A short siesta in office

According to a survey, after 3-4 hrs of working in the office, if you nap for 10-20 minutes, you will perform reasonably well in the next 3-4 hrs. The survey done on 200 people and it has been noticed that professionals, who take regular naps in the lunch hours at office, are professionally far better than their counter parts. The survey also says that difficult and complex works can be done quite easily after napping. But napping should be proper even if it is of 5 minutes.

The survey gives a picture which is quite astonishing and hilarious. How can someone take a short sleep in the office? In my professional career of 9 years till date, I never nap in the office. And I believe my performance is OK. In my opinion, napping in the office will makes you fishier in the office. Although it is a fact that most of the government organization’s employees are doing the same after their lunch hours. I, myself, have seen this trend in the government sector. 5 years back, I went to install a Base Station for TETRA in one of the state of central India. There I have seen that all the government officers were not available in the offices between 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. I was shocked to see that at that time. When enquired for the same, I got the answer that the officers take a sleep after lunch. And I am sure that after 5:00 PM, those guys must be waiting for 5:30 PM to leave for the day. It means they were working for only half a day. Should government cut 50% of their salary as they are working for only 50% of their allocated time?

And this is not enough. Three years back, I joined the largest US telecom MNC in India. And there also, I have seen a room with proper sleeping bed and blankets (with AC). When asked, I got the answer that this room is for napping. But most of the time, I have seen the professionals used that room for more than 3-4 hrs a day. Is it napping or wastage of time in the office? Well, I never used that room in my tenure.

Sometimes, I also feel sleepy in the office. But I always take a short walk or drink water to ignore the same. In my opinion, this is a better option to ignore the nap and work in the office.

-- Sanat Sharma

Maintaining a job

Some of our young professionals have a different mindset about the job. They thought that now there are no worries in the life, as they got the job. But this is not a right way.

Today’s world is of Globalization and open economy. It was a good sign in the past to stay in a single job for a long time. But now, the word “stability” has different meaning among the youngsters. Stability now means a stoppage in the professional carrier. Now the youngsters are regularly updating their skill sets by doing short term or long term courses and moving ahead in their career by switching the job regularly. This way redirects any professional to achieve a good designation in the office at a very short span of time with a good salary package. If you also want to succeed in your life using the same way, you have to add something in your personality.

1. Keep yourself updated: One need to keep updated in each and every front of life. Reading of newspapers and magazines should be a regular practice. Try to understand the new technologies and areas coming in the market. Better to understand the new products and their characteristics and use them in your day-to-day talks.

2. Keep an eye: Time is the only asset in life. So one should better utilize the time. And to do this, one should be aware of the new opportunities and use them at the right time and right place.

3. Networking: Networking plays a major role in the success of your life. It should be a part of your life. Do not ignore it in your daily pressurized professional life.

4. Do not tension: You have to encounter numerous problems and issues in your life. So no need to tension and better to fight the same and come out as a winner. Make a habit to consider each and every issue as a normal event and react accordingly. Better not to set many expectations from others because if they do not fulfill, they will give you tensions only.

5. Know your strengths: SWOT analysis should be a part of your daily life. SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It means one should identify SWOT in his life. Better to identify your strengths and switch your job accordingly. If you are not aware of your strengths, how come you will get an appropriate job?

6. Keep control: Try to be emotional intelligent. Keep your control on your feelings and think from your mind, not from your heart.

7. Think positive: How far will you go in your life, depends on how you are thinking for each and every situation. Be optimistic in life and set your aims in life. Try to achieve them continuously by doing hard work as well as smart work. Take a break whenever you feel that you are thinking pessimistically.

8. Improve skills: Improvement is a never ending exercise. So don’t sit relaxed after getting a job. Regular update and add new skills. If you will add more eligibility and skills in your professional life, you will get more and better job offers.

I have seen many colleagues and sub-ordinates in my professional life, who wants to achieve a lot in their life but are not following the above points. Some of them are so much relaxed in their current job that they are working like a “Fool Employee” in the organization. The paradox with those “Fool Employees” is that they always criticize whatever is happening in their professional life but have no plans to come up with all those stupid things.

To survive and grow up in a particular job, one need to do hard work habitually.

-- Sanat Sharma

Staying in same job – A Passive Candidate

Are you satisfied with your job? Are you not uncomfortable with any of the company policies? Have you never think of about the job switch in the recent past? If the answer of all the questions is “YES”, you are definitely a “Passive Candidate”. Passive candidates are on hot table among all the recruiters and HR professionals. But it is very difficult to identify the Passive Candidate.

Technical saying, a Passive candidate is the one who is working great in his/her current role in the office and not even thinking about the job switch in near future. Companies are now trying to identify the Passive candidates by doing a simple technique. The company, itself, is providing the information of the employees to the HR person of another company. Those HR people are calling the employees and asking for a job switch. They are offering good packages also, but only on the phone. Actually they are exploring whether the employee is willing to change the job or not. The report is then forwarded to the concern company and identification of Passive Candidate is done.

The real fact of the job market is that there are plenty of Active candidates. Active candidates mean those who are always ready for a job switch. As per the recruiters, dealing with a Passive candidate is much easier than dealing with an Active candidate. Passive candidates always think towards a single direction while Active candidates have numerous mindsets. Passive candidates will be more sincere and reliable resources, than the Active candidates.

Job market always requires eligible and capable candidates. Passive candidates are more stable, career conscious and loyal. These kinds of employees are like an asset in the organization. On the other hand, Active candidates have more chances to switch the job on a short time. Risks and costs both play a major role in case of Active candidates.

In one of my previous organization, I have a colleague who was like a veteran in the group. He was the first member of a particular group and was working there from the last five years. He has all the qualities of a Passive candidate. But one thing that always troubles me is the answer that he provides whenever he had been appreciated by anyone for being a Passive candidate. He always said that I am not getting the job anywhere and will not get the job in the market as I am compatible for here only. The answer sounds very depressing and unhappy. In my opinion, he must be very happy to consider himself as a Passive candidate in the organization.

