KM @ Infy

V.P. Kochikar, KM Head, Education &
Research Department, Infosys Technologies, says "KM helps us stay on
top of new software projects, emerging technologies and customer
satisfaction"  I take every media interview especially when it comes from an IT organization, with a large grain of salt, but some of the things Kochikar talks in this interview are fascinating to [...]

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Murder

Just imagine, you are away at work, your infant children are at home and someone comes and demolishes your home without caring about the kids…..this is exactly what happened over the weekend when I was away….two trees in the neighbourhood were chopped down and I understand that one of the large tree had a nest [...]

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Vacation for body, mind and spirit

Jeff writes about the spring break that he is taking. So am I. I am off to to the Ashram for a part II course. I really love the residential part II courses. 4 days of being in complete silence and meditation….four days of deeping dive into onself and coming out refreshed and recharged.
Looking [...]

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A Solar Lantern for a deserving student. Wouldn’t you contribute?

ProPoor’s weekly newsletter had an appeal for donation:
Small donations needed to cover the cost of a solar lantern ($100) for a 15 year-old boy named Murali, the son a fruit-seller in Chennai, who is often seen studying under dim streetlights.His father has passed away, and his mother uses her meager earnings to send her three [...]

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Turd Polishing

The latest issue of The Rational Edge has an interesting article on Software Management.
Managing
software projects successfully has proven to be very failure prone when
using the traditional engineering management discipline. Comparing the
challenge of software management to that of producing a major motion
picture exposes some interesting perspectives. Both management problems
are concerned with developing a complex piece of [...]

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Forced Ranking – II

841,500 is the number of software professionals according to an estimate in the IT industry in India.
Assuming most of the IT companies follow the forced ranking that I talked about in my previous post, the question that I have is….where does that leave the 42,075 employees who fall under the bottom 5%?
42,075! That is [...]

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Forced Rankings

Johana Rothman maintains two must read blogs – Managing Product Development and Hiring Technical People. I have been following her blog for more than a year now. In her latest post she comments on a paper published in Workforce Management on Forced Ranking.
If you force rank — even once — the people who find [...]

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Paradox for Knowledge Workers

[Via Sadagopan] Paul Allen writing in Connect Mag says:
The paradox for knowledge workers is
this: the more time you spend in gaining knowledge, the less time you
have to apply it. The reverse is also true. We must strike a proper
balance between learning and doing. Most people have their nose to the
grindstone. Very few spend enough time, [...]

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Software Development and Movie Making

Way back in early 90’s, my brother and I were having a conversation around the theme as to how software development was more closer to making a movie. For some reason, this conversation stayed in my mind and I distinctly remember that it was right after a TV show featuring Subhash Ghai where he talked [...]

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Why haven’t you asked “why” lately?

John Baldoni in his article The Power of Why writes:
One of the most powerful words in the English language is why. When asked as an interrogatory, why
has the power to change assumptions, preconceptions and mindsets. It
has the power to initiate change as well as the power to affirm the
right course. It is a word that [...]

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