Meeting Dr. Abraham Verghese - Director of National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Insects

Yesterday was a very unique day as it was completely unplanned meet but turned out to be one of the best so far. How does a software developer get to meet head of NBAII? Well, it all started when I had proposed in front of few big shots (ahem) of my organization that we should present ourselves in demojam held at TechEd Bangalore. It was a big and sometimes heated discussion. I don't know what clicked but after several rounds of discussion the team agreed that we could not focus entirely on marketability of idea at the moment. At my current position, I sometimes am not able to understand why people much up the hierarchy focus on sellability of whatever we do. That makes sense to an extent but it make things delayed to get started at first place. I remember I had to write that we could first focus on doing and then remodeling what we do to meet their expectations. This itself is a huge topic of discussion under 'Different People' category but since that's not the intention of this blog I'd not discuss that here.

 Things moved and process moved from 'why' to 'what'. There were many brainstorming sessions held with different ideas. Many got rejected as they were too sophisticated to get implemented with resources at hand. One of the team members has little exposure to agricultural concept because of close family relationships working in that area. Thoughts were diverted in that direction and after few meetings it was finalized that demo would be done in that area. Finally the team found few other team members whose close family members are in that area to better identify problems there. Things moved and to get a clear exposure to the concept and clarify our doubts, a meeting was organized with Dr. Abraham Verghese. Appointment was from 3:30 pm to 4:00pm.

We went there well before time and had to wait for close to 40 mins. The team was greeted well inside the big room of Dr. Verghese. I was a little surprised to see Dr. Verghese's humbled behaviour by holding the door until we all entered, though he had his assistant! We were seated and the discussion started. He had a completely calm and composed attitude. This was one such meeting wherein I just wanted to listen, listen and listen more! Each of his sentences had a heavy weight. He said that no farmer in India is poor because of production issues, it is all because of storage and distribution problems. He suggested that if we could do something for storage and distribution of perishable food products, that would be good. He was talking about the network set up of the transportation and storage of crops among different locations.
He said that the crop production capability of India has increased more than 6 times post independence. There is appropriate food produced for everyone in this country. But since there are gaps between production, distribution and reachability to the masses, the lack appears.

He also mentioned that there are middle men involved who helps farmers to get their production from farms to markets. In older times, these middle people were viewed with little skepticism but are now treated as facilitators. He has done many researches which are being used around the world. He highligted few examples where his deparment has helped solve bio-terrorism. In some year, there was an insect imported from another country which caused papayas to rot and hence causing huge damage to the many farmers many of whose income depends entirely on papaya production. They had to analyse the insect causing the damage, identify the country it was imported from and then propose the solution. The solution was interesting. No spray could help solve the problem. They had to import natural agents to destroy the insects from the same country. This process had to be quick and not take much time. His other example was that of mangoes which too were getting destroyed because of imported insects. He had done research and proposed the solution which is now being used at many countries around the world.

There was a similar example with eucalyptus which if damaged would cause paperless India. Thereby he also emphasized the need of  evolution in 'quarantine' process. Few of his other examples highlighting areas of improvement in India couldn't stop me from laughing.

All in all I had a great experience meeting him. I have also started to conclude that all amazing people have one quality in common - power of listening. He listened to all of us as if we all made great sense to him but I could make out very well that he was much beyond and above us. Seeing his calm behaviour I couldn't resist thinking about my own dad who is just the same. I was not much surprised when even calm people like him end up cracking jokes on me. While leaving us till door, he asked me where am I from and then said that he visits my state frequently and I would not have an iota of knowledge about the agricultural importance of my place. I said that if both of us are there at the same time I would certainly meet him again.

Things have moved good so far. I don't know if we would be able to submit our entry in the time required but trying causes no harm. I always feel that while doing any such extra work apart from regular day job, someone in the team has to be hyperactive to keep things moving. I did that in the last Innojam I participated. I would like to do that again but time management becomes little difficult when you are at the age of handling additional personal responsibilities.

If "Empathy" becomes part of work culture!