The world is changing and thoughts too. Our young generation is under impression that to become successful in professional carrier in a short span of time, job switching is necessary. But companies are looking for the stable employees i.e. Passive candidates.

-- Sanat Sharma

Role of Human Resource (HR)

The role of HR is very important for any organization and its employees, especially in recent time when the economy is not so stable. HR department not only hires the eligible employees for its company but acts as a motivator, inter-mediator and informer for its existing employee force.

Now a days, words like “lay off” and “salary cut” are creating a stress full environment among the employees in any organization. To resolve and clarify all these tensions, HR professionals should be there. There is an unstable atmosphere in all companies, in recent times, which had put a question mark on the survival of each and every employee. Experts always said that companies should disclose the financial and internal matters with their employees, as far as they can. This will help the employees not to worry. And it would also finish the words like “lay off” and “salary cut” before even they started roaming in the office corridors.

HR department is playing a major role in company strategies making process. Employees are the biggest assets of any organization and to be a safe-guard for them, HR must play a major role. Like HCL Technologies punch line says “Employee First”. In current market scenario, there are two major tasks for any HR department. First, to keep motivated the employees and second, to retain the excellent talents in the organization. These two are also the biggest challenges for HR. Keeping these challenges in mind, companies are improving their internal communication system. Improving the internal communication system is one of the major agendas of HR department. HR is giving importance to communication at each and every level. HR plays a role of mediator in this communication thread.

This role of HR is also important because the same communication channel is being used by most of the employees to know the internal happenings of the company. Many companies ask for employees help in crisis situation. Getting the suggestions is also HR’s task. This process promotes the open discussions.

I have seen in one of my past company that HR was not even concern about what the employees are talking about the company and its policies. In fact some of the employees are not even aware of who was their HR person. I have seen that HR roaming in and around the senior management without any reason and interacting with the employees rarely. That is why I termed that HR as “SHR – Sleeping HR”.

One of the companies in recent times mailed to each and every employee about the cost cutting measures and asks for the suggestions to improve the same. This is a good initiative by HR to start the task and it will definitely end the tasks on a good node.

-- Sanat Sharma

Switch the job when .....

Before you switch your current job, you must be aware that whether you are really not feeling well in the current job or you are switching the job for some few profits and returns. It’s a fact that to move forward in your professional carrier, it is necessary to review your job periodically. But sometimes changing the job in a frequent time frame adds a negative aspect in your CV. That is why; one should switch the job when it is required at any cost.

Following are some of the issues that drive a person to switch the job. It is as per my professional experience. And I am not covering a major factor of job switching in Asia – Salary.

1. Tension full office environment – If you are a part of never ending tension in your office, you could be a victim of headache or backache. An environment like this will redirect a person to sleepless nights heading towards a stressful day where one cannot perform well.

2. Target, far away – Are you on that place where you want to reach at that particular time? If your answer is “no”, I recommend you to start searching the job. If you think that your work in not recognized by the management and you are not getting any appreciations for your work, better to change the job. If you think that you are more eligible than your current role, switch the job immediately. I switch my last job due to this only

3. Dream job in your hand – Everyone has a dream of “Dream job”. If you got the same, without wasting your time, join it. But better to explore the different options of your “Dream job” else it could be your “Wild Dream job” also.

4. Boredom in office – Are you feeling boredom in your office? You are not feeling so excited about your work as you are before. If you are suffering the same from a long time, you need a change in your carrier.

-- Sanat Sharma

What does senior management think about the testing group?

Answering the title question, I recollect all my memories and list down the views that I have heard from ZAT management - Zero Aware Testing management. I already covered on one of my blog about ZAT management in the past.

· Bottleneck
· What is the point?
· Necessary evil
· Ad hoc
· Why so much time?
· Wastages of time
· No value addition in the product
· Too slow
· Overstaffed
· Too many excuses
· Testing should find everything
· Quality gatekeeper
· Find bugs too late
· Testing less value than other disciplines

In my professional experience of around 9 years till date, I understood that the senior management (ZAT management) doesn’t understand what to expect from the testing effort.

I worked in an organization in the past where many users and senior managers expect the testers to find all of the bugs. This is probably not possible and surely is not practical. If too many bugs are ultimately making their way in to production, then one way to reduce the number might be through additional testing and subsequent correction. But, a better solution might be through better understanding the user’s needs, creating better requirements, or producing better code from the onset.

I got a line from one of a senior manager in an organization saying that testing people have nothing to do except to find out the mistakes of the coders. And believe me, that manager has a work experience of 15 years in the IT industry. GOD, SAVE THE IT INDUSTRY OR AT LEAST SAVE THE TESTING. One of a great coder, with whom I worked, said that it is all because of the coders that the testers are getting the job. It means that the coders are 100% sure that whatever they will code, it will be a buggy product.

One of a manager in an organization was always raising the concerns about the testing cycle estimation provided by me for any component testing. He always bargains me with the effort days. We bargain the same like two fools and come up with a solution. The solution was simple. Just reduce the testing cycle effort to 50%. And later, that manager was giving the testing cycle effort estimation by his own, without even discussing with the testing team. WHAT AN IDEA ......

Testing is not the quality gatekeeper. The purpose of testing is not to ensure the quality of the software, but rather to measure its quality. It is true, that the testers may find bugs that, if fixed, will ultimately result in a better product, but this is due not only to the testers but also to the programmers who fix the bugs found by the testers. Testing is just one facet of the quality solution. Responsibility for the quality of the product must reside in the entire team: users, requirements analysts, developers, and, yes, the testers.

-- Sanat Sharma

Imperfections in a perfect job

One job can give you more than what is required to you. But it is also possible that you are not satisfied with it. So let’s explore the reasons of imperfections in a perfect job.

After exploring and interviewing many organizations, you finally got a dream job, as per your requirements. The organization, that had given you offer letter, has everything like
1. Great work profile.
2. Good working hours.
3. Flexible policies with respect to employees.
4. You have offered an interesting designation.
5. The organization has good brand value.

