Nowhere, get me there..

the melody in the beat

of a heartbeat in flux

the palpations

the elation

a rumble in the belly

a souring soul

each breath as if

racing the next

a time gone by

a feeble memory

a feeling now jaded

a distant dream

a paradise lost

does love depreciate

as all other things material

does affection dissipate

through the schisms in our hearts

does time frost our feelings

for once yawning souls

do responsibilities take a toll

on once a spirited soul

is there anything in life

anything at all

which is perpetual

so why, I sit and wonder

should love be

maybe a refresher is due

a resurrection whose time has come

maybe new melodies are desperate

to tango, to jibe

with the beats of a heart

long in need of a restart

a break from the shackles

the manacles of the norm

a leap into nowhere…….

cognisant of consequences

yet innocent to the impact

a pang of fear

that truth may go naked

a dash of anxiety

about budding possibilities

the spirit moves north again

the soul reignited

a new path

a new dawn

a new hope

maybe, just maybe

nowhere will get me there.

Will the magic of Indian Software industry last?

I don't think so until a tectonic plate shifts underneath the Indian software industry to usher in a fundamental change in focus. The word 'back shoring' is gaining popularity. Cliché’s can transition rapidly from fads to facts in this globally connected, word of mouth driven, social powered, internet age.

The genesis of the industry was on a cost saving proposition. The herd pattern took over, large deals got larger and Indian software companies grew from garages to ‘info’plexs. Certification became a fad and everyone chased ‘the CMMI stamp’ to signify quality. With the boom came the bane. Engineers treat companies like guest houses- stay a while, learn and then move on. With such stupendous growth the focus has been on volume as opposed to quality. And over the times, the economic price-demand curve has come to the fore with even base costs in India not being as competitive as earlier deemed.

The cost proposition is waning. I would conjecture a guess that with respect to TCO we are much worse off with offshoring/outsourcing as opposed to doing it in-house. Two key factors contribute to this in my view – first the high management overhead which the company needs to retain in order to govern the project so that they actually get delivered to promise and secondly the cost of quality resulting mainly from the software engineers being perpetually in-transition.

With the core value proposition under threat, quality of delivery in any case being an issue and state of world economy making protectionism and retaining jobs locally a priority, I think this industry needs a shake up to stay relevant.

My two mantras for the industry’s renewal:

·    Significantly yank up the volume on project management. Companies end up spending a fortune on management overheads as the project management support from the offshoring vendor is largely appalling, especially the emotional intelligence component which is so critical to delivering successful projects. It becomes immediately apparent that project managers have just grown through the software engineering line and not placed adequate attention on grooming in the art of management. This needs to be addressed at the grass roots level as IT project management is probably more about management than technology. Getting an IT project to deliver its promise is an art and not science and requires leaders at the helm to achieve success

·    Lead software engineering innovation – invent rather than just follow. India has captured market share in the business of software engineering but has done little to spearhead the field in terms of innovating it. Most software engineering innovations still emanate from the enviable Silicon Valley. New programming languages such as Ruby, Bid Data management innovations such as Hadoop, NoSQL, great companies built around IT such as Apple, Google, innovations in the mobility sphere such as the explosion of App stores et al have their roots outside India. A passion and fetish for software engineering innovation needs to seep into the IT ecosystem in India. The industry needs to stop thinking and promoting software engineering as a commodity and positioning it at a strong force to get competitive advantage in business. For this to happen, some of the industry stalwarts, the universities, the fund owners, the startups, the entire ecosystem needs to shed its conservative approach to doing business, promote experimentation, spend intellect on research and take bold steps forward to shape the future of business innovation through engineering. This will then create a sustainable comparative advantage and a new proposition much higher in the value food chain than just 'we reduce your costs of software development'

I feel India with its bright minds, its academic grilling and strong foundations, die hard focus of its people to commitment and hard work, its strong cultural roots, its current positive state of mind - has the right ingredients to create a sustainable business model around the IT industry cluster and surmount any threats.  

