Educational Institutes -- Where are we heading?

In the recent past I have watched the news related to our educational institutes. The educational institutes are supposed to be the temples of learning. In my country we even treat our teachers as equivalents of God. The teachers are given the position next only to the parents. Such is the respect given to teachers. However, in the recent developments the teachers are performing such acts that they are loosing respect of the students; and at the same time the students are not giving the due respect to their teachers.

It is not uncommon in India to punish the students at school, the punishments are sometimes severe. In one of the recent incidents a school teacher had made the child to stand in the hot sun for not completing the homework assigned to her. The poor kid could not withstand the high temperatures and she fell ill. She later went into coma and died. The kid's only mistake was not to complete her assignment and she had to face death. Does she deserve a death punishment for not completing her homework?

The other news that I got to watch on the idiot box was related to a university staff who got humiliated by the students for misbehaving with the female students in the campus. The person in discussion, had misbehaved towards the female students in the campus. The complaint was lodged against him and the university was taking legal action against him. But still the students thought it was their responsibility to teach a lesson to this guy and they started pouring ink over his face and beating him in public. Now if everyone feels so responsible and takes their own actions of justice, then why do we have judiciary?

In one other incident, one of the student who was an asthma patient did not receive immediate attention and by the time the student is taken to hospital for the required assistance, she succumbs to death. This is not in any government operated schools, but in a highly regarded private educational institutes.

This time the private university which was just registered collects high fee from its students provides them with nominal facilities. After two years the college management informs them that they are not a recognised institute and are just registered, hence cannot provide graduation degrees to the folks. Having lost their invaluable two years of education, the students return to violence by beating the administrative staff in the college and damaging the college property. As in all the bollywood movies, the cops arrive in the end and take the management into custody.

In another inhuman and barbaric act, in one of the schools for deaf and dumb the female students are subjected to sexual harassment's. And the culprits are none other than the staff and management of the institute. When the teachers and the staff who are supposed to help the students turning into self-confident citizens of the country turn into villains, what education will they get? Where will they go to learn the ways to lead their life in the so-called civilized world?

If the educational insititutes and the teachers don't realise their responsibilities and the importance of the lives of the students who blindly believe them to transform them into knowledgeble and responsible citizes of the nation, it is hard to imagine the state of the nation.

Land of Billion People

This is an incident that occurred in my project, yep the same one LFP about which I described in my previous post. As mentioned earlier the technology team works from the small corner in the garden floor of the corporate office. All the functional teams / PMO etc., are stationed on the second floor. The corner where we sit is really a small place and had two noisey printers as our companions. In that place three people can work sitting adjacent to each other with little comfort.

In the functional team, there are a couple of client people who are from the same land as me. Among them there is a guy called RS who is from my country, who had left the country long back. He moved from one country to another and ended up as a Canadian citizen currently working in United States as my client.  RS is a very funny person, he often surprises with his witty answers. He is a good natured person and has high regards for his home land or rather the land of his origin. 

One of the consultants working here is from my company lets call him JW, a Texan. This guy is a cool dude who is funny at times. 

Usually to do the testing, the functional folks come downstairs to work with us.  One day there were only two of us, this guy JW comes to work with my other team mate. When they were testing some object, RS joins. He had some object scheduled for testing and he was supposed to work with me. In that conjusted location, RS brought a chair from the neighbouring meeting room and was a little confused in arranging it there. Then JW comes up with this phrase and I quote, "Come on man, squeeze in. You come from a Land of Billion People".

Testing in QA!

This is a real incident form my second on site assignment, lets call it LFP. We were in the integration test cycle 3 phase of our project and just one month away from go-live. Unlike my first on site assignment where I was just part of the interfaces PI team, here I was working as both an ABAP and PI resource. I need to be honest here, my colleagues in this project are experienced ABAPers who have been on multiple on site assignments.

As you can imagine, being a month away from the project go-live, everyone was working hard to get the objects tested in the quality boxes, fixing the issues and testing to make sure everything looked perfect.  We had some smartforms i.e. in non-technology term it is just any other form which is like an order quotation, invoice etc that can be printed from the transactions in SAP and can even be sent electronically via emails / faxes. One of my colleagues here was responsible in developing this object in the project and was the single point of contact for all the issues related to smartforms and there sending mechanism. I have to admit he did a splendid job of getting this functionality achieved. 

When one of the forms was tested in the QA box the heading column in the form was blacked out and the rest of the form was getting printed with expected values. Now that was our top priority to quickly check why we were having the issue. We thought lets take a print and validate for other type of form. We did that and found the document had the same issue as the previous one. Then we thought, ok lets send it electronically to once of our email accounts and check if the document appears with the heading column in black. We triggered the same transactions in our QA box this time by selecting the email options. Better idea isn't it?  Before the emails are finally sent out from the system these get stacked up in the buffer and a separate transaction needs to be executed to release the buffer. Since we were in testing; the technology folks (we) had the access to release the buffer in the QA box. I logged into the transaction on my friends request and found that there were about 23 other emails/faxes queued up in the buffer.Without any hesitation, we executed the transaction to release all the emails from the queue. Finally got the email to our account and validated that the issue was with the printer drivers not with our program as the document that we received in the email was perfect. Please contact basis team, that is not our issue.

I (Tec1) and my other friend (Tec2) who tested this application went around with our business. In about 15-20 minutes after the testing we did, one of the functional consultant stops by my desk and asks me the whereabouts of my other friend who tested the application. And the conversation went on something like this:

FC1 (Functional Consultant1): "Hey dude, have you seen Tec2? I have an important issue that I need help on."

Tec1: "What's the problem? Is there anything I can help you?"

FC1: "There is a problem with some of our form application prints and emails. Can you help me with that?"