Seeing the above points, it is near to impossible that you resist yourself not to join the organization. But sometimes there is some confusion which creates a grey area in your mind.

If salary is not good: A very common problem in Asian professionals. An organization had offered you the job which looks like a perfect job to you. But you are not convinced with the salary that you have been offered. You are thinking that HR has won the game of negotiating the salary with you. If this is running on back of your mind, you should compare the given offer with the market conditions and salary structure. You should check whether the salary offered is right as per the market standards. Also keep your professional skills and expertise in your mind before getting into the conclusion that you are not getting paid as per your expectations.

In my opinion, one should spend the initial years of his/her job with branded company and good people. Try to learn as many things as you can. If you become expert in your job, the salary increment will hit your bank account at any cost and that too, on regular basis. I have also done the same.

Home-Office distance: If you have to travel a lot between office-home, don’t think that it is a big problem. Sometimes, it happens that your last office was 10 minutes far from your home and the new one, that you are planning to join, is 2 hrs drives away. So don’t get confused. Ask for the cab facility in the organization. Most of the companies are providing the cab facility.

Even I also consider the Home-Office distance a lot in the past. I usually prefer less travel time between Home-Office. And till date, I am fortunate to get the same.

When the company is a start-up: It might happen that your current job is with a branded organization having the good face value and the offered job is from a start-up organization. It is quite obvious that working in a new start-up company will be a challenging job. So my recommendation is to decide the same as per your personality. If you believe in taking risks, join the new offer at any cost.

I also joined a start-up company after my first switch in professional carrier. But I was sure that the start-up, that I am going to join, will be the market leader in near future. And it happened. I believed in the management of that organization and it paid me a lot. I got the exposure and learning experiences and it added a lot of value in my life.

Many job offers at a time: It is possible that you have applied in many organizations and you got selected in many of them. In this scenario, better to explore the relevant factors of all the organizations before joining any one. In my opinion, organization’s brand value and work culture plays a major role in selecting the organization.

This happened with me once in my life. I have been interviewed by around 10 companies in a time span of 20 days. I got the offer letter from 3 organizations within 2 days and I was in a confused state about what to do. But, as per my habit, I considered the near to home organization. But the plus point with that organization was that it was the biggest telecom company of USA. I joined it finally.

-- Sanat Sharma

(सनत शर्मा)

Late sitting in office – Is it worth?

Now days, there is a new trend in the market. Staying late in the office i.e. employees remain in the office after duty hours. But is it worth? Most of the time, it is not. A recent survey done by an US marketing agency gives a picture that 80% of employees staying late in the office are doing nothing after office hours. In other words, they can complete their activities on time, if they have the ability of better time management.

Its 6:00 PM। You started leaving for the day. You packed the bag and just starting for the same. In the meantime, you saw one of your colleagues sitting comfortably in the chair. He is not in a mood to go home. And on top of it, you know that he had no work at all. He is doing nothing but only time pass. These kind of professionals termed as “Late seaters”.

I have seen in some organizations that people starts playing games (Badminton, Table Tennis etc) after office hours। And finally they have the total working hours of 70 in a week. In fact once one of my colleague managers shared with me that one of his employee is actually sitting in the seat for 20 hours maximum but his report says that he is in the office for 80 hours a week.

Recently, Infosys chairman, Narayan Murthy said in a conference about late seating. He said that those professionals who have the habit of staying late in the office are wasting the resources of the office. And above all, they are wasting their time also. Actually these guys are not more productive. He also said that there are some professionals who have more work and that is the reason they are staying late in the office. That is why; people are mostly confused between sitting late and working late.

Each organization wants more productive and eligible resources for themselves। The only criteria of measuring the eligibility of an employee are based on work done on time. That is why if an employee is staying late in the office, it is not a good performance at all. The main fact is that whether an employee is staying late in the office because of time pass or work pressure, it depends on the employee itself. On the other hand, if an employee is habitual of sitting late in the office, he/she will not be able to spend the time with the family that redirects him/her to tension and family disputes.

Is it really necessary to stay late? If late sitting employees are doing great in the office, then the reason for that can be understood। But this is not true in most of the cases. It has been seen that most of the employees stay late in the office to impress the employee. Actually, this all depends on the behaviour of the employee. One cannot measure the performance of an employee based on the late sitting habit. It has been seen that few employees have more responsibilities over them, and that is the primary reason of staying late in the office for them.

In my opinion, staying late in the office is not a good culture of any organization। Employees are like back bone of any organization. Late sitting affects the performance of any employee and creates a gap between the team members. So one should not promote the late sitting culture in the organization.

-- Sanat Sharma

Recession hit Interview questions

One of the most important questions asked during a job interview is “where do you see yourself five years from now?” But now this question makes no sense as it is difficult for employers and employees alike to foresee their fate one year from now.

Although the market is improving now, still there are some recession related job interview questions that employers are asking from the candidates. I will try to list down those questions in this blog with the significance of the question being asked by your interviewer.

Question: During the current poor market condition, what makes you look out for a job change?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: It will help them to understand the individual’s primary reason for changing jobs as well get an insight into how well he/she has thought through the decision. It gives the employer an indication of the motive for change in job as well as well hints at how stable he/she is likely to be, if they join the organization.
Your expected reply: Be honest about the reason for the same and give substantial reasoning.

Question: Would you be willing to take a beating on your compensation or designation or both, if required, in the future?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: It reflects flexibility and openness of the candidate to possible future change and orientation to the reality in the market. This makes the candidate aware of the possibility that if not in the past, such a scenario can definitely show up in the future.
Your expected reply: Exhibit willingness to the above situation or be upfront about your views.

Question: Are you OK with a flexible job in terms of role?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: The employer needs to understand the candidate’s mindset in terms of his/her flexibility towards the concept of job rotation or even where getting him/her absorbed within some other department is concerned.
Your expected reply: Display openness while accepting roles that involved job rotation or honing cross functional expertise as it’s the need of the hour.

