phones, on laptops etc.

People are mesmerized and awed by his message. He definitely was one of the most powerful communicators of the 20th century.

Even if you don’t admire truthfulness, don’t love for your fellow beings and believe in violence, still without doubt, you will recognize this man as Mahatma Gandhi and the above is the advertisement of “Telecom Italia” which finally asks an unanswerable question –

“Imagine the world today – if he could have communicated like this”

Somehow the advertisement has struck the right chord and won the Epica Award, Europe's premier creative awards. I was also touched by the advertisement, more so because I consider Mahatma Gandhi as one of my ideals. I was happy to see that he is still held high as an individual and look with great respect and that people in western world think that him as a formidable force that could have changed the course of history.

Not to talk further of the western world, what about us? We claim to be the people of the land to whom Mahatma belongs. It was his birth place. The father of our nation was the son of our soil but what have we done to honor him. I need not talk as we all know – we all ought to be ashamed of what we have done to Mahatma Gandhi’s India or rather we should sit upright and now think – how to resurrect India – the moral India.

We can still change the world or prevent it from deteriorating further if we adopt his principles of love, truth and non-violence but why we are not able to pursue them. We lack inspiration. We lack his inspiration. Can we do it? Can we make India – the Mahatma’s India? Can we give her the glory that Mahatma Gandhi would have brought to her?

Sorry Gandhi jee, we can’t. We don’t know how to love any more. We can’t survive by being truthful and we think that any sacrifice will bring doom to us. We have limits. Only Mahatma could defy all limits. We need you, your inspiration, your sacrifice, your truthfulness and your love.

Please Gandhi jee, come back to your people. Your principles alone will not suffice, we need you. Come back to show us the way out of this maze. You did it once; you made us believe once that we could do it. Make us believe again that we can do this time too.
We are waiting for you Gandhi jee; we are waiting for a Mahatma.

BLESSSS YOUUUUUUU

BLESSSSS YOUUUUU

It is a story of previous times, time so previous when there was no word that could tell you how old the story was, when in jungles of mid-east Africa, there lived a herd of elephants.

The leader of the elephant named Elle had just given birth to a beautiful, male calf and everybody was happy. They all prayed that day to the lord of the elephants to grant the power and humility to him, the humility and power that were never seen before, not only in the world of elephants but the entire land mass and at night they all feasted on grass, as long as trees, to the long life of the new born. They prayed that he shall live a thousand years.

Days passed by, and the euphoria also passed with time and so passed the infancy of the baby-elephant. He has grown into a young kid now. He was the darling of the herd and then one day in the spring season when there is a fragrance of the fresh leaves and flowers, he smelt pollen and there was a sneeze – “akchiiii”. BLESSSSS YOUUUUUU - came the voice of the entire herd at once. Then another sneeze and another BLESSSS YOOUUUU and another and another……

The next day in the morning there was another sneeze and again came the word BLESS YOUUUU. It was the first time that each woken elephant was not greeted by the usual “good morning” but a different word. BLESS YOUUU seems the word of the week and the young calf had heard it so often from others that he thought it was his name, so he named himself BLESSSSS YOUUUUU.

It was 5th day of the spring when everybody said for the 100th time – BLESSSSS YOUUUUU…it was becoming a common word and no one except BLESSSS YOUUUUUU, now felt something unusual. Something unusual – he noticed had happened to this trunk. It has increased in size and it was increasing with each of his sneeze. “AAAAKKKKChooooooooo”. BLESSSSSS YOUUUUUUU. A bit longer it grew…

His mother Elle was sharing her concern with his aunt Ephan about BLESSSS YOUUUUU but was pacified when her aunt told that it was the next best thing for him. He soon will be having a trunk equal to the size of this mother and can go deeper in the sea and to a greater height on the trees. “AAAAKKKKChiooooooooo”. A bit longer it grew…

Years passed by and the arrival of spring was announced when he sneezed and heard – BLESSSSS YOUUUUUUU…His trunk has already grown longer than any elephant existing and he has also grown a pair of tusks. Now he could go deeper in the sea and higher up the trees than any other elephant including his mother. No one now has to wait for the sneeze to say, what everyone now knows to say. Whenever he sneeze, his trunk would straighten up and goes so long a distance that the herd doesn’t see after days of walking. All shrubs, plants, herbs and animals get away willingly or by the force of the trunk from its path and there comes a voice – “AAAKKKKKCCCCOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo”. BLESSSSSSSSSS YOUUUUUUUUU – came the voice. Not only from the herd of elephants but from each and every being in the animal kingdom even from far off places.

