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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Sports and politics is not a cocktail!

Sports and politics don't mix but sports have been used, over years, as a means to highlight political issues. Is this right? Can the politicians not refrain from using sports as a platform for political gains?

Sports in its unadulterated form is a means of enjoyment, a celebration of physique, acumen, will power, determination, team work and ability. Let it remain that! Let it provide smile to the billions and not a frown!

I believe that geo-political issues should have been kept out of the Olympics journey this year. Olympics is a tradition, an event that every athlete looks forward to, its an opportunity for a sports person to leave an everlasting imprint on this world- and it comes once in four years. Let it be a white canvas that it deserves to be for each one of the athlete. Lets not paint it blood red!

Peace!

Quiz 2: Simple 5










Another set of 5 simple questions…get cracking and refrain from googling…

  1. The first of these popular ads was run during the World Series in 1997. It was created by McCann-Erickson. Actor Billy Crudup has been the voice in the US market; in the UK, actor Jack Davenport is the voice. Name the company and the ad campaign.

  1. The current incarnation of A is the result of a merger between Confinity and X.com. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature. Identify A.

  1. What is the term for the largest ships capable of transiting the Suez Canal fully loaded, and is almost exclusively used in reference to tankers?

  1. Identify the picture of the geographic entity taken from space shown above (I am looking at the specific water body nearest to the two land masses which is the focus of attention)


  1. This person exploiting several loopholes in the banking system siphoned of funds from inter-bank transactions and bought shares heavily at a premium across many segments, triggering a rise in the Sensex in early nineties. When the scheme was exposed, the banks started demanding the money back, causing the collapse. Identify this person.

Answers in a week.

Please use the comments feature to respond.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Quiz 1: Simple Five

  1. Who introduced cinema to India by unveiling six silent short films at the Watson's Hotel in Bombay, namely Entry of Cinematographe, The Sea Bath, Arrival of a Train, A Demolition, Ladies & Soldiers on Wheels and Leaving the Factory?
  2. This lethal agent was first used in WW1 by Germany prior to the Third Battle of Ypres. The Germans marked their shells yellow as a means of identification. Identify the agent?
  3. This company came into existence in 1945 as M/s Bachraj Trading Corporation Private Limited. It has a plant in Pantnagar in Uttaranchal among other plants elsewhere in India. It made it to The Forbes Global 2000 list for the year 2005. Name the company.
  4. What is common to the following airlines: Asiana Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways.
  5. Once bonded, a male and female of this species tend to live their whole lives together as a monogamous couple. During the mating season, June to March, the pair call to each other at night, and meet in the nesting burrow every three days. These relationships may last for up to 20 years. Their eggs can weigh up to one quarter the weight of the female. Usually only one egg is laid per season. Although it is about the size of a domestic chicken, it is able to lay eggs that are about six times the size of a chicken's egg. Identify the species.
Answers in a week's time.

Please post your responses in the comments

All the best!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Charity at work!!

I really appreciate the good work done by Adam Gilchrist, Australian cricket team's wicketkeeper, for a charitable cause recently during a test match. He donned pink wicket keeping gloves and took catches that contributed money for the charity that he supports. It is a noble cause. But was it easy for him because he is a celebrity and people are ready to back him up. Will it be equally easy for commoners like you and me to do this? Well, the answer is yes! It is easy, provided we have the time and a desire to do a good deed!

I would love to hear from you what you have been able to do, ways in which we can help. Here’s one from my side – if you pay USD 400 for an XO laptop (100 dollar laptop project), you get one and the other one is donated to a child in an under-developed nation that could help the child in the education process!

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Staff augmentation - is it worth it?

Staff Augmentation works well for starters but is it wise to stick to it during the long course? Well, if you have a very small capacity to plan for then by all means, go for it.

Staff Augmentation works really well if there are only a handful of resources that need to be managed. Work could be assigned to and tracked fairly easily for these resources along with your own work. Staff Augmentation also helps if the size of the projects that you typically engage on are very small - both in terms of the team size and the duration. These projects use up less than 5 members and are less than 2 elapsed months in duration. Your project is as good or as bad as the resource that you decide to bring on board. Don't blame the staffing agency for the failure or the success, blame the model!