Question: How secure do you think your current job is during these times of recession and why would you think so?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: The employer would ask this question to understand the standing of the candidate in the previous job. It will also display the confidence of the candidate about his/her indispensability status in his/her current role/organization.
Your expected reply: Talk confidently about your importance in your current role, and why you think you are irreplaceable.

Question: How did you handle your team members during times of recession, when you had to let go of some people?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: It will explain a lot about the candidate’s team, his exposure to these scenarios, and how the candidate handles these tough dilemmas.
Your expected reply: You can talk about ways you handled the team dynamics sensitively and share experience of how you went decided through the dilemma of the process. Also explain how you choose team members that had to be axed and how you conveyed those to your team members.

Question: How has your present company performed during the slowdown?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: Gauging the candidate’s understanding of the global economic situation is vital. This will help employer in understanding the candidate’s knowledge about his/her organization and the broader view of company.
Your expected reply: You should have an adequate knowledge of the company you are working for.

Question: What do you think is an executive’s role during a slowdown?
Significance of the question being asked by your interviewer: It helps to access the candidate’s understanding of his/her role and how he/she can contribute, relating individually aspiration with organizational growth. This question is significant because this will help the employer relate his/her performance with reference to his/her past achievements.
Your expected reply: You should apprise yourself of the achievements or the challenges you have overcome in the previous organization.

Sanat Sharma

Interview Room Questions

Interview literally means to discuss formally with somebody for the purpose of an evaluation. Two parties involved in this process – interviewee, who is interviewed and interviewer, who conducts an interview.

Today, when everything is changing everywhere, the style of interviewing is also getting changed. The witness of any interview i.e. the Interview Room is also getting enhanced and upgraded. The latest trend in this is asking the Simple questions.

Now a days, there is a great interview dilemma happening. The candidates are preparing for the technical and difficult questions but the interviewers are asking very simple questions. These entire set of simple questions not based on the bookish knowledge but they analyze the personality and the behavioral knowledge of the candidate. The smart answers of these questions could play a major role in selecting the candidates for the further rounds.

In this blog, I will summarize some questions like this.

• Question 1. Give me a brief intro about yourself.

I encountered this question every time when I faced the interview. And the funny part is that 95% of the time, this is the first question that has been asked. Most of the times, I started with my educational background and then my professional background although all the information that I was mentioning is already there in my CV. But actually this is the best question to start the conversation between the two parties. So better to streamline and summarize the answer of this question before anyone is going to an interview.

• Question 2. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

SWOT analysis. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats. SWOT is a very famous technique to highlight the above four categories for any organization/individual. One should give something more than his/her thoughts before thinking and getting it answered for the same. Normally the interviewer wants to know about how much you know about by asking this question. Knowing yourself is a tough science and that is being examined by this question.

• Question 3. What you know about this company?

This is homework question for all the interviewees before attending the interview for any organization. By asking this question, the interviewer wants to know whether the interviewer is aware about the “CV” of the organization. This question is also very important as it can give the answer of whether the company is best suited for the profile and work and that the interviewer is looking for.

• Question 4. Who are your clients?

This is more or less a question for the high profile jobs. Because once a high positioned person is switching the job, he will normally join the organization with his/her last organization’s clients. I mean the person will snatch the clients also from the last organization. For other profile job, this question is being asked to get the information about the clients and how anyone was handling the clients.

• Question 5. Where would you like to see yourself in the coming five years?

This is again a homework question for any interviewee. The aim of asking this question is to get to know about what a person is thinking about his/her capability and what the future roadmap of the individual is.

• Question 6. Why you left your last job?

The answer of this question could be very diplomatic. At least this is what I have done in the past. But I would like to suggest one thing that better to be more transparent when answering this question, if you can.

-- Sanat Sharma

Smart, Smarter, Smartest Management

I will start this blog with a joke.
A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they're falling off the ladders, dropping the tape measures - the whole thing is just a mess. A tester comes along and sees what they're trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away. After the tester has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs. "Isn't that just like a tester, we're looking for the height and he gives us the length."

Recently, I witnessed a great example of getting a CMMi level in a group. The team was working in the same way, for which they were used to of. There was a simple process defined for everything that fits down everywhere. That process could be defined in a single straight line – “We will not follow any process”. And the whole team was superb in justifying their “Single Process Oriented” behavior.

Then suddenly, a big giant hit the market. The name of that giant was “Recession”. Everywhere the giant was destroying the economy like anything. Although most of the professionals in that group are not aware of what is recession. But still they were afraid. And then the top management tried to exploit the situation. A mandate rule hit the company that all the groups should be CMMI level before the completion of the annual appraisals cycle. If not able to achieve the same, you will be befooled with the appraisals.

All the managers worked hard to achieve the CMMI level. They tried their best to introduce the processes and get it followed by the sub ordinates. Since everyone wants a good appraisal hike in his/her salary, irrespective of the fact that whether he/she is doing OK or not, all tried their best. The game played by top management was going to be a super hit show. Finally, after a time span of about two months, the group got the CMMI level and that too, before completion of the appraisals cycle.

And after that, the team got the appraisals. Not even a single team member in the group was happy to see his/her appraisals. There was a dissatisfaction wave flowing in the group.

And then what happened was expected from the situation. The team again started following the same process that they were following in the past and that was “We will not follow any process”.

We may boldly state our commitment to quality and may even wave the banner of certification or process maturity. But the thing that really matters is how users experience our product. If they have to put up with frequent crashes, annoying bugs, or software that is difficult to use, our quality is merely a facade. Wrapping ourselves in the flags of ISO, CMM, or Six Sigma doesn't make our users feel any better.

The whole story had turned up into a summary line if you stand close to the management, you will hear the sea. But in any case, the management will always try to put you on the spot and will take certainly long time to make himself/yourself pointless. Management should not be dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

I will end up this blog with one more joke.

A man piloting a hot air balloon discovers he has wandered off course and is hopelessly lost. He descends to a lower altitude and locates a man down on the ground. He lowers the balloon further and shouts "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, about 30 feet above this field."
"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.
"Yes I do," replies the man. "And how did you know that?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "what you told me is technically correct, but of no use to anyone."
The man below says, "You must work in management."
"I do," replies the balloonist, "how did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect my immediate help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault!"