I read this great blog by slim this past week and commented saying 'Developers need to be empathic as they deal with lot of different teams in their daily work schedules and hence have to deal with lot of different people'. I also said that I have felt that there are instances wherein much of delay is caused by misunderstanding between people. In case you are wondering why developers need to talk to so many people let me give you an example:
'I (developer) write a code that sends external e-mails and I find the ports are not configured. I have to contact the basis administrator to get that done as in a typical scenario I would not have authorization to do that. I would work based on a functional specification given to me. I would like to know how does the transaction work and business case it solves, before I would do any custom coding. For that I would contact the functional consultant. Let's say while I analyze the specification I find that there are unclear requirements, I would have to contact the requirements gathering team (could be my customer).'

Slim wanted to know kind of delays happening due to misunderstanding between teams. Even before I proceed to answer his question I would like you to imagine a workplace like this: 'People understand you the way you want them to. Your words are perceived the way they were said. People don't try to draw conclusions based only on the words spoken but also by what was not spoken. They try to understand not only what is being said but also the background information which lead to the words that were spoken'. Well, when I imagined this kind of workplace I had a feeling like 'Wow'. There would be no conflicts if everyone becomes like this. Now when I say this, I don't mean that no one of this kind exists now, certainly there are people with such admirable characteristics but I have come across very few of them. At the same time, when I expect people around to be part of that ideal workplace, I would expect myself to scale up and improve my understanding/listening skills too.

Back to answering Slim's question, there is one experience that comes rushing to my mind. I was new to a team and obviously unaware of mindset of people and work culture. A fresh piece of development was handed over to me with a Functional specification (FS). As I mentioned earlier, after going through the FS, I went to the functional consultant to understand the transaction and to verify the understanding of object to be developed. She [I am addressing people involved as 'she' and does not actually mean that the person was a she] explained me well but she said that the 'Smartform' [object to be developed] would be triggered at 'Delivery level'. I came back and reread the FS and was pretty sure that 'Smartform' had to be triggered at 'Handling Unit' (HU) level and the 'Output type' had to be configured at HU level and not at the header level. I made an attempt to make her understand. She refused to accept that and she gave numerous examples of objects developed previously where print was at the header level. She was so confident of her assumption that she might have overlooked what was not-so-explicitly mentioned in the specification. This is clearly an example of people resistant to change and assume that anything new would be done just the same way, it has been done in past. 
I was in a strange situation as certainly the 'Importing parameters' of the code depended on the level at which the 'Output type' was configured. With the deadline within which the object had to be completed, I could not spare much time in convincing her 'What she needed to do' and hence rather decided to complete the coding with the understanding I had. My role was to code the object and hand it over to her for the final testing.[Was I being selfish, but how could anyone help a person who is resistant to change?] 
At the same time I kept discussing the issue with some other consultants who might have developed something similar and kept investigating as to how 'Output type' could be configured at HU level. Anything when started newly takes more time and seems more trickier. Finally, days moved and the coding was complete, needless to mention that the delivery date of object too was very near. With my numerous attempts to convince her, she actually at a pretty later stage made an attempt to contact another person from the concerned team to verify if the print had to be triggered at HU level and how could output type be configured at HU level. Finally, things were sort out and she accepted that it was at HU level.

Test plan had to be prepared and the object had to be thoroughly tested before it was delivered. After she understood, she did the configuration and then I had to finish the developer testing. Did it cause a delay? My answer would be a certain Yes. I had to work on a weekend to meet the delivery date. Apart from that, there were unnecessary last minute communication sent to different teams to get the configuration done as not all authorizations were given to her. There were high chances of missing the due date, had those last moment communication not acknowledged urgently. So, certainly it was not smooth. So if I give this whole episode a summarized look it could be like:

The specification was not documented very explicitly w.r.t level of output. The concerned team might have assumed it to be 'implicitly' clear.
Functional person 'assumed' it to be what she had been doing previously.
Poor developer could not easily convince her functional of what was right.

Now let me introduce the element I am talking about, 'Empathy'. It was certainly lost in this whole episode. Who had to be empathic here? The functional consultant, the specification writer or the developer or everyone of them?
Let me concentrate on the developer. Had developer tried finding out as to why the functional was so confident of her understanding, developer would have pulled out specification of those objects and tried making a comparison among them and could have found differences to prove her point. There was a high chance that specification did not give developer enough clue, she would have tried to respect the fact that functional was resistant to change and would have approached her with a more polite or well researched opinion helping her with ways of configuration rather than thinking 'It's her job'. Developer could have respected the fact that functional was highly experienced person and hence was deriving conclusion based on past experiences and thought of an appropriate approach to correct her.