So next time, if you travel to Africa and go for a safari, look for the voice of sneeze and you know what you need to say next –

BLESSSSS YOUUUUU

CMMI - Everything We Want To Know About

Glossary:

Ø CMM - Capability Maturity Model
Ø CMMI - Capability Maturity Model Integration
Ø SEI - The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University.
Ø PA – Process Area(s) –is activities where Software organizations and Projects have to focus in the path towards excellence and maturity.
Ø DOD – Department Of Defence
Ø SPC Charts – Statistical Process Control
Ø IPM – Integrated Project Management
Ø IPPD – Integrated Process And Product Development

Definition:

Capability Maturity Model Integration is a way to assess and describe an organization's software development process, compare it against industry standards and help the organization refine and improve that process.

Backgroud:

Back in mid -1980’s US DOD depended heavily on the external venders for their entire software/hardware such as Graphical Operating Systems. Because there were stringent environmental and reliability requirements, DOD needed a way to determine whether contractors could provide software on time, within budget and to specifications.

They found a way out in CMM conceptualized by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. CMM was first released in 1990 and by 2001, many disparate elements (CMM for software, CMM for Systems Engineering, CMM for Integrated process and product development etc) were brought together into a single initiative known as CMMI, or Capability Maturity Model Integration.
The structure and essence of CMMI is same as that of CMM.

Level 1: Initial or Ad-hoc.
Level 2: Managed. There are 7 PAs. PAs at this level look at project planning and execution (Basic project management)
Level 3: Defined. There are 13 PAs here. Life cycle processes and Organizational processes are the focus areas here.
Level 4: Quantitatively Managed. There are 2 PAs that deal with project management with quantitative data and statistical process control. (SPC)
Level 5: Optimizing. There are 2 PAs. The focus is on continuous improvement.

How to remember all the levels of CMMI? Well here is a way: Say aloud in one breath
I M Definitely Quality Oriented (I M D Q O). Mnemonics have always been proved useful ;-)

Initial, Managed, Defined, Quantitative Management, Optimizing

The diagram below is a quick snap shot about all we need to know regarding CMMI. Why I say so? Because as technical persons, we don’t require to know all the names or jargons by heart, but at least be aware of. In case we really need to talk about CMMI, we will do so for 15 minutes (this could be for an interview)

(unable to post the diagram, will update it later - sorry!!!!!)

Highlights:

Ø Level 1 processes are ad-hoc meaning that they are not strictly followed. Product Quality is difficult to predict. The projects are purely person dependent.

Ø Level 2 focuses on building strong project management processes in the project. Functional and non-functional/trace-ability between requirements and other work products/requirements should be documented. At high level, it includes Requirement management and requirement change management. Project Plan is prepared and is tracked against this plan in its execution – status or milestone reports. Quality Audits should start at early stages of the project.

Ø Level 3 processes are defined at the organization level. Information and artifacts of previous projects are available for reuse within the organization through mechanisms of knowledge sharing. It also gives guidelines on how the processes must be tailored to suit individual project need. Requirement Development is a PA at level 3 where as Req. Management is a PA at level 2 – a checklist should be in place.

Ø At Level 4, performance of process is quantitatively predictable. Quality and process performances are understood in statistical terms and are managed throughout the life of the processes. QPM gives us direction to measure and manage project performance in terms of measurable data. Having a good QPM structure helps the organization in having better control, better management information and improved estimation and tracking.

Ø At Level 5, the essence is how effectively an organization can make continuous change to its processes and technology that result in incremental and innovative improvements.

Ø One thing to note here is that collecting measurements and improvement areas are inherent part of all PAs

Ø 2 PAs at level 3 (Integrated Teaming and Organizational Environment for Integration) have strong flavor from People CMM, although PCMM is not today integrated in CMMI

phew, now that was something ... see ya soon...I definitely hope this is useful...

Rajal

In GOD We Trust; For Rest, We Need Data

We all our accountable to someone in our lives, be it our boss or our loved ones. Barring personal relations, for all our professional deeds, we need to give facts and figures to prove ourselves.

And I heard it in a meeting today, which is very apt and useful to know , so I will share it here.

If We Can't Measure Something, We Can't Control It.

True, very true - isn't it?