-- Sanat Sharma

Emotional Boss

Recently, there was a survey in Australia, the crux for the same came out is very interesting. According to that survey, if you, as a professional, are emotional and cooperative, there is a very little chance of yours to become a Manager in your team.

The survey was done by “Research School of Social Science” of Australian National University. As per the research, there is a deep relation between your personality and your job. If your behavior is too good, there would be little chance of yours to become a Boss. The research also says that if you are an easily convincible person, you will not become a good manager or businessman. On the other side, if you are an experimental personality, you will perform well in business line or in education field.

Currently, I am reading a book “Know Can Do!” by Dr. Dick Ruhe and other authors. The book defines some guidelines to help professionals to become successful in their organizations, as a successful leader. The points are:

1. Maintain a moderate emotional level. Balance a sense of urgency about what is going on with a quiet confidence. People appreciate a leader with a cool head.

2. Don't fall into the trap of inaction. Make decisions. Step up to the plate. Without a doubt, life rewards action.

3. Be honest with employees about what you know and what you don’t know. Say, “We are making some moves here. We don't have as much information as we would like, but we’re on our way.”

4. Hold people accountable. Let employees know that everyone—the leader included—is accountable for going in this direction.

5. Maximize information flow. Now, more than ever, the left-hand needs to know what the right hand is doing.

6. Give people permission to fail. It’s important for people to know that while you are going to hold them accountable, it is not going to be with the same kind of exactitude you might expect with more routine tasks.

Few years back, I was reporting to a person (my Boss) who was a very emotional guy. I still remember how I was befooling him on daily basis about everything going on in the office.

Sorry Boss for the same ……………………………

-- Sanat Sharma

C-Sat analysis meeting

C-Sat means Customer Satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction, a business term, is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. It is seen as a key performance indicator within business. The ten domains of satisfaction include: Quality, Value, Timeliness, Efficiency, Ease of Access, Environment, Inter-departmental Teamwork, Front line Service Behaviors, Commitment to the Customer and Innovation. These factors are emphasized for continuous improvement and organizational change measurement and are most often utilized to develop the architecture for satisfaction measurement as an integrated model.

Recently, I witnessed a C-Sat analysis meeting. In that meeting, we were supposed to analyze the different ratings given against each questions asked by us to our customers. We had forwarded the questionnaire to 10 different people and we received the response from only 4. And we were discussing the same. When I instantly asked the question from the presenter about why only 4 people have answered the questions, the reply that I got was “silent”. I again screwed the question and continued asking that since we have 6 people who have not answered the questions, there might be different reasons for that i.e.

Those persons are not interested or they don’t want to be a part of C-Sat.
Those persons are fully satisfied with the services.
Those persons are fully dissatisfied with the services.

Surprisingly, I got the answer for this question which was “INVALID QUESTION”.

After that, I was thinking about the usefulness of C-Sat. C-Sat data is useful for any organization at any day but what if the response is only 40% from the customer? Is it really fruitful to discuss the C-Sat results? Was it not wastage of time? Or the management was not able to convince me the advantages of that data?

In the mean time, the audience sitting in that meeting was around 30 but only 10 people, (front benchers) were attentively involved in the meeting. Rest of the audience was playing in the back seats. What I am trying to highlight here is that 66% of the audience strength was totally not interested in C-Sat and its effectiveness.

-- Sanat Sharma

Enhancing visibility and performance at work place

The subject line of this blog is very theoretical and subjective. Recently, I was analyzing the performance of my team and I found that four categories:

1. Some of the resources are doing nothing but showing like anything to me.
2. Some of the resources are doing nothing and hence showing nothing to me.
3. Some of the resources are doing like anything but showing nothing to me.
4. Some of the resources are doing as well as showing like anything to me.

A famous work philosophy says that 20% of your total resources will work like anything in your office. The next 40% will act and work as a normal resource and the remaining 20% will work nothing. The very famous “Pareto’s Law” (80-20 rule) also justifies this fact that one can be comfortable with his/her 80% of work force but remaining 20% can be destroyed at any day. It will not affect anywhere.

But how come the four categories listed above can be categorized as per the rules. This is where the subject line of this blog “Enhancing visibility and performance at work place” comes into the picture. Now let us break down the topic into individual words and try to understand their meanings.

First is “Enhancing” which means improving. Or in other words, we can say adding some more value additions. But one should remember the fact that improving/enhancing is a never ending exercise.

Second is “visibility” which means transparency. I personally believe the more is the visibility, the more sincere person you are. Visibility itself is invisible but the symptoms of its absence are not.

Now “performance” which means how you are working and delivering in your organization. There are performance measurement tools available whose output is any specific number which the management considers. This is because management only believes in numbers. And a number which is showing a positive side, is appreciated by the management.

Finally “Work place” which can be anything where you are working. It can be your home or office or anywhere. But here we will consider the office as your work place.

Now I believe giving a very brief overview about each word individually of my blog “Enhancing visibility and performance at work place” is more than enough to understand what we are targeting.

Let’s us discuss an anecdote here. In one of my previous organizations, I was handling a team of 10 engineers. Most of the engineers were very open with me and we were working as a team. But one of the resources in my team was very suspicious from my view and consequently from the management view. That particular guy was always not able to justify or didn’t want to justify what he was doing. The work visibility from his side was very shady. Although, the work assigned to him was clearly defined in the plan but still problem was the same. Due to this invisibility of visibility between him and the other side of the table, his performance was also getting impacted. And due to poor visibility from his side, the tasks which could be done in 10 days were being done by him in 15 days i.e. 50% of variance. This was unacceptable both for me and my supervisors and that affected his performance appraisal cycle.

Now where the problem lies? - In the system, in the process, in the boss or in that particular person? And the answer from my perspective is very difficult to select. But there is a solution and I did it with him successfully.