This experience actually taught me a lot and I have made it a point to get things straight, right at the first place rather than at later stage of development.

Slim has also commented saying, often people think that they understood what the word used by another person means. Let me relate to another experience. When a specification comes to a developer's desk to be verified and estimated, the explicitly unclear cases are easily identified and asked but how about some of the tricky ones which in most of the cases get assumed by the developer and causes problem at a later stage. Most of these arise because the same words are perceived in different ways by different peoople. One such occassion was when one of the developers was going on leave and I had to take over her work. I read the specification and concentrated on what needed to be done by that interface. [object to be developed] I found a statement saying 'Some update would be done by this "transaction"'. The interface was handling couple of big scenarios and the update highlighted above might not have been much emphasized or highlighted in previous discussions. I asked her about that and I could clearly understand that it was assumed by her that it would be done as part of some other process and not part of the same interface being developed, just because in specification it was written ''transaction" and not very explicitly that the update would be part of the same interface. I later had a discussion with the concerned team and found that they used the word "transaction" for any scenario handled via that interface and hence did not necessarily feel the need to highlight that in the specification. Did this cause a delay? Certainly yes as that called for additional calls and time before it was estimated.

I could give more examples of confusions arising due to misunderstanding but I think the point is clear. I can't expect eveyone around me to be empathic but I am very sure if I keep making a conscious effort to be empathic in dealings with people, that would make my life easier and peaceful.

Some of the things I dislike about SAP!

There would be no introduction portion for this blog as I am going straight to the issues which I think should be considered for revision by SAP.

1. If anyone has visited this page would know what I am going to talk about. SAP has been madly promoting HANA. Any official site of SAP would mention about that, required or not is not the matter of concern though. I was visiting AiE (ABAP in Eclipse) page the other day and even that page contained as much of HANA as possible. So, let's say one gets interested in getting trained on HANA by SAP. (as it's recommended to get trained from SAP and not just any other non-certified training centre.) I am sure on getting to know the training charges, one would certainly need to re-think about their plan. My goodness, one lakh seventeen thousand for a training! In this case, either one has to be at the mercy of their organization to get them trained or think about some other cost-efficient training centres or they earn REALLY well to invest the amount. I am not sure what's the average salary of developer's in India and I mean REAL developers who code day in, day out.
 On the other side, I would be really interested to know if someone invested the money out of their own pocket and were satisfied with the ROI. I may be naive in my thoughts here.

2. I completely understand and accept that change is constant. SAP is a great example of change and evolution. What seems strange to me is, when a new product is released, the earlier version gets demeaned to a great extent. Ok, for a break I would talk something else and not HANA! AiE gets compared to SE80 in ABAP. My first question would be how valid is this comparison? Secondly, there have been numerous blogs written by SAP wherein the advantages of ADT (ABAP  Development Tools) have been highlighted and it's advantages over SE80 is represented. I also read a shameless statement saying, "Currently SE80 and ADT might be same but in future more and more features would be added in ADT"! Absolutely horrendous! And then there lies a favourite word 'Non-disruptive'! The first disruption, such statements cause is in the lives of many developers. Neither customers nor ALL organizations are fast in adopting the new technologies as and when they get released and the reasons for doing so may be perfectly justifiable. So, ultimately a non-SAP developer would have to wait and may have to live with the feeling of working on not-up-to-date technology tools.

3. The favourite, service.sap.com! Recently, I was reading a SAP document to install ADT and it mentioned the pre-requisite to be SAP GUI patch should be greater or equal to 9. It mentioned this could be downloaded from the favourite site but without sharing any link. I searched with every possible way to get there but could not. Luckily, I found the link in one of the discussion forums at scn.sap.com wherein some nice soul had shared the links  from where the new patch levels could be downloaded. (I should mention that nicer was the soul who locked this discussion!). I may be exaggerating a little, but installation of AiE is quite a marathon!

