[I apologize for any errors or grammatical mistakes as this is being written in haste and not been proof read. One of you can let me know the mistakes on phone or mail and I will make the corrections if necessary. ]
The dark winters and the darker pre-design document is the beginning of this story. Its late for me to write on this now but I had been busy to complete the masters. The snow was the gesture of the coldness in the results that we received. A poor pre-design document. No reasons but lots of mistake. All of us were equally responsible. I was advised to change the name of the people as its a bad practice to name someone without their consent. So, I have made the changes here. Lets start from our nice smiling girl and let her be Supriya (I can smell something known) then comes the last lady Mahalaxmi then comes John and Sukhvinder. Team is still not complete so lets guess two new names Aparna and Somesh(It sucks, I know).
Aparna is a nice simple girl who believes in being self sufficient and productive. She looks crooked but she is too simple and smart. We had nice time being friends but she had been most professional in being as a group lead. Somesh is a hasty but too perfectionist fellow. He wants everything right in the world and absolutely professional.
Before I move on to my story again I need to mention this disclaimer.
"This is perfectly a hypothetical plot which has no semblance to any living or dead in this world or another world. The photos are randomly chosen and bear no relation to the subject being written. If someone finds it related to their own life, its a coincidence and I have no legal bondage in regard to what I am going to write or show. If you feel bad or hurt please try to forget it. If situation worsens please contact your doctor".
So the document made was Pre-design document. It proved how bad we were in terms of documenting. AI's gave us nice reviews. Again confusions rose and December was in its midst. We got break and I left for India. Mahalaxmi was too gone and so was John(Americans never work in breaks). Supriya was pointed to do extra work and correct the UI section. Ofcourse, Sukhvinder had to help her. A nice simple Supriya was transforming into a confident monster. Design document was the target and before I came back, we all got our assignment to new sections. This time the approach was different. Aparna made sure that we all get work which we complete in time. The older sections were not corrected and the new once started. Then team structural responsibility changed. I was now Team Lead(WORK Assigner); Sukhvinder was point of contact to client(This was awarded for is extra love to Client. Thank god that client was not a girl otherwise the end of this story had been happy marriage ceremony of Sukhvinder); John was the Guru(No one ever doubted it. Not even Mahalaxmi) and Last lady was the point of contact to supervisor(She is best in communication after all); Supriya was the log maintainer.
I was assigned Course and Report(No one know what it was), Sukhvinder was more into transaction section, Mahalaxmi was responsible for Search and Refunds, and John has User and Login with shopping cart. John was too technical oriented. He never complained of his work. We all did have complains.
Lets start from me. I was given Report.WHY??Well because no one else took it and no one else knew what was it about. We always neglected this section and I was the scapegoat. Mahalaxmi has complains about her section being too small and thus less responsibility. Supriya is always non complaining and looked happy to teamed up with me this time. Sukhvinder was too concerned about the script given to him, an alien task. John was pissed off with any more documentation.
Well we had no real hopes form the design document as we knew that requirements were not corrected. Mahalaxmi and I sat together and tried to make requirement more systematic. We worked hard, met AIs couple of times, bugged supervisor and team mates . Things moved smooth and Sukvinder tried to do data modeling sections. I remember a small fight between Sukhvinder and Mahalaxmi during this time and I was in Laundry. SE was an omni present topic, all time job, with no monetary gains. The fight ended with mutual exchanges of sorries(I dont remember if that really happened, but its nice to write it here).
Supriya was working on UI section and Sukhvinder was a helper. She thought she did a lot of work and now its gonna be less. Somehow she was wrong. John actually was pretty silent this time and major work was on Supriya (with Sukhvinder) and Mahalaxmi(with me and Sukhvinder). Not to mention somehow Sukhvinder emerged as the PRESERVER for all. He was helping in most of the sections and was confident that things are going to change. I knew somehow that things are not very different from past. We all were working days and nights. This was the time when we recorded some nice videos of Sukhvinder, Mahalaxmi and Supriya. I still have them but can not upload it. They show how much Mahalaxmi used to love "Cotten I Joe songs" and how more on John's nose hairs. It also recorded the marvelous and challenging laughter of Supriya like in uproar in a silent jungle(burrow). The best video is the cursing video of Mahalaxmi and Sukhvinder where they discuss the matters related to human body shopping. They were basically analyzing the market conditions about such trade. Its a hilarious video.
Document was done and the expectations were not much. We did hard work and nice job. The result was a OK. I was content that things are winding in positive direction. I though remember a small verbal fight between me and Aparna over documentation. I remember that I told the AI that we were not told to correct the previous document and Aparna said she told us to do it. She was sad as most of the time she took our failures as hers. I was sad that day as I was in no mood to hurt anyone. Just that I was too pissed off with the bad results. Well things started to get interesting after that. I was sure that I m in worst phase. I irritated my head who was supporting, the team load was immense.
Now was the coding era. We all were supposed to report to Somesh. He was out QA and not to mention a perfectionist. So every we were supposed to code. Mahalaxmi was doing search module(it proved to be shortest but longest). Panjabee was to read an arcane CGI script. No problems for John. He is the gem in the team for programming. We thought this phase will be good. Mahalaxmi, John and myself were in department from long and were kind of coders. But things are not as they look. So the first testing of search failed. So was the case with User module. Course was not started and Report was done badly. Even client was unaware about what they want in report so I made a tentative static report.