I prompted him to send me an e-mail before leaving for the day on daily basis about what he had done on a particular day before calling it a day. Initially he disagreed with this initiative because again he wanted not to clear the things. After a very precise discussion with him, he agreed on it. And from that day onwards, there was a clear picture about what he is doing and where he got stuck. As a responsibility of my role, I would have to jump into the area, where he got stuck, and come up with the solution. That increased the performance of that person and after that there was a crystal clear glass between me and him.

Now although it is not a very long experience of mine but what is the moral of the story? The moral is more you are visible to your management, more will be the performance level and after that more promotions, more salary, more power ……….

Anyways, I seriously insist this point that visibility plays a very crucial role in each and every area of your life. Visibility also means that one should initiate new processes, techniques, tools, and other initiatives which would help the organization to speed up the progress. If anyone of you have n number of ideas in your mind but you are not making it visible to the management, because of any reason, you himself is hindering your performance, growth and future.

Now visibility should be from both the sides. That means visibility should be upward as well as downward. Management should also be transparent to the staff at that level which is possible. Now defining that level is very tough but not impossible. Same is true with the other direction. It is tough but not impossible. In fact if you split the word “Impossible”, it itself says “I m possible”.

So finally, I would like to say that more the visibility in the system, more trust, more understanding, more clarity will come and consequently more performance that means more performance level will increase.

-- Sanat Sharma

Programmer turned Manager

I will start this blog with a recent incident that I witnessed in a Project Management conference few days back. One of a Senior Project Manager, who had an experience of around 12 years, that too in programming and coding, said “I never care about what my testing team is doing. In my opinion, those guys should directly interact with the coders / programmers to keep going the work in a smoother way”.

I asked in between that what if the testing team is facing some issues with the other side of the table. I added that don’t you think you should be more aware about what is happening between these two rivalry parties and should actively involve in the testing activities also. The reply I got was really shocking. He said “I believe programmers / coders are more intelligent than testers at any time. If there is any conflict/issue/concern, testers should follow the instructions that are given by coders / programmers.” After these statements, a lot of discussions started and finally, that person had been convinced that his thought process was totally wrong.

I was eager to know more about this person, so I started chatting with him in lunch break to explore more about his “GREAT” thoughts. And more of that I was interested how come a person having 12 years of work experience in software industry, is so blind about the testing. He told me in that chat session that he started his carrier as a programmer trainee in a group. He started growing in the same domain and after 6 years of hard core programming, he became Project Lead, taking care and managing all the programming / coding activities within the group. He interacted very little with the testers (or Test manager) because of the hot discussions that ended the interactions most of the time. After becoming the Project Manager, he had got the power to manage the Test team and he exploited them like anything. He made the testing team agreed that they should work as per the programmer's convenience.

I continued the discussions saying that a project manager’s job include making sure that all of the individual work activities in a project, including testing happen at the right time and in the right order. If they don’t, delays in completing one activity can set off a domino effect that cascades through the remainder of the project. Quality is never an accident; it is always a result of intelligent effort. After a long one hour discussions with him, I achieved which I was looking for. I made him convinced that the approach, he was working on, was wrong and he should redefine his thought process. I convinced him that the mindset can significantly color the outcome.

So what’s wrong here? Is it the person who is responsible or the conditions that are responsible to divert the person towards the unawareness about testing and quality? I always feel that it is often hard for the senior managers to get serious about Quality Assurance. This is because problem solving is a high visibility process but preventing problems is low-visibility.

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. It’s a dreadful reality that many applications / software are not tested properly before their final release. As a result the firms suffer great losses because of forced standstill. Thus, this becomes the prior concern of company’s top management. So, vendors do their best to optimize testing by means of both tried and tested and innovative techniques. In the light of the above, most organizations realize that software testing becomes an independent professional discipline. It is directed not only to yield maximum objectivity and transparency to bugs reporting process, but also enhances the business strategy itself.

In fact, I have also seen and worked with some of the Programmer turned Manager. For these guys, a very small activity done by any programmer/coder is a highlight to show to the senior Management. But on the other side, testing team, who could be working hardly on the automation front, is nowhere in the list. Those are the illiterate software professionals of the twenty-first century, who can read and write, but cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. These kinds of managers are really a walking encyclopedia for me.

-- Sanat Sharma

Grapevine during appraisals

The idea of this article came to my mind few minutes back. Whenever there is an appraisal time in any organizations, grapevine starts floating among the employees. But what is grapevine? In simple English, it means gossip spread by spoken communication. The originator of grapevine is mostly, unknown. But I feel sometimes, it is the management only who intentionally initiates grapevines within the organizations with some well planned and defined strategies.

Now days, in my team also, there are numerous grapevines. It might be because of the appraisal time that is there in my organization. But who cultivated them, no body knows. I am getting as many as grapevine news on daily basis from my sub-ordinates. Sometimes, I listen them carefully and sometimes I hear them only.

In one my previous organizations, where I worked, one of the greatest grapevines that I heard at the time of appraisal was that the financial position of the company is too bad (anyways it’s very general). But on top of it, there was a rumor spread across all the groups that the owner of the organization is selling his property to pay the compensations to all the existing employees. So how come, the salaries can be raised at this time. But after 2 months, the fog became clear and all the employees got a decent amount of increment.

There are some advantages of injecting grapevines among the employees by any organization’s management. Some of them are

• It is not expensive.
• It is rapid.
• It is multidirectional.
• If carefully cultivated, it is capable of resolving conflicts.
• It a very simple measure of public opinion.
• It serves as an outlet for anxieties, worries, and frustration.
• It promotes unity and solidarity.
• It is voluntary and unforced.

Universal law, if there are advantages, there must be disadvantages also. If the information from grapevine is blindly accepted, it may cause severe problems i.e.

• It may reveal some degree of error.
• It might be harmful in case it is baseless or imaginary.
• It leads to misunderstanding because of incomplete information.
• It may not be reliable, as nobody takes the responsibility of it.
• It can cause damage to the organization because of its excessive swiftness at times. I mean, baseless rumors that are not clarified in time, will be accepted as truth causing a negative impact.