However it is the Internet age afterall. Past laurels are not a guarantee for future sustainability. The winds of change need to be felt and absorbed pro-actively. Bold changes need to be ushered in at a swift pace.

Winners in this age will be defined by their ability to sense and respond to change as opposed to basking in the sunshine of a sinking sun.

SOA for my mother

Looking at the mirror one day I realised that I had reached the pinnacle of all learning. Knowledge hit me from all angles and I absorbed it, soaked it into my psyche with a passion. I had mastered the art of such complicated and diverse disciplines such as value driven engineering, expectation management, stakeholder management, time boxing and risk management with its kaleidoscope of red, amber and blues. I was ready to take on any corporate problem using my kitty of management tools, models and frameworks. Important words such as empowerment, swot analysis, exogenous influences, and diversification were oozing out of my 300 buck Brands branded grey suit and 30 buck tie from that shop which has ‘sale’ hardcoded on its mirror….. these important words always in a state of readiness to pounce upon and plonk themselves onto any conversation or PowerPoint slide they could lay their hands on. With the confidence of having Porter as a close relative, I looked at the reflection in the mirror and felt that I had finally arrived, in the corporate world…….

A wise person once said ‘it only takes a small needle to bust a bloated balloon’ (what a stupid quote, wise man, ya right!) Anyway, that wise person was probably referring to the rather sharp poke I got on my bloated confidence when an erudite and noble soul asked me to do a 5 slide presentation in 15 minutes to explain SOA to him as if explaining it to my mother.

SOA for my mother!! I immediately checked with Porter for a framework to crack this one and suddenly he was missing from the list of my next of kin. With trepidation I remembered the last time I had proudly announced our achievements on the Paradise Datamart to my mother she had equally enthusiastically asked me about which shopping mall. Encapsulation, orchestration, granularity, decoupling would equate to electrical wiring, music, wheat and marriage to my mother.

In that moment of anxiety as I scratched my brain for a simple way to explain SOA to someone with no IT knowledge, it dawned onto me that one of the true leadership challenges of corporate life was to explain increasingly complex situations and issues in increasingly simple ways, almost as if to your mother. After sweeping out all the models from my clouded head I could come up with only one example to explain SOA to my mother.

It relates to the kitchen. In the kitchen things are beautifully connected to each other - the sink to the dish washer, the gas to the cooker and disparate things such as refrigerator, kitchen sink, dishwasher, cooker, gas work together in harmony so that my mother can cook me a great meal. If however for some reason the dish washer breaks down we only need to remove it from the kitchen and not bring down the sink or indeed the entire kitchen to fix the dish washer. However sometimes we don’t build our applications like our kitchen, at least I didn’t. We end up connecting our dish washers with the sink in such a manner that if the washer has to be yanked out and used somewhere else, the entire sink has to be replaced.

So my mother’s kitchen is fully SOA compliant while some of the applications I built were unfortunately not so.

An MRI awakening

Doctors have stepped down from their angelic thrones. Their perceptual monopoly over the minds of patients has started to blur. The engagement in a Doctor's cabin is now more 'clinical' than ever before. Last time I went to see one I experienced the clinical execution of a well honed consulting process which went through the following phases (1) a review of my file for historic insight (2) a pointed question and answer session (3) a physical examination of my problem area (4) a collaborative review of 5 strategic options for resolution of my problem (5) my formal consent on one of the options (6) finally, at long last, execution of the agreed resolution strategy. Phew! Doctor as a management consultant with specialization in healing is here to stay.

The apparently bipartite discussion around strategic cure options was quite exhilarating. The options elaborated by the doctor were clear as mud and I was reminded of my days in the South when I used to nod my head in complete understanding and appreciation of the menu options announced in Tamil by the zealous waiter. After eagerly listening to the tambi’s enthusiastic recital, in true panju style, I would either order a Dosa or a Thali! In order not to dent his enthusiasm I would add “ put some extra takali”. Thereby leaving the waiter with the false impression that his recital had been well understood and the customer had taken an informed decision thanks to his efforts.