Tec1: "What kind of problem?"

FC1: "The emails of some of the invoice documents have been sent to the customers. The help desk folks are receiving calls from the customers enquiring about the emails they received. Do you have any idea who sent it?"

I completely forgot about the transaction that I executed to trigger emails and coolly answered the guy, "Hey you know what, I am not into this email / fax applications. Please check with Tec2, you should find him in the other cubicle. Anyways, I will pass on the word to him."

FC1 makes a move from that place looking for Tec2.

In the meantime, the director of the project walks down from his office in the second floor to the ground floor looks for the technology folks and the basis team. The place where technology team sits is actually a small corner in the office where the printers are placed. No one ever will imagine that people will be sitting in that corner and working. The directors face was red with anger and was searching for the technology team leads. We were surprised to find him at our place, and someone gave him a good news about the testing they were doing with some third party systems. The director had nothing to say on hearing the news and walked away from our place.

In another 15 mins, I go about my business and was looking for FC2 to test one of my other objects. There I find FC1 and FC2 working together and trying to find the documents that were sent to customers.

Tec1 to Fc2: "Sir, can you please test my other objects that is pending approval to QA?"

Fc2: "Nopes dude, we are debugging an important issue. Some one had sent invoices to customers from our QA system? We need to get the person identified ASAP. PMO is damn serious about this."

Tec1: "Oh did the emails actual got sent to the real customers? Hmm..when did this happen?"

Fc1: "About 30 mins back."

Then the bulb glows in my mind and I (Tec1) says,,"You know what, I think I executed the buffer to debug my print issue. Anyways, this is QA box right, why will the emails go to the actual customers?"

Fc1: "Dude, as part of the mock cut over task performed in QA box the real data was loaded. All the customer details and email addresses maintained are real."

Hmm...concern..then I (Tec1) says, "Ok fine, anyways I will confirm you back; if the emails were sent because of my execution or is it the work of some other guy."

After couple of minutes, I find Fc1 and Fc2 at my desk enquiring the updates. I get into the transactions and find that it was me who sent the emails to the customers. I thought God what did I do!!?? 

While we were debugging the director sends an email to the basis team asking them to send the names of all the folks who had executed the transaction to release the mails from the buffer. My friend in the basis team sends my name and some other folks who executed the transaction that day.

In the mean time Fc1, Fc2 and Tc1 (me) went to my TL (Team Lead) and explained him the whole story. His face turned red in no-time and had his hands to his head. He too received the email from the director of the project with all the other team leads in CC regarding the incident. 

He calls the other guy i.e. Tc2 to his room and seeks explanation. He visits the director and explains him the circumstances in which we had to execute the transaction to release the emails from the buffer. We get an earful for doing that and the immediate consequence of the incident is no access to that particular transaction.

This was only one of the experiences that got messed up when Tc1 and Tc2 worked together.

Project Round Up - 2

Project Round Up 2 - the title seems is definitiely a sequel to the previous Project Round Up that I posted almost a year ago. Yeah, sticking to its title, this is definitely a sequel with the project expereinces that I gained in the project that I have worked in last one year.

The first time that I had Project Round Up was my first onsite engagement based in LA, CA. I had lot to learn on that engagement, lots of interesting and valuable experiences. Moved on from that project to another project in Denver, CO. This project also had taught me good lessons. This project I took up as a full time co-ordinator for both PI and ABAP. Man, it is tougher to survive as project onsite co-ordinator than as the full time onsite developer. 

(a) To be a successfull co-ordinator you need to be very well organised and complete your daily tasks on a daily basis. 

(b) Never have any tasks delayed for the next day. Prepare the taks list for the day and complete the tasks on a daily basis.

(c) And the most important thing is to make people work for you than having the impression that you can fix things once you get the object developed from offshore. Yeah, I agree that you will be a good developer and may have the strong technical skills but still at the end of the day you are not a machine, hence cannot fix multiple objects in a single day. If you cannot fix multiple things in a single day, you are going to loose out on the turn around time. 

(d) Never think that you are going to get things sorted out during the weekends and make up for the loss of time. Weekends are not meant for work, weekends are to be utilised for recuperating your energies and enjoy your time. Though you think you can work over the weekends your mind does not respond unless it is urgent. So no weekend work. 

(e) No online articles, newspapers, cricinfo's during work hours. Office time is meant to be spent on official work.

(f) Now, coming to the points that matter the most, communication skills and have a good / great relationship with your team lead. Your relationship with your immediate reporting manager matters that most than anything else. Keep your manager happy, this point will take you places.

(g) Always be confident of what you speak and spend the time in improving the subject knowledge.

(h) Email Communication, follow up only with Emails. This will help you keep track of the assignments, follow up with people and keet every one informed. Else you are going to spend most of your time explaining people (unnecessary effort that can be avoided and guarantees peace of mind).

I don't know why, as usual I always try to analyze the project in the end and keep a lot to be desired from the next project.

Ok, and one good thing about the as usual stuff is always I find my well wishes. As I found in my previous project, I found some real good friends and well wishers who cared about me and my achievement as much as they cared about their. Man it takes time to identify the right friends but it is always good to find them. It is never too late. Try to preserve these friendships and learn from them.

Want to be an Entrepreneur?

Before you take up the big leap to be an entrepreneur read these articles to find if you have it in you to be a successfull entrepreneur. These are the article extracts from Wall Street Journal.

I believe these articles are worth reading:

(a) First, answer these questions to see if you have what it takes

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123498006564714189.html

(b) If you're thinking about starting a business, you might not want to give up your day job just yet.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123498014787414229.html

Read it. It is worth spending your time.

(c) Create the web site for almost nothing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121803326363016929.html