But most of the organizations are very smartly using this technique. They are not ignoring information received through the grapevine. They are not using this channel to supplement the formal channel. Smart organizations identify but not threaten the main source of information. Smart HR management always tries to understand the human relationship involved in grapevine.

This year, the grapevine market is very hot. There are numerous rumors spread across the nations, organizations worldwide. This might be because of the global slowdown in the market. But organizations are making money like anything in this current scenario.

Recently, I attended a seminar organized by a very reputed Indian firm and lead by a very well known person. It was an eye opener for me where I came to know of how the organizations are cultivating the grapevines and reaping money like anything in the recent times.

This year, as per the global HR consultancies say, India Inc is expected to increase salaries up to eight percent with infrastructure and FMCG sector likely to see the maximum hikes.

IT and financial services may be the worst hit. IT sector may see an average salary increase of four per cent this year. Financial services and Information Technology sectors, which have been severely impacted by the global slowdown, are unlikely to see any considerable increases in wages this year.

Big IT Giants like HCL, Infosys and Adobe are going to freeze pay this year as the recession crimps sales. I don’t know if this is a grapevine or not.

-- Sanat Sharma

Earth Day vs. April Fools' Day

Yesterday, when I was driving for my office, I suffered a major traffic jam in which I spent 1 hour. My car was standing like a Chinese showpiece, moving nowhere else. I was looking around and had noticed that 90% of the car drivers are single in their respective cars. They all were suffering like anything, because each one of them had to reach their respective work places as early as possible. In the meantime, some car drivers, or I would say some smart car drivers, thought something different. They started reversing their cars to jump on to the parallel lane for other side traffic. Only few of them succeeded but most of them created a chaos on the road. The situation was so deadly that both the traffic lanes jammed like anything and no one could be able to move a single inch from their respective places. Very soon, the place converted into a battle field with full of pollution and hot words discussions.

Suddenly, I switched on my radio and I came to know from a RJ that today we are celebrating “EARTH DAY”, which means we have to save the earth. The situation was too comic for me. There were two totally different thought processes going on, inside my car and outside my car. I was shocked first and then laugh at what is happening.

“Earth Day”, celebrated on 22^nd April, is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. It all started from US and is celebrated in many countries every year. In India, this is the first time; I came to know something like this. This is very mirthful fact that we all are celebrating Earth Day to protect and save the environment and all this started from a country that is primarily responsible for Earth devastation.

3P is the major source of unbalancing in the world’s environment. 3P means – Poverty, Population and Pollution. And human being is the main focus for 3P. Ironically, we all are talking, like a philosopher, to save the Earth but are doing nothing to achieve the same. Doing small things, while our day to day activities, will contribute a major chunk in this huge initiation of “SAVE THE EARTH”.

We all are aware of April Fools' Day, which is a day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of frauds and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.

In my opinion, “Earth Day” and “April Fools' Day” should be celebrated on the same day. Why? Let me tell you.

We all are throwing jokes on other side on April Fools' Day. And since we all are throwing jokes on Earth on our day to day activities, at least we should club Earth Day with April Fools' Day.

If we have to save the earth, every day should be EARTH DAY not a April Fools' Day.

Balance between two things is important here –

· Development and Environment

· Technology and Ecology

So, “THINK GLOBALY AND ACT LOCALLY.”

-- Sanat Sharma

Voice of India – Elections 09

This is the first time; I am covering something totally different which I have covered in the past in my blog site.

Elections are going to happen in India in the coming months. And now days, newspaper is full of entertaining news about the verbal fights happening between the politicians. How these politicians are reacting and giving speech is totally ridiculous. One of our PM candidates is trying his best to call the counter party PM candidate to come up with an open discussion about the current red hot topics of the world. But the second party, a dull party, is trying to save himself saying that I am a good PM but not good in discussions.

One of the election manifestos of a party is saying that they will remove English and computers from the country, if they came into the power. I pray to God that this should not happen.

One of a Bollywood (Hindi Film Industry) superstar tried to become a MP candidate from a particular constituency. But court refused to do him so because of his excellent past terrorism experience. But now, that guy is behaving like a Joker in all the rallies of that party, saying whatever, which is totally senseless. Please note that this superstar is one of my favorite’s actors.

One of a Bollywood superstar is attending the political rallies to assemble more number of people in it. Now no one is interested about what the leader is saying but only in watching, touching and praising the superstar. And on top of it, that actor is behaving like a complete joker with no knowledge of why he came there. Only money speaks.

One of a national leader, a very strong, commented about the age of a particular party and said that the party is enough old not to rule the country. After that the comedy started. The so called "Old Party" top leaders started mentioning their ages saying that we are enough young. In the meanwhile, one leader said that we should throw all the old age politicians into the sea.

One of a leader said that he wants to run a road roller on to the chest of another leader. On the other side, one leader (Male) said to another leader (Female) that she is "Pathher ke Sanam" that means a "Hard Rocked Darling".

One of a leader said in a political rally that he will kill the counter party leader. Then suddenly, he reframed his words and said that he will politically kill her.

We all know that no party will get the sufficient majority to form a government in this election. After the election results, money game will start and the party with more money will form the government. I am thinking why I should vote if I already know that there will be a hang assembly coming up.

-- Sanat Sharma

Testing Good News

What if I will say I have some good news? Almost all my audience will come into the impression that I have something that will bring joy and happiness to their faces. That will be welcomed by all and will spread a positive energy to all the recipients.

Now this is all about general good news. Consider a Software industry scenario. A tester had to say something which is good news from his/her perspective. The work if a tester is to improve the quality of the software and find out defects as many as it can be. Now what if a tester will say that I have good news? Good news for a tester will be definitely a defect that he/she had found. But that will be a bad news for the party on the other side of the table i.e. for the programmers. So my good news will be a bad news for others.

