Software Engineering skills Part I

The story starts when a, one year course named as software engineering began in my life. The learning in this course was more than just coding. The course was designed to test and teach group effort and right decision making. Feasibility study was the first test of decision making. The class was divided into groups of 2. Each group was benevolently awarded with a screwed up project and client(who wanted free work). Each groups has to study if the project is feasible to complete in one year time. The groups were exited with this new form of work. Everything looked green. Everything was looking great and so the results were enthusiastic. Most of the groups pushed forward their projects as feasible with out thinking much. Some of the projects were scrapped as the so called upper management rejected them. People were merged to form larger groups and story begins from here.

The next milestone was requirement study. Requirement study was similar to beautiful Fall. Colored leaves on the long trees, a small slim stream flowing beside the department. Things were looking best in the world. Only a document was to be made of some requirements that we already knew. We all were like omnipresent Gods. Client was too good and offered all kinds of assistances. We were to develop a registration system for an internal organization. The point of contact at client side, was a technical guy, who took this course during his graduation. We started with planning(as written in Books). We divided the work. Mitch and I took data flow section which looks near to flow as in code writing. Dalvinder and Priya took ER section near to Database. Gauri was the supervisor with all energy to begin her managing skills. Our group was considered good as most of us were pretty experienced with projects and coding.

Now let us talk about the team mates. Dalvinder, sardar from Bombay is a nice impatient man with all vigor to do work. He is always exited whenever he is talking, and enjoys to talk only in Hindi. He once told me that he used to swear upon girls in front of them. Now he was working with Priya. The situation worsened when Priya had least form of communicational availabilities. By that I mean, No Phone, No Laptop/Internet and ofcourse no other means to communication. Furthermore, Dalvinder was possessive about working on ER. He was always working on ER in solitude. We never knew what was happening with the ER section. Interestingly, I am sure even Priya never got any idea what was happening. Dalvinder had a vision to develop ER. He loved ER from core of his heart (We often called him ER singh). It was too private for some time as if he was designing some kind of Nuclear missile. He used to come to meetings but if you ask about ER,he had a simple straight answer -"under construction". We never knew until one day ER was made. It came like a royal design on a extremely large paper (I don't know how was he able to take that print out). ER design has those innumerable entities and their relationships. Every entity had numerous arrows emerging and submerging into it. A whole complex design which was almost impossible to interpret. A work of a genius. I felt as if Einstein has taken rebirth to develop ER. We were scared to ask anything on ER (She was a loving Wife). Dalvinder was a Hitler, if you happen to find some mistake in ER. There was no reason that ER could be wrong. Priya has no words to explain as she always found herself alone. She later discovered that Dalvinder had numerous talks with AI, Professors and Clients alone without her knowledge. The reason was that she could not be instantaneously contacted and Dalvinder was too impatient to wait. But she is as usual a non complaining girl. She was happy as Dalvinder did the work nicely.

DFD was not going that well though. Mitch and I never knew how to differentiate between process and related functions. Everything to us was just a flow of code. I read some literature to get some glimpse of DFD. Mitch was least bothered. For him DFD was bunch of unnecessary circles and arrows connecting each other. For me it was a stupid diagram which may be helpful to earn some good grades. Mitch and I sat one day and figured out all the processes or so called processes. We joined them somehow with some meaningful relations. Even, we never had any idea what is this DFD going to do. It was simply a bunch of crap. The only thing that Mitch insisted was to make DFD in omnigraph software which is only available on MAC OS. I had no reason to say no.

Gauri has all her optimism on our abilities. She knew that being good coders we are going to be brighter students.

Fall was fading away and the Grey season was arriving. Beautiful leaves disappeared and roughness on trees uncovered themselves. At this time one of the groups was dissolved as their project looked infeasible. As a result we were gifted with another gem into our group. Sheetal , we call her Amma (Dalvinder was the architect of her name), is all knowledgeable mother in computer science. Her communication in group was excellent. Her English was good. Initially I thought that she was already a masters from Oxford. Since she was joining late in the group so she enjoyed the responsibility of merging the document. A compilation in Latex, was more than some work which she realized later.
Meanwhile Gauri was always guiding us with her experiences with the course. She was a bridge between AI's and team. The best thing with her was she was friendly and used to give us a free hand in working. But we were not that good as thought before.

The clashes started appearing when work load increased and team meeting were negligible. People started showing more work than they were doing. We knew the system but the document turned out to be poor. An introspection meeting was called. We were all warned with consequences. Everything was grey now. Dalvinder was the chosen culprit as most of the sections relating to ER had inconsistencies. It should have been our responsibility to cross check ER but we all escaped responsibilities. So all of us cursed Dalvinder. He was a hardworking person but he realized later that he should have frequently communicated his design to team. In spite of being two English literate our document turned out bad in English. The learnings from this experience were numerous. Work in team and communicate the work periodically was a big learning.

Gauri was angry but her anger is summers rain which evaporate as it touches the ground. There were exchange of some serious mails and the spirit to work again with more vigor and discipline emerged.

