How Agile is your Transformation?

 If you are a technology driven organization in existence for a decade or more, it is quite natural that you may have a mix of old and new IT applications. It becomes even more interesting when you have a bunch of in-house developed and vendor applications.

The third dimension to this blend, given the nature of operations is the fact that you have a combination of legacy applications that are running with minimum required support and new ones that are part delivered or the stars in the horizon for which development is in progress.

Frame the above picture in your mind and now think what will be your consideration when you are moving from the Waterfall way of delivery to Agile delivery. Before heading to the answer, we first need to look at some of the Agile considerations assuming we all are familiar with Waterfall.

With the risk of sounding like an Agile Coach, here are a few quick thoughts that come to my mind the moment we speak Agile. Sizeable chunks of work, Fail fast and Iterative development.

Sizeable chunks of work

This is probably one of the first questions that we need to ask the teams. Does the current status of a product allow us to break it down into sizeable chunks so that Agile development can logically apply? This could be possible for products that are already in production and for which a healthy enhancement pipeline exists. On the other hand you could face challenges with those products for which development is half way through with a pre-agreed delivery methodology. The scenario gets complex if we have a vendor in the mix.

Fail Fast

It is true that you could apply this fantastic concept for your products. This equally must apply for your transformation saga as well. You may try to pull off an Agile transformation for your identified products, but if any of them does not meet a criteria, it’ll be better to rethink the strategy. Probably having an Agile KPI is a good idea so that you have a measurable action based on which informed decisions can be made.

Iterative Development

This is a fundamental building block of Agile. Can you create your product in iterations? Can the releases be planned to add value to business incrementally? Can the product be pieced together to finally form a jigsaw? Are the stakeholders all aligned to meet this criteria? If the answer to any of these is ‘No’ you’ll need to revisit your transformation path for that product.

There are definitely many more factors that drive Agile transformation. The above three are probably some of the key ones. What is important is to remember the fact that while transformation could be essential for progress, it isn’t the panacea for an organization where a plethora of technology flavours co-exist.

You need to choose and choose wisely. Else your Agile transformation will end up being nothing but fragile!

Being Positive

 Flying around like a beautiful butterfly

With a riot of colours and happiness galore.

The world was on my fingertips

And dreams were all that I adore.

Sky is the limit, was the mantra

Chanting I did, lying on my dewan.

Out from the blue came a bolt of shock

On it was written, Made in Wuhan!

Holed up in the house, feeling arrested

Fun, outing and everything else busted

Even a rare chance of getting out

Was a lost cause with cops all out!

When all hopes seem to be lost

A ray of light shined like a ghost.

All what my heart did was yearning

And the answer to that was E-learning!

Life bounced back with verve

Colours of hope was shining again.

Yes we still felt arrested, but

Happiness was what we did regain.

Lucky indeed am I, to be alive

Luckier in fact is my guessing

A thing my books could never teach

That survival is nothing but a blessing!

Kitchen Sink Teacher

I’m sure you must have heard the advice, ‘Couples should settle their disagreements before bed time’. This has been one of the age old pieces of wisdom passed on to us from generations and is supposed to be the mantra of a healthy relationship.

There is no denying of the benefit of this fact, provided you could truly achieve this! Keep aside the theory for a moment. Practically how often did you have a situation in your relationship that you just couldn’t solve the issue between you and your partner before bed time? You ended up sleeping on either ends of the bed or worst case, in different rooms. If you are smiling after reading this, I’m sure you understand what I mean.

Not to worry, this is something every couple in a ‘healthy relationship’ experience at least once (smiles widen here) in their life. What is more interesting is to know what happens the next day morning. Are you sulkier than what you were last night or you really feel refreshed? Can you say the same thing about your partner as well? If either of you don’t feel better, then the issue of last night will most likely get worsened.

If both partners are in fact feeling refreshed in the morning the chances are higher for the issue to be resolved in a few minutes after they are up. Now the question is how do some people achieve this? How can someone who literally fought like cats and dogs a few hours back mend ways and live happily ever after? What is that secret ingredient these people add to their sleep?