I have seen in my carrier that most of the programmers have a red fired eye through which they always scan the testers. The situation becomes worst when the management also have the same attitude as the programmers. Sometimes, management plays very carefully when they have to appreciate the efforts done by testing team. They have to make balance between the programmers and testers and sometimes, by doing this activity, they become biased towards development (or seem to be biased) from the external view.

A very especial comment that I received recently is that it is due to test team only that software delivery get delayed to the customer. Because we always talks about defects in the software, and fixing and re-verification of all those defects takes more time to analyze, more time to re-code, more time to test, more time to deliver to test team and further more time to deliver the software to customer. These kinds of people have a mindset which clearly states that all the defects in the software are because of testing team. Is that meaning that testing always increases development cost? Definitely not. But only wise person can think like this. This is something really strange that it is these guys only (programmers) who inject the defects in the software, but the responsibility cracks on the testing team.

Few days back, I witnessed a great example of delivering the software to customer where the development totally got confused that what needs to be done before releasing the software to customer. Those guys behaved like a ……, (what would I say), but the whole storey was very hilarious and comic. I will not disclose that event here as it is against my professional liabilities.

-- Sanat Sharma

CMM

CMM – Capability Maturity Model. It is a model of the maturity of certain business model. Most of the software firms are running behind this without even knowing what does that mean? Would it mean value to the organization? And if yes, at what cost? And the most important. From where it all started? What was the background when it all happened?

CMM original context was for defense-related development projects (for United States Air Force) where human lives are at stake, and where time, money, and manpower are all available in quantity.

Now if we talk about the current software industry, who else will accept this fact that they have time, money and manpower in good quantity. Now days, where each customer wants their software development cycle good, fast and cheap, how can we think about time, money and manpower in good quantity?

Are CMM practices appropriate for every software development context? Certainly not; no way. In my opinion, without tailoring the processes defined in the CMM, any organization should not even think of about the CMM.

I have seen in some organization how they have implemented the CMM certification. As a process of CMM, the organization should be through with the CMM audit that is being done by the CMM auditors. I have seen some companies discussing and giving lectures to all the target employees who will be responsible and will be a part of CMM audit and that too, one day before the audit. I also encountered some great examples where the management invests a lot of time to understand and correlate the actions that are required for a CMM certified company. And the people, who have a good knowledge about the topic, sitting outside doing their regular tasks.

Most of the times, the organization receives the CMM certification but it remains as decorative as Chinese lamps. I mean no one follows what had been promised while CMM certification activities. That is why initiation of a task is easy but continuation of the same task is a real challenge.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.–“William Shakespeare”. This means it is bad if the management is only thinking about getting the CMM certified tag and after that, no control on the same. On the other side, it is really appreciable if we continue with the same practices that we are practicing while getting the certification.

Just because you have the CMM certification doesn’t mean that you will remember all the processes when the need arises. But it is the responsibility of the management to continue with the same to maintain the dignity of CMM.

-- Sanat Sharma

EPP and 3H

EPP – a new term came to my mind just now and I started writing this blog. EPP means Effectiveness of Professional Performance © Sanat Sharma.

Most of the managers are under impression that it is near to impossible to measure the professional performance effectiveness of any individual using any criteria or parameters. I do agree with this. In my opinion, this is true that the management cannot evaluate the level of performance done by any individual in any organization.

Three things should be in a committed mode towards your working organization. Then only, one will get a professional performance expertise and henceforth good level of performance. Those three things are the vital parts of any professional’s body. And those are Head, Heart and Hand. And that is why I called it 3H performance. © Sanat Sharma.

-- Sanat Sharma

Feedback to your Manager

Feedback – We all need feedback. It plays a major role in improving anything. Improvement is a never ending process and feedback is an efficient fuel for it. We all need feedback to know how the things are going on and where to adjust their actions.

Across horizontal and vertical hierarchical structure in any organization, feedback is required from each and every individual to concerned people whom they are interacting on regular basis. This is something called as 360 degree feedback cycle, a new term invented by HR recently. Now providing feedback is quite simple for anyone to his/her subordinates. But unfortunately, it’s not always easy to obtain feedback from direct reports. Somehow, we've come to believe that feedback only flows downhill. Vice presidents give feedback to directors, directors gives feedback to managers, and so on, all the way down the hierarchy. But managers need feedback from their groups, as well, to understand how they are performing their jobs. I mean direct information from the people who rely on their managers to create an atmosphere where they can be successful.

Some of the very common thoughts about “hesitation of providing feedback to your manager” are:

1. “If I criticize him, I will see the effects when it comes to annual salary review”.
2. “Feedback is one-way street with my manager”.
3. “It’s not my job. He should know how he’s doing. He’s the manager, after all”.
4. “How can I provide feedback to my manager? He is boss, who is always right.”
5. “He is not my manager. He is my ideal.”
6. “He will not listen to whatever I will say. Better to keep my mouth shut.”
7. “He will not improve even if I say something to him.”
8. “I don’t trust my manager. He will take my comments on other side.”

Now all the above points are valid at some place or other. So the whole story of all the above 8 points have come up to a summary line that it is really difficult for any individual to provide the feedback comments to his/her superior. So what to do?

The manager’s should come up in this scenario and ask for the honest feedback from their direct reports. So as a manager, one must have to work extra hard to create a comfortable environment with T2 (Trust and Transparency) so that each and every individual feel free to provide feedback to you. The first way to build trust with the people, who report to you, is to demonstrate that you trust them. Demonstrating trust includes both the absence and presence of behavior from both the parties. One should be transparent, consistent and committed towards his/her professional responsibilities to create trust within the group. It is the only trust which will create a healthy environment for each and every individual. And trust redirects everyone to provide an honest and true feedback to everyone in the group, either to your seniors or to your juniors.

But how to do that? In my opinion, managers should create a feedback document with all the points that is required to all the direct reports for smoother operations with in the group. These points could be availability, approachability, commitments, transparency, technical expertise, managerial aspects, problem solving skills and many more. It depends on case to case. Seeking feedback shows that you value the group’s perceptions and want to provide them what they need to do their jobs.

-- Sanat Sharma