We all teamed up for prototype phase. Dalvinder diligently created Database tables. Sheetal and Priya helped him. I and Mitch were looking into develop the PHP section and making sure things go well with respect to checking errors and validations. Gauri gave us rigorous reviews and we all improved before final presentations. The day came and Mitch had his baby laptop with him to present the prototype. It went successful and we earned all the praises from Upper management. We were happy with this phase.

Now was the party time and out benevolent supervisor was rocking. She took us all to a food court. We enjoyed the food and the talks. All of us were getting more friendly.

Team looked happy and so the supervisor. We felt a kind of confidence to be the best. Prototype was about coding and we were slightly more confident. The next step was Predesign Document preparation. The spirit was up and it was this time that we all were good friends now. Dalvinder learned to communicate and present in group meetings. He is a clear hearted man and learns from his mistakes. Mitch was as usual, not very concerned with grades unlike me. But he was cooperative. Sheetal was the DJ of the group and Priya had a uneasy disease of laughing when she face a digital camera(She told us that one of her friends had asked her to do so). We were having nice night outs in the department building. This was the time when Mitch enjoyed some of very good Indian songs(Hindi and Tamil). Mitch, Sheetal and I used to go to OP Taylors. No its not a kind of boutique. Its a restaurant. Its is this time when I developed my insatiable desire for mozzarella Cheese Sticks. We had nice time chatting about India and America with Mitch. Sometimes they were like debates of two opposite worlds. PreDesign Doc was also progressing.

Awakening

Independence was an abstract freedom giving to Indians on the night of 15th august 1947. It was really a night and morning is still awaited. Rabidranath Tagore wrote "Where the Mind is without fear" and defined an ideal freedom. Why are we still in clutches of some Indian born rulers?. The story of this newly independent democratic India starts when Mr. Nehru appointed political people to higher posts of offices.

Congress paved the path for congress man as the president and then governors. A well know historian and a opportunist politician, Panditjee knew how to make the whole system weak. His weak foreign policy created Kashmir dispute. This has never been in history that in spite of winning the Kashmir war, then government happily passed a one forth part to Pakistan and a small part to China. The politics covered all and this policy was shown as if India has a peace loving image. People were happy that India was Peace loving and that was an achievement. But it was a weak show that demoralized the, then military and instigated confidence in some anti Indian forces.

History repeated itself when Indira Gandhi (Political Heir of the Nehru Clan) fought 1971 war against Pakistan. Army did a fantastic job to win the battle. Pakistani army surrendered and the number if soldiers surrendered were more than 80000. India could have forced Pakistan on negotiation table but again the peace loving nation freed all the soldiers. The exchange gift was Shimla agreement which lays down that Kashmir problem should be the solved with talks. The funniest part of the whole game was people of India were happy with the way they have been fooled again. The songs of victory made Indira won another term graciously. Congress achievement was in drugging the whole India with false achievement of victory in minds of Indians.

National security is not the only issue but is the foremost. The another battle started with in democratic India when Mr. Mandal released his report. British rulers use to follow divide and rule policy to rule a divided nation. Same happened when V.P. Singh was sworn in as Prime Minister. A small and weak janta dal was aiming to target to divide a section of the society to cater for votes. The draconian report was tabled in parliament. Reservation bill was passed which now allows to reserve a percentage of seats for certain caste of people. This was not an attempt to raise the backward people but was to remind certain section of society that they belong to some caste which is been looked down. A seed of hate was sown into hearts of some sections that others are enemies. There were some protests when students tried to agitate. But things settled down after some time. V.P. Singh lost his post but was able to make India hollow from within. People were mum. V.P. Singh was not responsible, but we are.


The gimmick was played again by congress few months ago. The human resource suddenly felt that reservation should be increased. The ironic decision was made when a report suggested that reservations in India has completely failed. The uplifting of certain section has dropped in last 20 years. The report suggest that reservations based on caste is not serving the purpose. The weak education policy is a stumbling block in the progress of undeveloped class. But Mr. Arjun Singh, a faithful servant of Mrs Gandhi(a new heir of Nehru-Gandhi family), announced new reservations. A huge uproar from doctors community about this form of reservation rocked India. People from different sections joined hands and started to fight. Lastly everything dissolved and nothing happened. People forgot everything. No one now talks about it.

I have seen people in small get together s talking about the issues. They know the problems and solutions but they are waiting for a Saviour to come onto the earth and do something. Many have died thinking same and more will die. We will gift all these problems to our children as we were gifted. This will keep on happening. We would have dreamed reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi who could have at least unified India. We are still Hindu, Muslim, Marathi, Kashmiri but an Indian. You can not clean a dirty pit standing on your terrace and talking about it. You need to step your feet into the pit and clean it. We have to take responsibility now. We can not wait for a Leader to step up and do something.

The right way is create awareness and tell people that someone is fooling them. Let's come out from our houses for a reason that we feel concerned. Let no political party interfere our work. Let us start our own movement when we will talk in bigger groups and address the concerns. The best weapon we still have is Satyagrah. Let us all sit on a Hunger Strikes for a very small issue and do not abandon it until work is done. When we see some people doing a legitimate protest, lets sit with them.

I know we all know but we have to act this time. Let's become fearless and held our head high. Into this morning of freedom let India Awake. India Awaking is India progressing.