Leadership

Listen to this speech by A P J Abdul Kalam. Very inspirational and positive speech which most of us needs to know. I can relate the words of him to compare the qualities of great leader with what I see in my daily life. But its a matter a big dis-heartened to me that most of the leader we have are not worthy enough to be followed or to be intimated. Everybody want to be a boss not a leader. Dr. Kalam says that the leader should have:
1. Vision
2. Passion
3. Courage (To travel unexplored path)
4. Knowledge —> Creativity, Courage, Righteousness
5. Should not be frightened of failures
6. Novality in management
7. Working with Integrity

Our leaders (who think they are and those who want to be) should listen to this speech.

Experiencing the role of a TA

Being a post graduate student, I am entitled to do TA (Teaching Assistant) job apart from my thesis work. Many a times, students feel that TA job adds extra work load and creates hindrance in thesis work. I completely disagree with this statement. I have been TA-ing from last two semesters and let me tell you, this job gives me a lot of knowledge in terms of both technical and presentational skills.

During my third and fourth semester, I assist my supervisor with two subjects namely, Operating System and Database Management Systems for MCA. Although I have studied both of these subjects during my undergraduate course, so this was not a big deal for me to handle the classes and the labs. I am sure you can differentiate between the study of a private college and a deemed university. I haven’t learned anything practical in both these subjects from my past college. And I was very excited to challenge myself with these subjects.

The very first day, when I was to take my first lab of OS, I was very excited. I have this thing in my mind that, might be I could fail somewhere in explaining the concepts but I was more concerned about my learning rather that the students. It hardly takes one or two labs for me to learn how to handle students queries. Gradually, I and the students created an environment of learning where there is no teacher – no student, only a group whose aim is to cement the concepts and to make ourself confident in the respective subjects. During this period of time, most of the students asked me to change the structure of lab. They wanted some kind of project work instead of having few programs as assignments. As lots of time had already gone and we are not left with any time to do projects. So I requested them to continue with assignments this time and if, in the next semester, we got chance to work together, we surely will do projects.

And finally in my fourth semester my supervisor asked me to take the DBMS lab for the same students of MCA. Till now, we were all friends. But I always kept a line distance between us so that the respect for a teacher and a student does not dissolve. During this lab time, I along with my supervisor decided to give away the projects to students. I requested the supervisor to experiment the hybrid methodology of development rather than waterfall model or iterative model. He agreed and we started implementing the process model, which I was working on.

The overall session of being a TA was very good. Instead of affecting my thesis work, this job helped me for the implementation of my work. Both of these subjects are also important from the point of job placement. The aim of getting a good job in my dream company also encourages me to do hard work. I would suggest every computer science student to assist as TA for at least one subject during his course period. You will enjoy every bit of this experience and most importantly if you could develop a healthy relationship with the students, you will get many good lifetime friends.

Issues faced during Scrum Implementation

Being on an academic project I faced following major issues while practicing Scrum Process.

1. Lack of Risk Management
2. Unnecessary Management Interference
3. Lack of Cooperation
4. Lack of Testing
5. Lack of Decision
6. Lack of Discipline

Experience with a phase of life (Chapter “JOB”)…

Being a postgraduate student at MNNIT has been very stimulating and challenging at times, but with continuous hard work and dedication, I have successfully managed to acheive my way to success. I thought I’d share my placement experience with you all.

On 21st december 2009, I got a call from my friend to say… Tarun you got selected as software engineer at IBM. I was absolutely ecstatic as this was the moment I have been waiting for long time. I will never forget how happy I was to hear such good news.

In July 2009, I began my placement year with MNNIT. I was a bit nervous, but the nervousness gets diluted with time as the companies started coming. During May – June 2009, companies like STMicroelectronics (STM), Citrix, Goldman Sachs take students for internship. I got a call from STM and have given 4 interviews. And during these interviews I realise my weaknesses. I didn’t get selected in STM and I started preparing myself for interviews.

During the start of my placement, the routine of getting up early everyday and concentrating for the whole day was daunting and I did struggle to get into a regular pattern in the first few weeks. I made a list of targeted companies whom I like to work with. IBM, Oracle, Accenture, STMicroelectronics, Goldman sachs and TCS tops the list.

4 to 5 top companies got passed away, and I was not able to make it. This was the most frustrating moment for me. STM rejected me, Goldman Sachs didn’t allow M.TECH, and for Oracle I was not shortlisted (2 out of 3 students on pointer 8.125 were called, and the 3 rd student left out was me. I don’t know why they have not called me). Accenture and TCS had no hope of visiting campus. Finally getting into IBM was mandatory for me. Only 2 days before we were told about IBM GBS visit. I know this was not the last chance for me to appear in campus, but I was pretty sure of making this as my last campus. I prepared hard for written exam, as for me, this was the most difficult part to crack. And finally, at around 1:00 PM a mail from TPO called me for the next round.

Time management is the key in written exams.

Group discussion was the major elimination round. My topic was “Test cricket Vs One day cricket”.

