Effective Scrum Master’s Dos and Don’ts

Vineet Kumar Agile Development , , ,

Scrum is a framework with just three roles (Product owner, Scrum master and Team), three artifacts (Product backlog, Sprint backlog and Burn-down chart) and a few ceremonies (Sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospective and daily stand up). Its easier to learn but way more difficult to practice. Adopting scrum is not just a change of titles but mindset. In this article I will focus on the role of a scrum master. Being only a good scrum master is not enough, effective is the goal. Below are the Dos and Don’ts for a scrum master to be effetive

Scrum Master Dos :

  1. Facilitate the product owner to maintain and prioritize the backlog items.
  2. Facilitate team members with any additional training or coaching required.
  3. Makes sure that team delivers the  true value to the business.
  4. Inspires the team members to own the tasks.
  5. Allow and help team members to make decisions.
  6. Removes any impediments holding the team back to achieve their goals.
  7. Helps team to become self-organised.
  8. Shields team from external interference.
  9. Acts as a servant leader.
  10. Should be willing to improve continuously.
  11. Handles only one team. If you  are a scrum master of more than one team, the commitment cannot be the same.

Scrum Master Don’ts :

  1. Own the decisions on product backlogs from product owner’s behalf.
  2. Make estimates on team’s behalf.
  3. Assign the tasks to the team members
  4. Try to manage the team.
  5. Make changes to team in middle of sprint.
  6. Accept backlog changes in middle of sprint.
  7. Make commitments on behalf of the team.

Scrum master does not control the team. He acts as a facilitator and works on the concept of servant leadership.

I hope this will help someone. Please add your thoughts in comments.

AIB Roast – A Proud Moment Or A National Shame?

Vineet Kumar General , , , , , , , , , ,

AIB roast is in controversy now. Some people liked it and some didn’t. Some of them even raised a voice against it. Complaint lodged and the video taken out of the youtube but still available on torrent. On twitter #AIBRoast and #AIBNationalShame both were top trends. I too expressed my views on it and some got offended to it. I questioned the morality and responsibility of AIB hosts. In response, I received a no of replies asking , do I never abuse in my life and never use these so called fancy and cool words?

Answer to your question is a big YES. Yes I abuse, I use these words and so you do. But you can not compare me with the people present at AIB roast. People like Karan Johar, Deepika Padukon, Sonakshi Sinha, Ranveer, Arjun kapoor, Raghu, Tanmay, Alia Bhatt and the list goes on. These are the people whom the youth of the country follow. You can check their followers on twitter, facebook pages and other social networks. And can do the same on my accounts and see the difference. So when you have millions of followers, there comes a social and moral responsibility on you. A responsibility to take the youth (your followers) into a right direction. When I abuse and use these words in my friend circle, it doesn’t impact anyone. The only impacted people are my friends with whom I use these words. Moreover I (or You) dont use this filthy language in front of our parents. Neither we use it in front of kids of our family, be it our cousins, brother/sister, nephew/niece or our own children even if they are above 18. We don’t do that because we know they follow us and what we say or do impacts them directly. We don’t talk vulgar in public places. When you ask me this question in reply to my tweet against AIB Roast’s filthy language, its like someone asking you how many scores did you made in reply to your tweet on criticizing Virat Kohli for not performing good in a crucial series. We criticize only those who have a bigger circle of influence. I hope it makes my point clear.

AIBRoast

Another point, there were prominent women present at the show. Deepika padukon, Alia Bhatt, Sonakshi Sinha. These are the ladies who talk a lot about woman empowerment and women’s respect. What they conveyed through their presence in such a show where jokes were cracked about women body parts, made fun of Parineeti Chopra and Aisha Takia in a way vulgar manner. Had it been done by a political person or someone else, Parineeti would have busted out and lodged an FIR. But here she chose to keep quite and the reason is well known to everyone.

Most of the people are supporting it as a freedom to speech and at the same time they are getting offended to people who talk against it. Dont you take it too as a freedom of speech. If you believe that someone should be allowed to use filthy language on the name of freedom of speech, don’t you think criticizing it is also a freedom of speech.

Flaws of common review / appraisal process

Vineet Kumar Corporate, General , , ,

Bell Curve

Next Recommended Read :- Feminism Over Humanity

As the title is very straight forward, without going deeper into the context I will directly list down the flaws I have noticed in a common appraisal system followed by most of the companies.