I have only these in my mind now but I am sure I would update the list soon!

Innovar 2013 - a mega event and an amazing day

Innovar 2013 was organised on 30th January at Bangalore. This was my first experience with such a grand occasion at NTT DATA. A lot of dedicated effort goes behind the scenes for organising such big events. I was privileged to work with some of my senior leaders in close proximity while planning the event. I am amazed by their contagious spirit, passion, creativity and undeterred determination while organising these events. Such events provide employees a good chance to meet the members of
leadership council of the organization. I am highly impressed with the leadership council members of NTT DATA. All of them depict a high level of passion at what they do.
This year Innovar was held in tandem with town hall where leadership council addresses the employees. I could feel that the LC members were highly impressed by the talent shown at Innovar stalls from different verticals and practices across the organization. Each stall demonstrated innovative solutions used in different projects. One of the key takeaways from the town hall was emphasis on spreading the talent shown across NTT DATA in various geographical locations and momentum to grow.
The other highlight of the day was tech sessions by some of the highly motivated speakers on topics related to latest technological advancements including cloud and mobility. I was not much surprised to hear about HANA in one of the SAP related session.
I would let the pictures do the rest of the talking:

Looking back at those five years!

I have suddenly realized that I have completed five years in IT. I had a sudden urge of ranting my experience so far. I think the trigger point is the book 'The passionate programmer'. Here I go: I started as a fresher in Wipro Technologies. My first client was Convergys. I was trained in ABAP and till day I am an Abaper. I was hyperactive in my first project. I remember an incident when a fellow coder estimated an object for few days and I had thought "Why is she taking days, I can sit down and finish it today". With time, I have gained understanding as to why she estimated it for few days! I started my career with HR ABAP. I remember, I used to go to office on holidays to debug and understand the BSP Application, I was supposed to fix bugs or do changes in. I was very naive and not aware of IT culture when you have to follow "Your boss is always right". I have learnt it the hard way and also perhaps by reading different books. My next project was in Insurance domain. The client was Lloyds. I must say, that has been the best team I have had so far.
I had an excellent lead who motivated me and entrusted me always. There were lot of challenges that I faced in that project but it taught me most parts of ABAP. There were many breathtaking moments in that project but I enjoyed and overcame every such moment victoriously. Till date, I meet my ex-colleagues from that project.
I moved on from Wipro and switched my job to Keane, now NTT DATA. I did not much like the change in initial days but gradually got used to it. I have spent two years in Keane India by now and the journey has been good so far. I have added few new skillet to my CV. My current client is Honeywell and I have visited my client site once. After joining Keane I have become an active member of a well known site known as SCN which has added many different people and perspectives in my life and all of them are very good rather fantastic.
So far, if I look back at those five years, I find that exciting, challenging and most importantly full of fun. I hope future years add to the fun and bring new set of challenges.

In search of Mr. Right!

2013 has begun on a chirpy note for me. I was in mumbai (Bollywood city of India) on the first day of the year. However, purpose of the visit was to meet the guy whom my parents think is Mr. Perfect for me. Alas! how badly do our opinions differ. The fact is unlike many rather most, if not all girls, I have not established criterias to look into a guy to finalise him as my Mr. Perfect. C'mon we are in 21st century, anyone fit to live in this changing era is good enough. Obviously, there are few basic things that are necessary. I have already decided after meeting few guys, that I would not go for looks (lol) else I would keep waiting......this being said, looks does not matter to me, there are many other things apart from that.
If by go by traditional ways, girls were not even allowed to meet guys before marriage...the same would have happened to me had I not taken my friends' advice and decided to meet guys before hooking up with anyone of them. The last one I have met was rather weird, as he did not come to Bangalore to meet me rather I had to travel to mumbai to meet him. That's certainly a negative point on his part. However, it was good that the guy respected my travel by taking me to almost all the tourist places in mumbai possible in one day.
Mumbai is amazing. Apart from visiting places like marine drive, Juhu beach, gateway of India etc. I went to the market of mumbai. I was surprised to see that many dresses that I saw in trend in USA were trending in mumbai as well. I did my shopping and am very happy. I met one of my sisters in mumbai.
Let photos do the rest of talking.