Who could innovate better?

Today, I came across an activity "Search for Social Advocate" inside the organization.

When organizations around the world hunting for social media specialist and writers on job boards and social networks, I am amazed with this idea of searching the advocates inside the organization.

"Social Advocates" - Interesting term!

It is better to that somebody who understand, live and experience the organization, writes about it on the social platforms. It is a Great thought, Isn't it?

I believe it brings in better productivity and usefulness of the content shared.

I am not aware of the internals or plans for the "Social Advocates". But I believe there should be a  team of Social Advocates, who could the organization co-ordinate and form a team (Virtual?). Train them with products, policies and basic writing strategies with marketing touch. I believe, the organization by their values and policies, will never intervene on the creativity of the individuals.

The team could be formed with experts, interested people from every group and product team to share thought and happenings in the markets/industry, technology and strategies.

We could always depend on the professional marketing team for promotions through advertisements and campaign activities. But for content, definitely this is the right way. Millions can't be wrong. Content is the KING, always.

Honestly, I un-follow people and pages that kills my interest with repeats and spams.There would be no chance for such scenario here, I believe.

Organization?? Who else? It is EMC - The Strong and Innovative Storage Giant of All Times.

Leading Through Good Times

It is all about being  responsible and understanding simple objectives

Career is almost a half part of an individual's life. For many it is the most part of life. Keeping work and life balanced is a thought at the age of 35 and above at the time where you missed all your valuable ages of life.

I use to have monthly feedback meeting where I allow my sub-ordinates to complain on me! or I can say a feedback meeting. Initially it started with most complaints and over a period they stopped complaining. They appreciate very rarely! But do it from their heart which is the best compensation I enjoy for my hardwork.

I always believe, the sign boards and branding are not the company but the people and stake holders are. As a manager, I trust my responsibility is to keep my stake holders happy and satisfy their requirements. I understand I am a representative of the organization. My stake holders are people who I work for and with who I work. Essentially, my customers, my sub-ordinates and finally my managers.

I am valued because my customers are happy for which my sub-ordinates help me to keep them happy. So I need to give first priority for my customers followed my team. My managers wish the same order so the ecosystem is balanced and focused towards the common business objective of keeping customers happy.


Stop blame game and work as a team

I strongly believe mistakes made by team member is mine.

Absolutely, there is nothing to blame, nothing to harm. After all it is a team work. Mistakes can be taken for discussion to identify the root cause and solutions could be discussed to avoid such mistakes in future.

I found some leads point out mistakes in a way it harm the developers. It leads to depression for the developer and frustration for both. It also makes the developer feel inferior.

If the developer don't write the code well, it is the mistake of the person who hired the developer or the one who trained him or even it could be because of the SDLC practice. Don't you agree?

Most leads and managers forget their role in a team. Being a good team player he should identify the strength and weakness of every resource and make the resource a valuable asset to the organization. It is also every manager's responsibility to mentor the sub-ordinates. Their career/life is trusted on organization which in turn handed over to a responsible manager or lead.

Reminding how many mistakes we did and never took efforts to correct them. Jumping companies and being promoted as managers! Ha, after all is it not true? Even if not for you, you accept this truth with your known circle. But I'll say it is nothing wrong. Everybody does mistakes. It is about accepting them and correcting it with the right spirit. In fact man who does many mistakes could be a better manager.

A senior programmer's single page of code could have dozens of bugs. It lies on the perspective and application. Sometime, following best practices doesn't work all the times for all the applications. It isn't just my statement but the best practices itself. It says best practice for most applications but not all.

Treat mistakes as learning milestones and not as crime. Document mistakes and prepare a best practice manual for your organization.

I agree, mistakes costs. It has to be budgeted. Even if it is unacceptable, it is practical. Sometime, it is called as buffer time!

Never do it

I have noticed leads and project managers writing code sitting next to developers and keep in sync with development process. While it is appreciable for a manager to contribute code, it is offense to ignore the responsibilities of a lead or manager.

It will speed up development but extends time of the project. Contradicting? Yes, most of your time should be spent on code reviewing and to comply with objectives and milestones. Find places to improve, identify re-usable code, help developers to be more efficient and organized, define metrics, tabulate resource utilization and identify ways to maximize of productivity, arrange for performance meetings, arrange for technical training, work closely with testing teams and development teams, work closely with business team and customers. I promise you, you won't be finding time to sit on a developer desk.

If you deny doing the above, basically you have problem with your team. Be bold to rebuild your team. A good craft man requires good tools. Here tools include resources/brains too. It is a business call. Try to help people get on-board with required skills, if it is not affordable let the team understands it. Have a open meeting. Investing on good brains are important than investing on infrastructure and assets when your business is majorly run on brains.


Managerial roles are commonly circled as Projects, Business, Human Resource, Marketing. Finance and Operations. Understanding the circle is very important and being effective inside the circle helps the organization more than trying to penetrate in to next. The top level management helps coordinating inter-circles.

These points are out of my experiences. I would be happy to discuss it with your comments.

You could be a Leader - Years are not counted!

A Leader is not defined by years. Great leaders who ruled the nation where much younger than my grandpa!

It is about leadership qualities. Be wise, be gentle, be truthful. These are the first step to become a leader.

The second step is tendency to help and grow along, acquiring knowledge on the field of expertise and gradually learning more on the eco-system.

Third step is to be proactive, being grounded and focus on what you do.

Finally, you never have to promote yourself as a leader, your qualities will do.

Warning! Big Mistakes Goes Unknown

Most managers in small and medium size projects trust Developers for Testing. Please don't! I am stating  this because, I am a Developer toO! Trust me nothing offensive here.

Naturally, at least as far as I experienced, developers are blind to some mistakes which are identifiable only by a non-technical Genius. Allow developers continue to innovate. Have a weekly review meeting with developers, testers and managers to  discuss where things went wrong.

I am not totally against developers testing their module. Performing a unit test is an essential part of any developer's role. He could have understood the functional part but not as effectively as a functional expert do. Sometime, due to stress and late night builds, big mistakes on some usage scenarios goes unknown if not tested by testers other than the developer who developed it.


If your project budget don't allow you to add testers, try peer reviewing. However, you should try to accommodate at least one testing resource for functional black-box testing in every project irrespective of its size.

In my experience, I've realized many mistakes been unnoticed until a stage where it runs successfully for months or in some cases years. Yes, such missed mistakes are very rare to find and rarely affect the systems, otherwise could have been identified in the unit test or at least over a short term alpha or beta period.

But these rare mistakes could have taken away many orders in an e-commerce environment or missed many figures in a financial application or given a wrong guidance in statistical application. Trust me sometime spelling errors could take away the clients from you.

My sincere request to all managers: Despite the project size, please take testing as an serious part of SDLC. Don't wait till the last minute until the development is completed to test. Include testing as an integrated process and do frequent testing and implement an effective feedback system, where it could be efficient if the interaction happens directly with tester and developers on daily basis. Frequent mistakes could be bulleted  for a weekly review with a power point.