  • Bell curve fitting : Bell curve methodology assumes that all the employees in a company can be divided into three parts a) 15% top performers b) 70% average performers and c) 15% non performers. This methodology is followed from a small team to organisation level. Every team gets divided into these three categories. It compels the rater to a forced ratings instead of a fair one. What if every team member performed well? Rater has to put someone in category C, even if that employee has performed better than the top performer of some other team.
  • Lack of 360 degree feedback :  Its all about manager giving feedback for subordinates but not the reverse. Suppose an employee A reports to B and 10 employees report to A. Feedback of A is collected from B but not from 10 employees who report to him. A’s appraisal shouldn’t completely depend on what B thinks of him, but also on what 10 employees reporting to him thinks of his abilities and leadership skills.
  • Setting over hard working employees as benchmarks : – There are some very hard working employees in every team or company who works more than normal hours at cost of their personal time. Either they love to work for those extra hours or they do it to stand out of the crowd. Managers generally support these people and set the similar benchmarks for others as well. Hence a person working in normal hours gets lesser rating then over hard working employee. To improve his rating he also starts working more than normal hours and hence spoiling the work environment for others who wants to enjoy their personal time. Working more than the contract hours should not be encouraged by managers. And if someone is working with his own choice, others shouldn’t be impacted because of that. Appraisal of everyone shouldn’t be impacted just because someone is working beyond the limits because of his personal interest.
  • Employee in need vs employee who did well : This statement is true for almost every organisation. On papers, review is to be done for the past (a year for annual, 3 months for quarterly review process) performance of employee, but actually it happens the other way. If a person is having future dependency, he is made happy by giving him good review, whereas, if a person has performed extraordinary in last year but doesn’t have much dependencies for coming time period, his efforts are generally ignored.
  • Seeing leaves as a crime : If someone takes leaves for a week or two, its considered as a crime and it affects the final review a lot.
  • No second review : There are no second reviews on final rating. Even if management is convinced that a candidate deserves a better rating, its not changed because most of the time its not there in the policy . This looks unfair.
  • Working on multiple projects : If a person has worked under two different managers in a financial year, he generally doesn’t get a good rating irrespective of his work done. The manager he worked with in past, thinks he has no dependencies on the person, so he gives an average rating (The reason for this is the bell curve again, he has to keep his current team members happier than the former). The manager, he is working with currently also takes care of the people working with him from a long time hence sacrificing rating of this new person. Here both the managers need to understand that rating should be given on the basis of how he performed in the given time period for which he worked.

Click to read it on LinkedIn

Feminism Over Humanity

Vineet Kumar General , , , , , ,

I will start this blog post by putting up a question , does feminism hurt humanity in any possible form or way? Before we look for its answer, let me share a couple of incidents from my own experience.

Next Recommended Read :- Can education alone save our environment?

Recent one I experienced last night while traveling back from my office to home in Delhi metro. I boarded into the coach just next to the reserved one (for females). I had a look into the female coach and found 15-20 unoccupied seats. Then I noticed the coach I was standing in and found 10-15 females sitting there and almost equal no of male passengers standing. I just went near to a girl and politely asked her if she can move to reserved coach , so that i can have a seat too. But she refused to move. I didn’t argue further and kept standing even though a lot of thoughts (or arguments) were going on in mind. At next stop a passenger deboarded and I got space to sit. Incidentally there was a girl sitting next to me. She was listening to music  through earphones. Firstly I hesitated a little, but somehow I managed to disturb her and politely requested her if she can move to the ladies coach to vacate her seat for someone else. First she looked a little confused but then she realized what i meant and agreed to move. I thanked her, a male passenger took the seat and he thanked me for convincing the girl.

The first girl who refused to move had a mindset of like what if front coach is reserved, I am a girl and I have right to occupy any seat in metro. Of course she is right legitimately, but what she didn’t realize was the humanity factor. She was definitely missing the helping mindset.

Another incident again I witnessed in Delhi metro. This time I was not a part of it , but I watched it very closely. An old man (easily above 60) was sitting on a ladies seat. At next station a healthy and energetic lady (around 25-30) entered and asked him to vacate the seat. I had a thought to offer my seat to him but before that another guy did the same. Who was the more needy in this case? of-course the old man needed it more than the lady. But as it was read “Reserved for ladies”, he had to vacate it. Legitimately she is perfectly right, but isn’t it inhuman? At-least for me it is inhuman. Someone might have different point of view here, but this is what I think. After reading next couple of paras you will find the reason for this point of view.

Now I will come to the main agenda of this blog post. Some females are over feminist. They understand feminism as a way to feel and prove themselves superior to men. Going with the above example , such a female will capture a reserved seat at any cost, but at the same time she is not ready to vacate her seat for the one who is more needy. In my views this is not feminism, this is what I call a warped feminism.

