Why Gold Plating is not Welcome....

Life experiences has always taught us very beautiful lessons, even the ones that I have not studied in my B-School. This has always made me appreciate the immense benefits of learning from unusual sources. This is what my daughter and my wife taught me about 'Gold Plating'.

As usual, it was one of those wonderful late evenings with the family and we were all glued to Barclays premier League match between Manchester United and Liverpool. My wife served me a glass of lassi and after having the same, requested my daughter to leave this in the kitchen sink, as I did not want to take my attention away from the match.

As I instructed my daughter, my wife listened to that and asked my daughter not to keep leave it in the sink, but just on the cooking table. She also told my daughter that, she may not be able to reach the bottom of the sink, so she may break the glass. My daughter went to the kitchen left the glass and came back to the living room and we continued watching the match.

Then, after sometime I heard a sound of glass being shattered, so, had to rush to the kitchen to see if everything is fine. As my daughter and self were going to the kitchen, we heard my wife shouting at my daughter, ' Did I not ask you to keep the glass on the table?'

In the next 5 minutes, things settled down to normalcy. But, when I was just analysing the situation, the only thing that came to my mind was 'Gold Plating'. My wife assumed that my daughter kept the glass on the table, as she had been instructed and kept a big vessel with water in the sink and that had made the glass break. My daughter wanted to do a good job, as she knew that the glass should anyway be kept in the kitchen sink, she stretched a bit and did that, inspite of being asked not to do the same.

Even though my daughter had stretched a bit and completed the task in the way it has to be done, the customer(my wife) was not happy because my daughter did not do, what she was asked to do. So, my daughter, who was thinking that she should be appreciated for what she did, eventually ended up being abused. Are you able to draw parallel to one or more of your customer experiences.

Gold plating is what we call it when the project team does work on the product to add features that the requirements didn’t call for, and that the stakeholder and customer didn’t ask for and don’t need. It’s called “gold plating” because of the tendency a lot of companies have to make a product more expensive by covering it in gold, without actually making any functional changes. (For example, there are plenty of watches and fountain pens you can buy from luxury companies that are identical to their cheaper versions, except that they’re covered in gold.). I shamelessly stole the above definition from Andrew Stellman's blog.

My Experiements with my daughter....

With my weekdays becoming a lot more predictable due to the long travel that I had to do, to reach my office, weekends have become really important for me. And, off late, I see that I am very creative during the weekends with my new experiments.

This week was nothing new and I would say I was certainly at my creative best and unfortunately my seven year old daughter, Atulya, was my guinea pig.
It was life as usual on a Sunday morning, till my mom came to me and asked me to take my daughter for a hair cut and one look, you would agree that the poor little child's haircut was long due. So, I called the nearby 'Green Trends' for an appointment and then got an appointment after 45 minutes.

Now, with my attention being on that, I asked my daughter, "How do you want your hair to be cut?" She said, "Classic Bob Cut". She also said that suited her and also the Hair dresser told that she was beautiful. Then sold my daughter the idea of trying something different and asked her to trust daddy. Reluctantly, the poor child agreed. Mind you, all these are happening without the knowledge of my wife and my mom.

Then I remembered the movie 'Blind Dating' which was screened in Zee Studio a week back. I liked the heroine 'Anjali Jay' in that movie and searched for her pictures and finally got hold of her picture. Then I took a print of the same and told my daughter, that this is how she is going to look and convinced her that it would be great.

Then I took her to the shop and showed the picture of Anjali Jay and asked the lady to do a similar cut. She did do her best and I also added my interpretations and instructions to her and the end result is for you to see.

My daughter was very unhappy and she said that she is not looking like the woman in the picture. The hair dresser did convince her.

Then I told the Hair Dresser that I cannot carry this picture every time, so in case I need to ask for this kind of hair cut to be done, how should I ask? She said, 'Classic Bob Cut'. Luckily, my daughter was not around, when I heard this, Poor Child.

My New Buddy - Nintendo Wii - Could not resist ...

