Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The King Cobra hunt


Harry - a farmer - found a small snake, that was about a foot in length, roaming near his house. He immediately killed the snake and threw it away. That day He told his wife that he killed a snake about a foot in length near his home and asked her to be careful about that. As soon as his wife came to know that, the news started spreading. She told her neighbour that he husband killed a snake that was two feet in length. In a few hours, the news spread like Harry killed a cobra that was 10 feet in length and finally the people of the village came to Harry's home to congratulate him on killing a King Cobra that was 15 feet in length. After the villagers left, he sat puzzled. His wife asked why he was puzzled. Harry replied, "Do snakes grow after they die?"

The IT situation is no different, here is why.

The Unit Head says - "We are enterprise ready, we have the expertise to build Enterprise grade software", but this is what he hears from his subordinate, say a Senior Manager
The Senior Manager says - "Our team has demonstrated the capability to develop and deploy J2EE applications", again what he heard from his subordinate is
The Manager says - "Our team has developed a Java Module" which again is heard from the Team lead as follows
The Team Lead says - "The developer has successfully executed a Java Application"
But actually what the developer did was compile and execute a Java program that prints



"Hello World!"

So, how many King Cobras did your team hunt?.... :)

So long until the next post...

Saturday, June 5, 2010

The Snake

There was once a group of frogs in a well that lived together harmoniously. One fine day, there was a small quarrel among two frogs, Arrowhead and Bob, for some small issue. Over a point in time, the quarrel grew into animosity.

As the animosity grew, Arrowhead, the dominant of the frogs decided that he should venge against Bob. He thought that hurting Bob directly or chasing him out of the well, would bring a bad name and so he came up with this idea.

Arrowhead ventured out of the well and searched out for a friend who will execute his plans. He found a snake that passed by. He had a small chat with the snake and told his vengeance against Bob and asked for the snake's help. The snake readily agreed. Arrowhead took the snake to the well

All the frogs panicked on the first sight of the snake. Bob knew its intentions and prepared to flee the well that night with his friends. And Bob flee that well.

Days went by, Arrowhead was happy as Bob had fled away from the well and thanked the snake for the help. Slowly, frog population in the well started to dwindle. Either the frogs fled or the snake was eating them one by one without the knowledge of Arrowhead.

One fine day, the only thing that remained in the well, was the snake alone after finishing off the last frog, Arrowhead.

The situation is no different from an IT organization. Employees have some disagreements, simmering etc that could be handled deftly. However, in most cases, the management decides to bring in some consultancy, survey, poll or policy to set the situation right. As a result, people start to flee or be eaten.

At last, you know what remains ;)

So long, until the next post...