Feminism Versus Warped Feminism

Dictionary defines feminism as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”.  First para of wikipedia () reads “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.”

On the other hand, warped feminism is about demanding extra favor, demanding additional reservations and then using these  as they want. But that should not be the way to move on.

Feminism is not about using your rights above humanity. Its not about reservation for ladies. Although even I support female reservations because bringing the big change in male dominant society is not that easy. I respect the necessary reservations made for females. But at the same time I hope one day they will vanish .I hope that day will come very soon when we will not need any more reservations to make our females feel safe , feel equal to men in cultural, social and economic rights.

Feminism is not about gluing to the seat reserved for ladies, its about offering your seat to someone who is more needy (mostly aged people) than you. When you do so, it s reflects that you are as strong as a male passenger and that is feminism (being equal to males). Feminism is about building a free and equal society for both men and women. Its about building a world where women will not need female only coaches. It about creating an environment where females will feel safe without any special security arrangements and measures. Its about empowering females in such a way that they do not need any additional favor.

Does Feminism Hurt Humanity?

Now I will come back to the question with which I started my blog post. According to me the answer is a straight No. Feminism does not hurt humanity, its the warped feminism that hurts. Its the wrong interpretation of the word feminism that hurts the humanity. So it is very important for all of us to interpret the definition of feminism correctly and then use it.

Read it on linkedin here 

Twitter Reacts To Brazil’s Humiliating Defeat Against Germany

Vineet Kumar Sports, Trending News , , , , , , ,

Germany vs Brazil Soccer World Cup
Germany vs Brazil Soccer World Cup

The country of 200 million people had hoped to win the title at home and erase memories of its 1950 World Cup defeat to Uruguay in Rio de Janeiro. But instead Brazil suffered the worst defeat in its 100-year footballing history, falling 7-1 to Germany at the Mineirao Stadium in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte.

The game created a new record as being the most talked about on twitter as the rate of tweets went up while the host nation crashed out of the tournament. By the time the match ended at 7-1, the entire social media was full of comments and humour regarding Brazil’s record-breaking loss.

Here is the list of some tweets from public reaction to the historic semi final

Railway Budget 2014 – What’s Missing And What It Holds

Vineet Kumar General, Trending News , , , ,

Today On Eighth July, Union Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda presented the Rail Budget in Parliament.  It looks to be an average one except a few things. The basic problem with rail budget (be it today’s one or the previous budgets) is that there is no deadline specified for new projects. Union Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda talked about Bullet Trains, high speed trains, 58 new trains, wifi facility, office on wheels facility and more, but none of the project is aligned to a deadline. Anyways that’s happening from ages , we hear about a lot in budget but get just a part of it.

Rail Budget

Here is a list of major announcements by railway minister. Lets try to analyse a bit one by one

  1. 58 new Trains : New Trains: 5 Jansadharan, 5 Premium and 6 AC, 27 Express Trains, 8 Passenger, 5 DEMU and 2 MEMU services; 11 train extensions.
  2. Bullet Trains : Bullet train on Mumbai-Ahmedabad route. Setting up Diamond Quadrilateral Network of high-speed trains connecting major metros
  3. Food and Catering : Food feedback service through IVRS. Food courts at major stations. Food order through sms. RO Drinking water
  4. Online Booking Enhancement : E-Ticketing support for 7200 bookings per minute. 1,20,000 simultaneous users. Internet platform and unreserved tickets.
  5. Wi-Fi and Internet : Wi fi in A1 and A category stations and select trains. Internet and workstation facilities on select trains.
  6. Safety : Addition to constables head count, provision for 1785 crores for road-over/under bridges
  7. Railway Training : Setting up Railway University for training.

If we look at point no 3 to 7, everyone would be happy for these enhancements. The only concern is the deadline. No one knows when will these get implemented.

To add to point no 4 (Online Booking Enhancements) facilities like round tour ticket,onward journey and break up journey RESERVATION with online system is still missing.

Bullet Trains :

Coming to Bullet Trains. Do we really need them? First, The cost of bullet train is around Rs100 cr Per Km. Recently railway fares were hiked to cover up the losses being carried by railway. So from where the funds will come for bullet trains. Secondly, BJP govt is promising to get it done in five years or so, but in other countries it took minimum 7 years to make a bullet train operational. How will they do it in 5 years? Another concern is about the fares of bullet train. It will be more than (or equivalent to) air fare. Who will be benefited from this?

What is missing in this budget?