I really cannot speak for every one of these magicians out there who does their tricks in different ways. But I can definitely vouch for one such magic which was taught to me by a rather unusual teacher, the kitchen sink!

Have you ever tried to wash a heavily stained dish at home especially towards the end of a tiring day? How much ever hard you scrub it, even with the soap, you’ll find it next to impossible for the utensil to be deprived of the stain. Here is when you’ve two choices, especially when the dish you are trying to clean is testing your patience.

Choice one is to leave the dish in the sink and do nothing. Guess what will await your return to the kitchen next morning? A much more hardened stain for which you’ll possibly need a Himalayan effort to clean up.  

Choice two is what smarter people do. You take a deep breath and tell the dish that we’ve seen this and more. Once you get the psychological advantage over the dish, then you add a bit of dish wash liquid and fill the dish with water. Enjoy the beautiful view of bubbles reflecting the true colours of the dish while you head to the bed by leaving the worries at the kitchen door. The next day morning after you return to the kitchen, all what you have to do is swipe the dish with a brush by giving a gentle stroke as you would give to a baby. The dish will be squeaky clean and will reflect your smiling face just like in a mirror!

Bringing you back from kitchen to the rough evening between you and your partner. Just think that the stain on the dish is similar to the fight you had. You’re not able to resolve the issue and you’ve the same choices.

You can decide to leave it dry and make things worse the next day. Alternately both of you tell the fight that we’ve seen this and more. Once this is done, mutually agree that you can solve this issue, but probably need to sleep over it. This is the water and soap which will do the magic just like how it did for the dish. I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see the positivity in you the next day morning when you get up. What you don’t realize is the fact that the stain is nothing but your ego and the mutual agreement is the secret ingredient that helped the ego melt away over the sleep.

All what is left to do is to give each other a quick hug and make up for the fight because love is the strongest emotion mankind ever experienced! 

The Christmas Miracle

If you gave me a bunch of wires, half a dozen tiny bulbs, a working motor from an old toy car, some hay and a handful of seeds of rice, it probably meant nothing but junk. You give the same stuff to my brother and he’ll create such wonders from them, the making of which will be a sure shot material for a viral video in world as we know today.

Allow me to take you to our world 30 years back. I was just ten and my brother four years elder. I loved getting drowned in the world of books and was quite happy that my parents setup a library at home. My brother on the other hand had a table that reminded me of an electrician’s shop. I never understood what he did with those wires, soldering iron and millions of other electrical things he seems to have fallen in love with.

One fine morning in a weekend during December, I watched him as he started dismantling one of the old toy cars we had. He took out the tiny motor and later pulled out some wires and bulbs from his drawer. The next step was to ask mom for some seeds of rice. Once he had these, he then headed to our backyard and got hold of a big bowl of red soil which when mixed with water allows you to mould anything. The soil was quite fertile as well. He even asked our neighbour and got some hay also. The curios cat in me jumped out, but he said it is all a surprise and asked me to wait and watch!

The next thing he did was to find a suitable corner in front of our house and he did find a good one indeed. He settled down with his stuff and started preparing the soil by mixing some water into it. He then got into the act of moulding and soon enough I could see the contours of a tiny mountain shaping up. On the slopes of the hill he seemed to have left small rectangular patches which I couldn’t make out why. Through the middle of the mountain he also left a provision for what seemed like a pathway. The real reason for all these designs were to be revealed in time.

He then got a few tiny twigs, straight ones, from a nearby tree and started planting them one after the other from top to bottom of the hill. By the time the mould starting setting in, he attached the tiny bulbs to the wires and then connected the string to the twigs. I was still wondering what will the motor do. The answer remained the same. Wait and watch!

Before long, one side of the bottom of the hill was all prepared to look like a small pond, good enough to hold some water. On the other side he kept some cardboard boxes and laid hay around them. It was the turn for the motor to be picked up. His tool box came out as well and he did some of his usual mystical work with it. Before I even knew it he finished connecting the motor to the wires.

It was time to bring the bowl of rice seeds to the limelight. I had seen him not let the clay dry at those rectangular patches I mentioned earlier. He planted the rice seeds carefully in these patches and returned to the remaining set of work.

