MSP - Making the excuse that "I didn't prepare for the class" begins to get old, even when you're telling it to yourself. Now I understand that convincing yourself is the easy part... so that should be a sign that goes "Isn't it time you read those articles?" Anyway, this past week I was woefully unprepared for the classes. Luckily, it had to do with the Agile process, and what makes it different from waterfall. Now I thought that if I'd heard it once, I've heard it a million times. And I've heard this spiel almost five times now. Everyone from my lead, the guys from another of our company sites, our annual conferences, to a 'certified' Agile coach has told us about this magic pill. So I'm pretty sold on it, in fact I sell it everywhere I go. But when you listen to the same thing in a class, it's a different thing. All of a sudden, it is no longer about the practicals that you associate it with. It's about the theory. It's about WHY people use Agile. It's about who all are using Agile. It's about how it's no longer a fad, and that my clients, YOUR clients, and their clients are all saying they want that silver bullet. It's no longer about having the maximum number of people working low wage jobs so that work can be outsourced to you, it's getting to be about the quality and reliability of the work you do, and the associated accountability, so that the clients will require MINIMUM maintenance from you. Managing Software Projects, an art in so many people's eyes, is slowly but surely making its transition to a science.
Beyond the general theory of "Why Agile?", we had a guest speaker come in from (top secret) company working on a (top secret) project for a (top secret) client. I am not supposed to be saying this out loud on a public forum, but I couldnt hold myself back. Act like I didn't tell you anything. But in any case, this person described to us as to how they went about implementing Agile. The best part? His diagrams were convoluted and you could point off his problems so easily, that you realise, the theory that the prof tells you is one thing, practically whatever we're doing is still sufficiently unstable, just a little less so. The difference is that now we can observe where we're truly going wrong. There is a minor debate going on the side, that Agile requires outspoken team members, being given the opportunity to be self-sufficient and self-moderating. The argument being put to that is if you can find so many such people who want to be that way. It's one thing to be given the power, it's yet another to accept the responsibility. Thankfully, most of the experienced guys in class say that their companies have such responsible people.
LOC - Yet another class I wasn't prepared about. But listening (or trying to listen) to the discussion in class, I gathered that it's about the attempt to do a turnaround within an organization. The first session was about HCL, the second was about Surat. I dont really know if HCL's was a success, but I hear Surat's was downright amazing. Apparently the leader (S.R. Rao, I hear) empowered his team, put the whip in the hands of the common man by giving him the right to question and tracked his team. I remember a few words out of this week... cynicism on the parts of the IT employees on whether the company's promise to 'make the change' was going to hold, and accountability in the other where 'the ones making the change were being policed by the ones who had to live with the change'. Maybe there's more to these cases, let me get back to you on this. But if you want to take something away from this paragraph, remember: "Get the people on board, so you can make the change with their help... because if you fail, it will be easier for you if you fail together, than be the lone person being judged by everyone for having caused increased irreparable damage."
PM - I met a couple of old friends again this week 'Segmentation' and 'Positioning'. Did I tell you that Product Management is apparently actually an advanced Marketing course? So these sessions were all about how you target the appropriate customers for your product. And how you let them know about it. We started off with understanding how a market is segmented - basically split it up into four areas, where you dont have a product, have a product but either dont want to sell it to a particular segment (conscious choice) or dont even know that the segment exists, lost one of your segments, captured some segments, or had some from the very beginning and didn't have to fight for them. So it's important to know what the customer wants, and what your rival's customers want, so that you can use them like trading cards depending on which strategies you employ to garner more market share. The next session was about how you let the different segments know more about your product, and constantly keep giving out the same message so that it's imprinted in the customer's mind.
Since a few of our classmates were cursing that people like me don't have enough exams and assignments, I have some great news! We have two assignments for this week, two assignments for NEXT week, a quiz this week, another next week, so I too now have reason why I shouldn't be getting even the bare amount of sleep that I claim to be getting right now.
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