Signalling System :  Shri Sadananda Gowda has not targeted a critical system i.e. Signalling. It needs to be replaced by modern GPS controlled system and Anti-collision device.

Delayed Trains : Is there any plan to stop unnecessary long delays of trains? As per Rail Radar, average 50-60% trains got delayed by 4 to 24 hrs and Railway does not consider delay by 1 or 2 hrs as delay at all. By controlling the delays you will not only save on fuel and overtime of railway employees but will also save precious time of passenger.

Whats there for poor : What a poor person travelling in general coach expects from railway? Is it bullet train? Is it wi-fi? No. He just expects a convenient travel at a low cost with proper safety. Most of the trains carry two (or three sometimes) general coaches, where its almost impossible to get in. People travel in toilets because they don’t have a choice. Why can’t we increase no of general coaches in trains. The whole budget is focused on upper middle class and rich people and has nothing for general class travelers. At least the no of general coaches can be increased or we can run super-fast trains with only general coaches to make travel convenient for people who can not afford the reservation cost.

Corruption : There are no announcements on measures to be taken against corruption in railway sector.

On one side they speak about not adequate capital for finishing the existing projects and on the other side they make provisions for new projects to be started in this budget. how odd is that ?

Overall budget seems to be an average one with just a little variation to previous budgets. But the most important aspect of any project is timeline. Railway minister has not given timeline for any project.

Now only time will justify if the promises get fulfilled or not.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer : These are my personal views and has nothing to do with any organisation or political party.

Fans Reaction On Maria Sharapova’s Tendulkar Ignorance

Vineet Kumar General, Sports, Trending News , , , , , ,

Maria Sharapova appears to have upset an awful lot of cricket fans by admitting she didn’t know who Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar was.

maria-sharapova-sachin

At a news conference at Wimbledon on Saturday, the tennis star was asked if she knew who Tendulkar–who was at the tennis tournament —was. She said she didn’t.

Soon after the news #whoismariasharapova started trending on Twitter as Tendulkar’s overzealous fans took to social media to defend their master blaster.

Here are some of the best tweets so far

 

Can education alone save our environment?

Vineet Kumar General , , , , , ,

Pasionate Talks

Can education alone save our environment? A big question mark.

How would you react if I say an engineer working in MNC throws 5 to 6 buckets of water away every time he takes bath. What if I say an accountant working in an international firm keeps his bathroom’s light switched on forever because he feels good about it.

These are just two examples, there are many more. This leads to a very obvious question. Are degrees like B.Tech, BE, M.B.B.S, L.L.B, M.Sc etc enough to develop human mind to think about natural resources and environment.  The answer is neither a yes nor a no. It hurts when I see top educated people wasting water, paper, electricity without realizing their significance. So whats the reason behind this. What I could figure out it that its not their fault alone. Neither our education system is 100% responsible for that. Yeah its not that…

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Rail fare hike – Is it the only solution

Vineet Kumar General, Trending News, Uncategorized , , , , ,

The government on Friday pushed through a steep hike in rail passenger and freight fares. From June 25, rail passenger fares will increase by 14.2 percent and freight rates by 6.5 percent. The last fare hike was in October 2013.

Train

I will first discuss the impact of this hard decision and then I will talk about the alternatives those could have been thought off. But before that let me throw some light on the need of this hike.

“To meet all the necessary expenditure, I was forced to implement the order,” Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda told reporters after announcing the increase. Indian railway is running in a huge loss. At the same time the facilities at railway stations are not good enough. Infrastructure is lagging. Security measures are also not upto date. Infra and facilities can’t be improved without money. The previous government deferred a plan to increase fares in May, leaving the decision to Modi’s new administration. Hence the fares were likely to increase but the timing made a chaos because the budget is about to be announced in a few weeks.

Impact analysis

1. Increase in freight charges will increase transportation cost for daily-used commodities and hence their prices will increase. Which will force inflation to go up.

2. Govt promised to provide world class infrastructure and facilities like wi fi, clean toilets and enhanced security. The extra fare will help in solving financial problems for railway and can be used for this purpose. But this is something that only time will justify.

3. For people travelling in First class and AC classes, this hike will not affect their financials much. They can afford higher prices for better facilities like internet etc.

4. But think about the majority of people who travel in general and sleeper class. They can not afford higher fares. Do they really need internet connection inside train! The first requirement for them is to travel at lower cost.

5. Hike in railway fare is likely to make flying an attractive option. After implementation of the hike, a Rajdhani Express Mumbai-Delhi 2-AC Ticket for the month of August will be priced at Rs 2,511. A Spice Jet flight ticket on August 19 costs Rs 3,564.