Mom called out for lunch and so we took a break. Over the next few days I could see him do some fine tuning of his creation. By the time our calendar announced that Advent season will soon come to an end by culminating with Christmas, the mountain of clay he created was beaming with green patches of healthy paddy fields!

On the Christmas Eve, he invited all of us for his ‘magic show’. In the valley where he had placed the hay, he softly placed Mother Mary, St Joseph, the three kings, shepherds and their sheep and a few other animals from our crib set. It was time for baby Jesus to be placed in the middle. Very carefully he carried baby Jesus and placed in the middle of the barn he created. He then reached behind the hill and we all heard a click that sounded like a switch. That’s when the magic got revealed to all of us!

The whole string of bulbs came to life lighting up the hill from top to the bottom. Soon enough we could hear the gurgling of water and to our surprise we could see water flowing from top of the hill through the pathway he created which ended up in the pond. Mysteriously the water never reached the limit of the walls of the pond and didn’t overflow! The secret was that he used the motor to pump the water back to the top of the hill thereby creating a sustainable fountain!

That definitely was one the greatest Christmas Miracles of my life! 

Power of One!

I was having a discussion with George, a colleague who was quite active with the chapter of Toast Masters Club in our company. He was telling me how good it was to be a part of the club and how it helped him as well as many others. The Art of Public Speaking is definitely an essential skill which I truly believe will help all of us and will always be associated to good leadership. Toast Masters Club I believe is a good medium to achieve this.

While the discussions were on I couldn’t help but be reminded of an incident that happened many years back. My memories took me to the compartment of a running train in the sweet 1990s. I vaguely recollect that as a return journey home to Changanacherry from somewhere in the North of Kerala. I would’ve never imagined at that time about a conversation I’ll have almost 25 years later about Toast Masters Club. If not for anything else, one word from the name of the Club was quite applicable at that moment in the compartment. I was indeed toasting my dad, mom and brother truly living up to the term motormouth!

Looking at the scene that happened three decades back I could really empathize with my folks. It must have been nothing less than a torture for them to keep listening to the endless rambling in the confinement of a compartment. The train kept moving, stations after stations passed, only the discourse never stopped. Poor beings, they must have felt imprisoned in a locomotive in motion with no way out but accept the destiny with the only hope of reaching the final destination which was another three hours away.

Dad was one in the family who was known for finding the way out even in the adverse of situations. He did find one in this case as well! He tried all possible ways of tempting me to keep my mouth shut. Offers of many kinds poured in including an additional plate of the deliciously cold Vada that you only get in Indian Railway. Nothing seemed to have worked.

He was losing out on all possible options to entice a 9 year old with an offer that he couldn’t refuse. But finally he did come up with one which apparently worked like magic. History was written in gold that the final deal for which I succumbed made me completely seal my mouth all the way from Thrissur to Changanacherry, a formidable distance of 160 Kilometres which took more than three hours! I heard that part of the train experienced Nirvana during those precious moments.

The offer ladies and gentlemen was a fresh currency note of One Indian Rupee!

That’s not fair!

Here’s a story of how a recent trip to Kerala redefined the meaning of being fair. We were on our way to my wife’s place and stopped at a corner store to get some fruits. I decided to get a few apples and oranges. A basket was kept right in front of the store with red apples neatly arranged. The shop owner asked me to get a few so that he can weigh it for me. As usual I picked up some that appeared without any dents and handed it over to him.

The apples weighed only about a kilogram. Since I wanted 1.5 Kgs, the shop keeper asked me to get a few more. I went back to the basket of apples and picked up some more just the way I selected the initial ones. The moment I placed the additional set on the tray I saw his face changing. Soon enough came the comment that redefined the phrase ‘being fair’ for me.

He said, “Oh! You have selected all good ones again! If you keep doing this I’ll end up not selling the remaining ones. Select something from the rest as well”.

Speechless would’ve been an understatement for my state of mind. For a moment I was not even sure if he really meant what he said. So I reconfirmed with him that he indeed want me to be fair to him and choose a few apples that are not the best.

Apparently, in this part of the world, customer is indeed the king, but at the mercy of the seller!

Tail End: I walked out of the store with 1 Kg of apples.