Nishant Verma

“What happen when we move in a new situation” or for the sake of simplicity of understanding let’s say what you feel when you join a new team. You as an “individual” bring in your learning, your individuality to the whole team. You get acquainted with the processes prevailing in the team. Some of these processes you would have experienced before, some you would have never heard of. Things which are new are tough to digest and practice. We react to it: we start questioning, we feel little uncomfortable towards the new things. We start influencing the process by “trying to modify” the existing process. That is the “individuality” you bring on to the team, which should be highly respected. Some of these processes are good, efficient, valuable etc. Some has room for modification, replacement. During the initial phase of settling down we feel strongly about these processes. Given a chance we would want to change it or replace it. This feeling of bringing change lasts from starting few d...

Individuals with their own individuality, style and uniqueness forms a Team. A Team is defined not by the uniqueness of the individual but by the coherent vision and capability they share. It’s a group of focussed people who lead to the success of any project rather than a bunch of highly talented individuals who just wants to get driven by themselves. Team is very similar to a chariot shown below. If all the four horses starts to run in their own direction then the person riding this horse will never reach his/her destination. The goal of a team should be to achieve higher level of cohesion, trust among peers and increased focus on delivery. It should be performance oriented. The biggest advantage of team is learning from peers. One should be open to learn. I may be good at certain thing but there is always a room for improvement in each of us. Also it’s the onus on each one of us to shape the behaviour of team. There are people who make you feel positive and spread positives vibe...

In my previous post “ Bridging the gap-the ‘Analyst’ way ” I have briefly discussed the role of Business Analyst. One important role in addition to that is “testing” the system frequently.  I strongly believe that BA should test the system frequently. They should verify the acceptance criteria of the story and augment the QA testing. This is especially important when we have more than one BA on the team. One should continuously be in touch of the system by testing it. Also this will inculcate the feature ownership, which sometimes get lost in day to day rush.

Few questions when asked I don’t know how to reply. It’s not that I don’t have answers but just that the questions are not appropriate I feel. Some of the common questions are: How are things ? How is it going ? How is the project? Problem I see with these questions are they are not Quantifiable, they don’t make me think to answer. And most of us are little optimistic by saying “Things are going good” or “Yeah it’s good” or “Going on”. Instead questions should be asked in such a way that helps us get an insight. “ How good are we looking in terms of velocity planned ”, “ Are you implementing any new practice ”, “ What are you learning these days ”, “ How is Team Confidence looking? ” etc. There could be many questions like the one above. I wanted to highlight that Questions when framed properly can get you fruitful and real information. Also it will make other person think through which they might not have been doing.

I will give you 6 easy steps to configure your iPhone 3GS to work on cellular data. I have a Reliance connection. On Main menu screen, click on Settings. Click on General. Click on Network. Turn “Cellular Data” ON . Click on Cellular Data Network. Click on APN. Enter “ rcomnet ” in small letters. You are good to surf on Cellular data network. Enjoy !!!

Scene 1: On 23rd Jan I registered on Tata Docomo website for mobile number portability. I got a confirmatory SMS that a representative will get back in touch for the paper formality and with a new SIM to be given to me in 4 days time. Till now I was feeling nice. I was thinking that the secret behind good consumer facing product is great Customer Service/Care. How much you value a customer? After 5 days of patience, I called up on the Toll Free Number 1800-266-0000. To my surprise they have no idea of this. After speaking for around 5 minutes I asked them how do I cancel my request? Simple solution: Send a mail to listen@tatadocomo.com detailing that you want to cancel the request. I got an automated response that my request will be served. Thanks a lot ! See the response below from them: I was surprised to see the awards they have received for their service. Amazing !!! Scene 2: Out on Indiranagar 100 Ft Road, Airtel Office, Vodafone Office, TataDocomo Office all in close p...

What we did well ? What we didn’t ? How we can ? I always use to think that Retrospective meeting is all about taking some time out of busy delivery schedule to reflect back on the work we did. I somehow feel it’s an important practice in agile methodology. The goal of the meeting  should be to continue the momentum of continuous delivery by effectively continuing some process, amending some process to suit the team best and then dropping off some. Retrospective Meeting also allows us to review our practices; practices that worked well, practices that didn’t work so well and practices that should be picked up or implemented. Another thing which I wanted to point out is: most of the Retrospective Meetings results in bunch of action items. Some of them are forgotten the very moment we step out of the room (post Retrospective) and then they got picked up once again right before the next Retrospective meeting (just to give update). What’s the point in having such action items? A...