In this time I made sure that Supriya start to learn. I never wanted anyone to interfere in her learning so I asked her to ask me or John anything that troubles her. I myself used to sit in Library with her to help her learn. Nights were common for me. Supriya was also devoted. I told her that if she wants grade in this course then she has to work double and she did. Sometimes when she lagged I made a point to shout at her not to terrify but to make her vigilant of consequences. The best thing in her was she had full confidence in me and whatever I was telling her.
Sukhvinder was not escaping meeting and I hated that. He was more busy in his database course. So his script reading went on and on. Search failed again in the next test session which made Somesh bit angrier. Mahalaxmi was good but now we were skeptical if we will be able to do things in time. She was also having her project load and RA work. Things were getting complicated.
Requirements for reports changed and I was in mess. I have full course and Report. I had plan in mind that if Supriya did not do good in programming I myself will code. But I wanted to give her opportunity to show her best. But now things were getting worse. More reports were to be appended. Course was becoming bigger. Now I have started realizing why our design was bad. We had escaped half of the functions in Course.
The best thing in Mahalaxmi was she always sat with us as a team which Sukhvinder lacked. I was bit agitated over him, as his script reading was not ending and his seemingly simple code was not even started. Somesh asked him to submit his code and show results but the best reason for him was "It can not be tested as client did not get Verisign authentication for setup". We knew that he works hard but this time he was postponing(May be because of the database course which was too much work). So now the things in course were mounting like hell and even John said that it too big to be a module. It was a gigantic module which could have been a project in itself. I wanted that Sukhvinder completes his relatively smaller section and join me in completing course. I can not ask it from Mahalaxmi as she was too engaged with Search (which was not working after the third trial). Actually Somesh was too good a tester. He always pointed out the errors.
Deadlines were approaching and I was under too much pressure as I was coding for both Course and Report. Supriya, John and I designed and modeled and coded it from scratch. Meanwhile, I had exchange of fire emails with Mahalaxmi. According to her I was always interfering in contacting AI and they contacting me instead of her. According to me I can not wait long to take decisions and go via some routes. So in one of the mails I happen to remind her that its her job to be a point of contact. She got agitated with these words and my dare to remind her of her job. So she replied with a harsh mail of reminding my duty and how I interfere with her work and a warning that I have to ask her before contacting AI for meetings or work. I was hurt a bit. But then I felt that I should be more professional. I stopped making friendly gestures then and tried to be professional in getting things done.
We already passed the submission dates and took extension. Somehow Search was done and MahaLaxmi had to face Refunds. She worked hard to complete the section and so did we all. Sukhvinder too completed his code. I wanted him to join us but he reminded me that its not his work. There were discontent building up against Sukhvinder and I never wanted him to loose points so I was pressing him to work and show his presence. Again a bad phase of email exchanges went where I and Sukhvinder had left nothing to curse each other. Most of them were professionally written(we both have experience from Industry to write those bullshits.). One of the email was pretty personal where he made an allegation that I am frustrated and so I am targeting him. It made me felt down. I stopped any email after reading that mail and emailed personally to Aparna that I will not ask people to work, nor will I be responsible for any assignment and completion. Let me get the worse grade but I can not do anything further.
Bad things are going but Sukhvinder apologized for the comment and joined us in completing whatever was left. Aparna played a nice role in resolving that issue and I think she was too good as a manager. I made him work on CSS and a small translation module which was an overlapping module of User, Course and Transaction. He made it finally and we all completed things.
At one time when I and Mahalaxmi were talking she told me how much she is irritated with Search now. I though I have to ask for some supernatural help to make search work. Finally search worked and also Refunds. Mahalaxmi resolved the issues and John helped her with the problems. Surprisingly, Supriya was the winner as she completed the assigned coding in course module. Also she actively did testing of other modules. I did no testing.
So everything was integrated and we were happy. Somesh wanted the final presentation as soon as possible. Our system failed. But the good thing was there was no team who passed it. So we got some time to work on it. We never used any CVS or SVN. Though John and I have made a SVN repository on my computer but no one was ready to learn using it. This was the reason that in last moments we all were modifying each other's files and complaining of errors.
This was the time when we all were acting as one team. No one knew what module was done by them. I think that was what I wanted. Things were happening nicely. Aparna had constantly supported us throughout the phase. We used to go to her place in odd times like 3 AM and 6 AM. She was too supportive to lend us her lap top for Supriya for work.
Mahalaxmi and I too had nice time chatting on various issues of marriage, Cultures and more of dam things which I can not write otherwise she will sue me. John had been real guru and out of any troubles. We had nice potlucks at the end. John seemed to be victim of Mahalaxmi where he was forced to know about why India, how India and where in India. I am sure if he goes to India he will feel at home.
Our modules passed individually and collectively, and we were the first one and the biggest project to finish it on time(i think so). So all rejoices. No complains now. Professor sent a congratulation mail to the team.
The end was the last potluck we wanted to have at Mahalaxmi's place. The interesting part was I and Sukhvinder was preparing some food and were almost ready to leave for Mahalaxmi's place. Suddenly, Mahalaxmi called me up and told me to postpone it or keep it at Supriya's place. The reason for cancellation became very hot topic as it informed us of biological cycles in human being and their consequences. Most of us know the reason so I will not write it here but it became interesting as when Mahalaxmi told me about it on Phone( I was on Speaker and we all could hear that reason). It was a very embarrassing situation for me but it became hilarious at the end.
Very nice Potluck was the not the end. We kept on meeting after that and enjoyed to harass each other by some or the other nonsenses.
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