To the uninitiated ‘takali’ means tomato in Tamil – about the only word that I learnt in a few memorable years stay in the South.

Unfortunately, the options presented by the doctor bear no resemblance to Masala Dosa and I did not have a medical panacea equivalent to ‘takali’.

My views on the state of medical science and its undertakers thus honed, I was invited to an MRI scanning session. The invitation was a consequence of problems with my neck, which was probably due to its uncanny habit of popping up, down and round about at even a hint of a pretty damsel in the vicinity. A wise man once said – old habits, Bruce Willis.

Anyways, armed with the strength of a cynic, ready to smell a rose and think of a coffin, I ventured into the MRI scanning center. A lovely nurse with a German hard-nosed ex-pression efficiently ushered me into the changing room. I had to strip off all worldly possessions to gain entry into the MRI scanner’s domain. I tried to maintain an overt composure that belied the inferno in the belly. The drumming in the belly had a stark resemblance to the rumblings leading up to a public speech I did a few years ago. However, I continued to smile like Sanjeev Kapoor after he inadvertently gobbled a few drinks in ‘Angoor’, as the nurse struck two ear buds into my ears (offcourse, where else!) and led me into ‘The Room’.

The beast looked quite daunting with its ugly open-ended mouth waiting in anticipation for its next hapless victim. I felt like fleeing and cursed the neck for its infidel overtures. In keeping with the modern-age ethos of the medical profession, the nurse displayed no signs of compassion. Her KPI was to get me in and out of the beast within a period of 25 minutes and ensure that I didn’t run away with the clinic provided nightie-equivalent I had to don in order to entertain the beast whilst I stayed in its august company. What cannot be cured has to be endured. My neck had left me no other option but to reluctantly surrender myself to the beast.

I lay down on my back, with arms folded, face facing up and the sides of the beast right up against my own. At the stroke of a key, the beast started gobbling me up, slow and steady, into its dome. In a few seconds, the beast had engulfed me completely and I had absolutely no room for maneuver. In order to avoid a feeling of claustrophobic panic I immediately closed my eyes. The nurse announced from another planet that the scanning was about to begin and I should gear up for some high decibel noise. Another keystroke and the silence was broken by a sharp sound piercing my ears - “tok, tok tok” went the scanner at an irritatingly consistent frequency. “tok tok tok” – “tok tok tok”.

I tried to make music in my mind dovetailed with the beast’s toks and day dreamt of an interview with NDTV where I beamingly relate the unique inspiration of my top-of-the-chart musical score. My dream was rudely interrupted by the nurse’s distant announcement that the ordeal was coming to an end in a few minutes. Enthused, I opened my eyes….

Life only needs a few moments to pass you by. As I opened my eyes to see myself completely surrounded by a machine in semi-darkness, I felt the strongest feeling of unease I have ever felt in my life. My heart started racing at top speed as sweat beads swiftly ordained my forehead. I felt impounded, impotent, captured and felt a strong urge to break through the shackles and run for my freedom. In those few moments, I truly understood and appreciated the value of freedom – freedom to enjoy the clear blue skies, freedom to bask in glorious sunshine, freedom to follow what your head thinks and your heart desires, freedom to socialize, to interact, to walk, to run, to debate, to discuss, to read, to write, to chase your fantasies and your aspirations.

Not every fall is into an abyss. Not every opening in a tunnel has a train on the other side. As life punctuates our existence with a few disappointments we develop amnesia towards its highs. On that day, during those few moments, I realized how blessed and lucky I was to be free and my heart bled for those who were perpetually confined to the four walls of their hospital rooms.

As I was released from the clutches of the beast I felt a sudden surge of liberation as well as a sense of calmness in my soul. The scanner had failed to unearth anything unusual in my neck however had succeeding in awakening a new perspective to life.