The only purpose of rail fare hike is to reduce financial burden on rail department. But is it the only option available? In software architect there is a saying “If you have only one solution, get another one”. I feel it applies here also.  There are other ways to make department financially strong.

1. Advertisement :- Advertisement industry has grown many folds in last two decades. Railway has a huge potential to use it for revenue generation. Advertisement in railway was introduced by Lalu Prasad Yadav. We have a few trains that holds ads of various products. It should be expanded to cover almost every train.

2. Corruption :- Isn’t it a good idea to first work on eliminating corruption in railway department for some time and if it doesn’t help much then increase fare.

3. Make a strong procedure for capturing people without tickets.  A large no of people travel without ticket in trains. If every person traveling in train pays fare, it will increase revenue by a big margin.

4. If we are hiking fares on the name of facilities like wi-fi and world class infrastructure, why don’t we hike fares for first class and AC class travelers only. Because the ones travelling in general or sleeper class can not afford this fare hike. More than 90% of passengers travelling in general class don’t need internet. For them first priority is to travel at low cost. So we should increase fair for the real users of the facilities to be provided.

Please put your thoughts in comments.

Can education alone save our environment?

Vineet Kumar Environment, General , , , , , , ,

Can education alone save our environment? A big question mark.

How would you react if I say an engineer working in MNC throws 5 to 6 buckets of water away every time he takes bath. What if I say an accountant working in an international firm keeps his bathroom’s light switched on forever because he feels good about it.

These are just two examples, there are many more. This leads to a very obvious question. Are degrees like B.Tech, BE, M.B.B.S, L.L.B, M.Sc etc enough to develop human mind to think about natural resources and environment.  The answer is neither a yes nor a no. It hurts when I see top educated people wasting water, paper, electricity without realizing their significance. So whats the reason behind this. What I could figure out it that its not their fault alone. Neither our education system is 100% responsible for that. Yeah its not that good.

The most important role is of our society and the way we have grown up. Our parents and teachers never talked about it. Remember your childhood days? If you switched on a bulb or fan without use, what your mom and dad said about it. They must have told you to put them off because it will lead to an extra electricity bill. The same goes when you wasted some buckets of water in childhood. “Hey don’t waste water, do you know how much bill we have paid for last month.” This is the statement used by most of the parents to stop their children from wasting water, electricity etc. Nobody asks their kids to stop it for the good cause of our environment and other people who are deprived of these facilities. Eventually we grow up and earn enough money that a few extra bucks in bill doesn’t matter to us. We don’t think about the real effect of our activities.

When top educated people living in metros cant stop wastage then what we can expect uneducated people living in under-developed villages who don’t even know about rest of the world.

We can save a lot from our day to day activities.

Tips to save papers :

  • Print your emails only when its required.save paper
  • Always take print on both sides of paper. Even if you need some print outs for a meeting, print it on both sides and bring an environment friendly culture in your organisation. If you are handling a team you can influence more people.
  • If you are going for an interview always print your resume both side. Don’t think that it would make a negative impact. In fact it should make a very positive impact.
  • If you are conducting a walk in drive or other recruitment event, ask the candidates to come up with resume on both sides of paper.
  • Try to keep hanker chief in your pocket and make minimal use hand dryer and tissue papers.
  • Opt for email bills in place of paper bills for your mobile connection, credit card and bank statements etc,

Tips to save electricity :

  • Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescence.save-energy
  • By switching off light at main power button, or even the socket, you would be saving energy and money both.
  • Put lamps on the corner of a room to reflect light from two walls.
  • If possible iron all cloths at one time.
  • Sleep your computer when you are not using it.
  • Turn off your lights and fans when you are not using it, even for a few minutes.
  • Turn off your television, radio etc when not in use.

Tips to save water :

  • Turn off the water after you wet your toothbrush. Turn it on only when you need water.Save Water
  • When washing dishes by hand, don’t leave the water running for rinsing.
  • Don’t let the faucet run while you clean vegetables. Just rinse them in a pan of clean water.
  • If you have a bucket of water not to use, don’t just throw it away. Think for a minute if you can use that for some other purpose, it could be anything like cleaning your bathroom floor or watering plants etc.
  • Check for leaks in pipes, faucets and couplings.

In the end I would say every small action matters. So take a resolution to be environment friendly. Even animals fight for themselves. We are human beings, we should think about nature, environment and other people who are deprived of the facilities we enjoy.

This article may have many flaws. I just tried to put my feelings in words. If you know more ways to save our environment, please write them down in feedback.  Share this article for increasing awareness.