Techie,,Legend Stuff!!

I still remember the day i joined my college,, felt like a new bird with wings of freedom, friends from different walks of life and ofcourse total new concept of eating habbits!!! It was breathe-taking experience when the lecturers used to "SCOLD" when we dont write the codes properly ,or when it fails to work according to the requirement, i used the word "breathe-taking experience" because it has its purpose. They used to say "I dont understand what your code does, what are you going to do in the company if they hire you? waste fellow...". The scolding was cute in itself because it emphasised in the work COMPANY... MNC COMPANIES and LOTS of COMPANIES!! Well,that was the purpose of us, young and wild and logically approved budding Engineers!!! The sad story,,or say the irony of the story was this,, what our lecturer told, what he scolded, was oblivious to the fact that there are other important factors for a successful project development, coding, being one of the ingredients.. Now wait a minute,how the hell coding can be one of the mere ingredients for a successful project development??? This was at that time a MILLION DOLLAR question i asked myself for self evaluation,, and yes it was true that coding can be just a mere ingredients!!! Now take a minute for this, The backbone for successful Project Development is "COMMUNICATION between client and the customer"!!!
I have my own personnel experience and i'd love to share that,,, It was a peaceful holiday weekend which i usually spend in bangalore with my neighbour of that historic time, when i used to enjoy coconaka toffee more than X-box, who is now working as an assistant consultant in Bangalore. Now being associated with Cognizant for more than a year, it is a good feeling, like a child i would go around the places with just a bag to contain my used clothes and toothpaste. So it was his place when we were enjoying IPL matches after splendid chicken and hilsa fish for lunch, since both of us were techies i just indulged some technical words into our conversation, to make it more interesting. One talk led to another and so on.. It was funny.He just asked me what is my domain,technology. I was like .."umm...java.....wellpoint... healthcare....
(**coughing**)". He was having a smile which i didnt like it ..at all!!! Then there was 15 minutes royal thrashing!! YAY!!!! The bottom line was,,he opened my eyes, untill we dont know what is the requirement,what is the purpose of the status, documentation,and ofcourse the kind of client we are dealing with,i dont think we can manage the project. I was dence and i didnt know what he wanted to hear from me!
Say,for example,,there is a bug in the database which hampers the optimal usage of the database,which is tuned for 90% .My PL asks me to look over the matter,and i tune it for 95% and i say thats the best i culd do. Now look at the situation, supposedly this was the scene and my PL wanted to give the status to Bussiness Associate then probably he would'nt understand all the tally and percentage approaches, this might lead to serious escalation, hampering the future business with the client!!!
Now imagine the same scene but the talk not of all technical dictionary,, my PL says "The database has been tuned and upgraded now, earlier you could do business only for 16 hours and you can do the business for 19 hours!! " .The business associate might hug my PL if he is liberal ! 3 hours of additional business worldwide is something very big achievement for the client. WE should know whom we are talking to, what he wants from us,,because he is paying for the job to be done!
Miami actor Will Smith said, "We are gonna have to work on our communication." in Independence Day.Computer scientists, programmers and systems analysts being the rational beings they are,touchy-feely subjects like communication is amorphous, vague and make one very, very uncomfortable! After all, how do you know if you are communicating well? People call it different things - Good Requirements Gathering, Good, easy to use Interface design, etc. However,managing the process and project management well just makes you efficient!. Gargage In -Garbage Out at the right time, within budget!
This is also what people call Business - IT Alignment! Understanding clearly what business is trying to accomplish and making sure that IT helps in that quest and not come in the way or be unhelpful! The difficulty with communciation is doing it correctly. It comes with experience and many painful failures. Once you see what works and what does not, you get a sense of how to do it right while sticking to the Process and the Project Management goals set.
In this century let's hope we shift the focus somewhat to communication away from Process and Project management. It will get us a lot more mileage than previous methodologies did!