For a long time, I have been a fan of Sony PlayStation and have been spending a lot of time on the same. These games somehow seems to satisfy my ego, when I play alongside Gerrard and Torres in the Liverpool team in FIFA08/09 and also when I see myself in Chicago Bulls Team in NBA Live. The excitement you get, when you are part of the strike force in Call of Duty. So, PS2 and PSP have been my very good personal friends, taking a lot of my time.
When I was thinking that it is time that I should move to PS3, there were worthy competition from Microsoft XBox and Nintendo Wii. Having never been a great fan of Microsoft, my choices were left to Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii.
Both were awesome, eventhough I was a little partial towards PlayStation due to my loyalty, one demo of Wii bowled me over and I have been planning to buy the same, ever since I played Wii Sports on the Wii Console, way back in July 2008. Having resisted the temptation of being a proud owner of Wii for the last 8 months, I had to give up, unable to resist more.
Now, I own a Wii, the last 4o hours have gone, without me moving away from it.
I love Wii, but, I love PlayStation and PSP too... :-)

The Smart Worker - An Article about my wife in the local daily

Building a company is not like planting one giant tree. It is about creating an entire forest someday. You can see the entrepreneur within when Kavitha Venkatesh reads out one of her favourite lines from Subroto Bagchi’s 'The High Performance Entrepreneurs' or when she goes about doing her duties.
Kavitha’s story may not sound very different for the dime-a-dozen Internet entrepreneurs, but for me it is about seeing a simple, shy girl who never thought of working transform to manage a company. Tucked inside Madipakkam is Kavitha’s flat, with her home and office on the ground and second floor respectively, where she juggles between the two.

It all started one year after marriage when her husband, Venky, motivated her to do something. “Even if it is a failure, it is fine; I will be with you,” Kavitha repeats his words. After a little prodding, Kavitha was ready to take the plunge. Thanks also to the three others (her sister proficient in computers, a friend well-versed in human resources and a computer teacher) who guided her in floating the web maintenance and development firm.

Before that, the Commerce graduate made sure she enrolled in a computer class to learn the basics of what she would be handling. “Even now I only know the basics. I bag projects and the rest is handled by my team,” she says candidly about her company, Compunet Connection, (http://www.compunetconnections.com/) for which she is the sole proprietor. How did she bag her first project? “Through a common friend I got my first client, from the Caribbean, who later referred me to others. And the chain continued.”

Kavitha also keeps a social consciousness angle when she recruits. “All my appointees, six sets of eight to nine freshers who have worked, are from rural areas like Namakkal, Salem, Tiruveneli and other districts. They have BE/ MCA degree in hand, but lack communication skills, so they lose out on opportunities,” she explains.

She has no qualms about losing them after a year or two. “I am happy that they are going to a better place after getting the initial push,” she says, explaining how she conducts personality development programmes for them. “Being intelligent is not enough, but it is essential to be smart,” Kavitha concludes. True!

The above article was published in a supplement of 'The Hindu' - Ergo on 16th February 2009.

http://www.goergo.in/?p=3620

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12403885/Ergo-February-16 ( Page 5 )

I became a Pizza chef..... You can also be one...

It was a sluggish Sunday morning and after having a very tasty breakfast prepared by wife, I was lying on my bed aimlessly, just waiting for the time to go. Suddenly my daughter came to me and asked me if I am willing to do some activity and then she brought some art books which we started colouring.
As I was busy with my daughter, I realised that I was colouring a pizza portion and it stuck me, as to why I should not make a pizza. Just because everyone known to us has bought, we also bought a microwave oven and believe me, my wife uses that to store things, that she wants to keep it out of sight of my daughter and self.
Then I told this idea to my daughter and she also seemed like the same and we both went to my wife and shared her the idea. For a minute, she did not want to entrust a Sunday Afternoon Lunch to a person, who has always thought that the kitchen belongs to the next house. Then reluctantly she agreed. 'A Father is always a super hero for any child', my daughter is no different, she immediately called my parents and my sister, and informed them not to prepare anything for lunch. The plot is now set.
We went to the nearby Reliance Fresh in Ullagaram for buy the necessary ingredients for preparing a pizza. Unfortunately, the Pizza base was not available. My daughter felt very disappointed, though my wife felt relieved. But I did not want to give up, went to Food World in Nangallur, negative. Then finally we got the Pizza bases in Nilgiris Super Market in Nanganallur.
Then, I bought Eight Pizza bases of the size 6 inches. Then bought capsicums, onions, tomatoes, panneer, cheese, butter, frozen sweet corn, hot and sweet sauce, chat masala.
Having bought everything, arranged everything on the table in front of the Microwave Oven, tested if the Microwave oven works, it did. Then I asked my wife for a recipe book and she helped me with a book by 'Mallika Badrinath'. As I was reading that I realised that she had given the way it has to be prepared using using the tawa and induction stove, but not Microwave oven.
So, threw away the book and thought I will follow my instincts.