Beyond a certain threshold (35+ resources or 5 medium sized projects), it makes sense to go for project based ownership driven model of outsourcing. It takes away the pain of staff augmentation overheads of short-listing resources, interviewing, risk of whether the resource will really work out or not, tracking the time sheets for these resources among other tasks. The risk is owned by the consulting vendor. You can sit back and manage the outcome / deliverable. You really do not care if there is resource turnover in your project, the consulting vendor is on the hook for delivering the goods. These days Tier 1 vendors have an elaborate set of metrics that could be tracked for a project which give you a fair measure of the health of your project. If you see red, a phone call to the top management of the consulting vendor is all it takes for corrective actions and investments to fall in place and lo behold! the project is back on track! It is not always this easy but life is less stressful. If the project fails, then the vendor is to be blamed! The only thing that you need to manage (and manage really well) is the expectation of the business users. Business users will need to adapt to the concept of not always having people responding to their queries right away, they will have to learn to follow some processes, learn to sign-off on deliverables (and later learn that sign-off means a sign-off), learn the hard way that requirements cannot be changed at their beck and call, it takes money to add or change requirements, well the list is long...So long as you are able to manage the business users, you are on your way to success!

The other factors are that it is a cost effective option, there could be learning that is cross leveraged across projects, knowledge could be created in a common repository and over a period of time your organization could benefit from the structure and process regimen being followed by the consulting vendor (you will never reap these benefits with staff augmentation - there is no incentive for a staffing vendor to do this for you).

Staff augmentation may look easy and less of a trouble, but friend, look beyond and there lies heaven...it takes courage to take the first step (you know what, every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing it, so just do it). And most importantly, please make the vendor successful as your success lies in the success of the vendor. It takes some effort initially but the end results are worth the effort! Come on board and enjoy the ride!

टेक्नोलॉजी का दुरूपयोग - क्रिकेट पे कलंक

क्या टेक्नोलॉजी क्रिकेट कि मासूमियत छीन रही है? क्या टेक्नोलॉजी क्रिकेट से मनोरंजन को कम कर रही है?
मैं यह नहीं मानता! मैं तो यह कहता हूँ कि टेक्नोलॉजी का पूर्ण उपयोग न करने से हम इस असमंजस भरी स्थिथि मैं हैं। यदि स्निक्कोमीटर या हाव्क आए जैसी टेक्नोलॉजी अम्पाइर के पास होती तो वह कभी गलत डिसीजन नहीं देते और इतना बवाल कभी नहीं उठता। कृपा करके आप यह समझे कि उम्पिरे भी इंसान हैं और गलतियां भी इंसान ही करतें हैं। इस प्रकार का टेक्नोलॉजी का अर्ध उपयोग क्रिकेट को एक सज्जन और भावनात्मक खेल से एक ठंडा खेल बना रह है। आज कि ज़रूरत है कि या तो हम टेक्नोलॉजी का पूर्ण उपयोग करें या फिर अम्पाइर पे पूर्ण भरोसा.

Technology's invasion of cricket - is a non issue!!

Slick use of technology certainly makes for an interesting cricket viewing on television but is it good for a good old game of cricket? Is use of technology robbing a part of the 'glorious uncertainties' of cricket? If we really look at the root cause, it is the partial deployment of technology that is the cause for concern rather than the technology itself.

Who would have raised a hue and cry, if the umpires too had the freedom to look at the snickometer or the hawkeye reading for each appeal. Please do not blame the two men in white coats in the middle, they are after all very much human. TV Commentators, have the freedom to look at replays and make use of the technology at their disposal (and they sometimes still get it wrong!) and create an issue out of nothing - thereby create a topic that sustains them for a day and for the TV channel it translates into higher TRPs and thereby higher revenues!!

So what if the umpire makes a mistake! Its a part of the game - at the end of a day's play, the players and the umpires should feel comfortable to meet at the club house and have a beer and enjoy each others company. Please remember cricket is a game and it should be enjoyed not only by the viewers but also by the players as well as by the umpires. This partial deployment of technology is not helping the game - it is robbing cricket of the human element. Technology is cold and impersonal and cricket as a game is much more warm and friendly.

The decision makers must decide - either all or nothing - swaying in between is not done!