Communication skills, Presentation skills, & confidence are key stones.

After clearing GD round, my confidence just double. Next was the tech interview. I was ready with my documents to enter the interview room. My interviewer was a lady. I handed her my resume. She glanced my resume and said good 3 times. I was waiting for her questions and finally she started firing questions. She asked about my thesis work, projects, data   structure(especially, queues, stack, and tree), software engineering and database. She tried to make me confuse by asking irrelevant questions but I sticked to my answers. My interview lasted for around 25 minutes and I answered all of her questions. She was pretty impressed.

The mantra is to keep youself confident , cool, & relax. Eye contact is a must.

After clearing tech interview, I was knowing that I have been selected. The HR had all my documents, the written paper, GD marks, tech interview comments and my resume. He was looking at them very deeply and asked me to staple few papers for him. I did that very silently. Then he started scanning my resume and went on asking every detail on the resume. After 15 minutes of tech discussion, he asked me few HR questions and offered me to ask a question. The interview lasts for around 30 minutes. This was the most happening interview for me.

Personality development, communication skills, confidence, way to handle pressure is all that any HR looks for.

The day was called off and we were asked to meet up next day for final results. And finally I got selected in my dream company, IBM.

CPI and Subject selection…

Role of CPI: CPI do play a big role in campus placement, but this is just an eligibility factor. Having a low CPI eliminates you even before the written exam but, having a CPI above 9 doesnot guarantee you a job either.

CPI is the first step in the ladder but, there are still far more steps in the ladder to climb.

Subject Selection: Every thing during your M.TECH program depends heavily on the subjects selection. Such selections, reflect your intention from postgraduate program. Many a times, getting a good CPI and interest in some subject (for which you will not get good CPI) got clashed and we end up achieving nothing.

Long term goals got clashed with short term goals and end up with no goal.

Subjects studied in first year ignites your interest in something and makes your way of selecting thesis topics. There could be two targets: either you are industry oriented or research oriented. Selections should also consider this factor.

Learning from mistakes, realizing your weakness, building confidence and presentation skills is all I would recommend to all.

GOAL Analysis

Have you ever asked yourself “Why are you doing, what you are doing”. Why you want to be a doctor, engineer, socialist, actor, teacher or some other. Why you want to do M.Tech after B.Tech, or PhD after M.Tech, or MBA. Give it a thought and I bet, you will find it the most difficult question to answer. Real world is completely different from what we could imagine. “Some useful thought to do something different is always obscure by invisible forces”. But then also we pull our socks up and never get dis-hearted because we have some goals, some mission, some vision. Oops, so many things to achieve.

I always wonder what all these vision, mission, objective and goal makes a difference. They are all different names to same flavor. Prof. B.D.Chaudhary clarified this by putting all these words on a time scale.

Goal………..Objective………….Mission…………Vision

If I was asked to describe what GOAL means to me. Then I would preferably say “Genetic Observant and Talent”. Who sets goal for us? Is it our parents, family, friends, colleagues or mentors. Or its our talent which internally force us to set goals ourself. We all are society peoples. Several invisible and visible forces tend to divert us and help in the progress of community.

Goal setting or any work you do, according to management peoples, needs SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threads) analysis. But do we really do SWOT analysis. Very rarely.

Two very important points:
1. We set our goals based on the competition around us
2. We set our goals after analyzing the threads it can bring

Brief to Agile & Scrum

Here’s a small presentation by me which gives you a glimpse of Agile Software Development and Scrum Framework.

ASD and Scrum Overview

Wave the Scrum

Google has all what a developer wants. Agile community was demanding for a much better collaboration tool, and the Google presents you with “Google Wave”.

Google Wave is a Communication and Collaboration Tool

Google Wave along with Wiki forms a great combination for solving the problems of collaboration. Google says ” We will give you the platform and the various resources, now its up to you to customize your tools”. Making the application open source, Google gives much flexibility to the developers to experiment and develop their own applications which could be used by large community. An era has come where instead of saying “Mail”, people will say “Wave”. Google Wave provides real time communication and ways to get yourself social. This wave tool is an alarm to other social networking sites that “Hey you, I am in the market”. You can see Google wave as a collaboration of IM, Email, Wiki, Twitter and Blogs.

A simple way to add your application to Google Wave is:
1. Click on New Wave
2. Left click on this image 3. Paste the URL of your gadget
4. Click Add

Here’s the link of one of the Scrum tool User Story Tool. Add this link to your wave gadget and make access to User Story Tool.
For viewing other extensions for Google wave you are required to log in to Wave Sandbox. If you do not have an account here, then click on this Wave sandbox account and get the free developers account.

When we talk of real time video conferencing, Google wave comes handy. It provides you with rich client applications that can purposefully make the communication effective and efficient. Many of the problems we agiler facing today can be solved with GWave (Google Wave). I am looking forward to see many new gadgets for Agilers in GWave. Infact we can also develop several tools for the practices of XP, Kanban, Scrum and others.