1) First and foremost, I sliced all the vegetables and collected everything in a shallow microwave bowl, then added a cup of frozen corn and then added a little water and boiled the same in the Microwave for 5 minutes.
2) I applied butter on the pizza bases and got it toasted in a normal tawa, so that it became a little crispy.
3) Took the panneer and got the same slightly heated that in the microwave for 2 minutes.
4) Also using a mixie, I made chilli flakes using dried red chillies.
5) Once I had all these ready, I took one of the base and grated cheese on top of that, so that it covered the top portion of the pizza base.
6) Then I kept it in the oven for 30 seconds, so that the cheese melted on the base.
7) I took the paneer pieces and arranged it on the base.
8) For those who need the pizzs to be a little spicy, this is a good time to put some chilli flakes on the pizza base.
9) Poured some sauce, made a plus design and a round on the pizza base.
10) Now, arranged the vegetables and corn we have already boiled as per the need.
11) Again grated some cheese on top of the toppings
12) Kept this in owen for 2 minutes in High temperature.

Pizza is ready to be served......

My daughter, without knowing the fact she was a guinea pig, claimed that she has to be served the first pizza and everyone agreed willingly. Once she had, the first comment that she told was," Appa you can start Venky Corner" ( Pizza Corner is her favorite pizza outlet in Chennai). This gave enough confidence for others to taste the pizza and improvised it with each and every pizza I made. Honestly, my family is waiting for me to try my next recipe and so am I.

Life is so beautiful...

This picture was taken in Kallanai near Trichy. This is a 329 metre dam built in the 2nd century and this dam is still in operational condition. Its an engineering marvel and this does make me proud to see how they have thought and conceived this dam.
But more than all those, we spent more than 2 hours in this dam and I would say that it has been the best moments of my life in the recent past. The smile on the faces would tell you how much we all enjoyed being there close to nature. As I was watching my wife and daughter playing happily in the water, I was just wondering how beautiful life is and setting aside all these, we are actually racing behind an artificial, lifeless world.
As usual, I decided that once I retire I would probably settle down in a place like this. then I smiled on my thought and said to myself, to live the life my heart wants to, I should wait till I become old... Why cannot I shun away the life, which I don't like and do I what I want to do, now itself.????

Tambaram - Water Reservoir, OOPS !!! Subway

I go by the office cab to work, its a pretty long drive from home to work. Its a 90 minute drive everyday and its a pretty interesting drive, if you keep your ears and eyes wide open.

Tambaram is a suburb in Chennai and I cross this place everyday when I go to work. This picture was taken on 9th January 2009 and you could see the state of the subway, which is located near the Tambaram Railway Station, connecting Selaiyur and GST Road. Chennai saw rains, nearly two months back, not anytime in the near past, but the picture may make you feel that it just poured yesterday. This subway is alternate to the Tambaram Level crossing and so many people depend on this subway to reach the all important GST Road. Also, this subway is so small that only small vehicles can go through,and with so much water logging, 2 wheelers and 4 wheelers find it very difficult to cross this subway, making it literally unusable.

Interestingly you can see lot of posters of almost all the political parties on either side of the walls of this subway, but none seem to understand that this has got a larger use than just being a billboard.