At last the leaders in Kerala are talking something for the people

I have written earlier in this blog about the inertness by the leadership on the Mullperiyar dam. Finally, the leaders have woken up, thanks to Minister PJ Joseph. His remarks in public followed by a public uproar has made everyone to react to it.

It is now the turn of Central government and the Judicial institutions to listen to the worried millions of people in the state. People in Tamil Nadu and their leadership has to understand that by supporting the safety requirements of 3.5 million people in Kerala, they are not going to loose even one drop of water. Instead they will gain goodwill in the state. Hope wisdom prevail.

Project management success mantra

Be in control as a leader but never behave like a boss,

Enhance knowledge with Subject matter Experts,

Do not enter when exit is not clear,

Depend on God but never ignore Numbers and Dates,

Believe that Quality is a culture and

none would be proud to produce sub-standard results,

Measure all possible downfalls,

An effective communication would be your key to success,

Break it into smaller meaningful blocks,

Plan it macro and then plan it micro,

Review review review always while in execution.

Mulla periyar can be the largest dissaster world has ever experienced

I read a note written by a person on facebook about MullaPeriyarDam, which inspired me to write these words here.

Those who do not know the context, MullaPeriyarDam is a large reservoir situated in the Kerala Tamilnadu state border which has exceeded its life expectancy and still holding water at dangerous levels to supply water to Tamilnadu State primarily. While this water is essential for agriculture and other requirements in Tamilnadu, the reservoir is reported by many knowledgable people that it might not survive for long. Any collapse of the reservoir will wipe a few districts in Kerala and could lead to the death of millions of people in Kerala.

Kerala has a funny polical balance (or imbalance) between the 2 alliances namely UDF and LDF. Every 5 years the opposition alliance switch over to become the ruling party. Both the alliance parties are very thick headed and quite irresponsible to the people of the state. Politians in Kerala treats people as votebanks that has to be maniputed for their benefits. They are too pre-occupied with their own internal politics and intra party politics. It is a pitty, but the reality of the situation in Kerala is that there is a complete absence of a committed leadership in Kerala. A subject of grave importance such as risk of millions of people's life is just another subject for them of average importance.

Hope the national leadership would take note of this risk and quickly do someting about it. At least consider that there is a risk of loosing a million votes(that is the only risk politicians and political party takes up as their own problem). It is our parents, brothers, sisters and children who are living under the threat of MullaPeriyarDam. We have equal right of living safely as much as the people on the other side of the Sahya moutain range.

Information technology in Healthcare, baby steps today....on fast track growth.

From mid 1980s, I have seen a evolution of systems and adapation of these by verical industries. Some industries embrased IT faster than others and very few have not even indulged at all. As we all know banks,telcos etc. have a very high degree of usage, which is to the extend, without very high dependency on information technology their business cannot be conducted or progressed in today's world. Manufacturing, Retail, Government and many others have moderte consumption of IT systems, but the IT in these areas is steadily increasing its footprint.

One of the industry which has very little or no IT penetration was Healthcare. Healthcare, though was a heavy consumer of healthcare technology innovations in the field of pathology, radiaology, invasive or other forms of eqipments etc. was reluctant in moving fast in adapting information technology. It appreas to me that the trend of IT consumption in the healthcare industry is changing a lot. Certainly the wave started in the western world but now it is reaching the shores of Asian countries. There are some African countries are also following the pursuit.

Healthcare industry and its associated industries such as health insurance industry, pharmacuetical reasearch and manufacturing industry, bio-medical equipment, clinical and other consumables industry etc. form a large slice of global economy. I would think that what is possible in this industry strata is minimally explored and the possibilities are unlimited and c be compared to that of financial services industry. As we can see in financial services industry utilises IT capabilities to address every aspect such as the traditional banking transactions and others like the internet based, ATM/CDM based, mobile based etc. In additional, it uses information technology for risk management, channel management, automation of every internal processes, fraud detection, compliance reporting etc.etc. are some of the examples. Like this, healtcare industry could slowly cover hugely and increase the quality of care and coverage.

My Home state, Kerala - No way it is God's own country !!! Hmm !!

We get what we deserve - So we need to change what we deserve.

For years we kept saying that the leadership of our state doesn't have the vision and hence the situation in Kerala is not going to improve. We blamed corruption, we blamed the strikes conducted by all policals parties....we blamed everything.... Except blaming ourselves. We believe that it is our fate and we accepted that as statusquo. Hence we are a community in comma.

My fellow keralites, please don't get me wrong. I am not talking about changing Kerala Politicians, although they are certainly part of the problem. I am talking about us, all Malayalees - in and outside the state. We should start somewhere.....the journey of success. The million dollor question is HOW ?!! I think the first hurdle in the journey to success is our mentality towards success. Years of influence on our thinking from the old schools of thought drag us back and carelessly make judgements on our ethics in every spere of life. A close look at each aspect that an induvidual make judgements should be studied to understand the huge effect of the mentality on our road to success. Some examples are our understanding of democarcy, our attitude towards work, our view of wealth creation, our quality of life, Our tolerance toards crime, our inertness on abuse of power or position................many more.

Bulky to commission and costly to buy software create digital divide between enterprise and SMB.

Is there rich man's software and poor man's software ? Oh Yes, it does exists. ERP applications, database engines, many software tools  and many vertical industry applications are example such expensive software that most of the common buainesses can't afford. Although opensource software provides some relief, it is not a remedy. Except a few of them like Linux operating system, alfresco document management software, most of the opensource provides only software for entry level and to use it seriously in an organisation, one will have to buy its enterprise version, which could be as expensive as any other.

Ask an implementor of ERP, that how long will it take to implment his ERP solution in you organisation. It would be minimum 6 months and can be as long as many years. They say it is because of your business complexities and thus requires customisation. True, I know from experience, it is not easy to make a pre-built bulky software address all your business requirements as it is. It could be longer and costlier unless you make several compromises on your business requirements.Funny though, the more tim you spent and the more money you spent, it would be that much more difficult to maintain your system. Ah...that's how it is information technology now......it might change.....but......when ?!!

Can SMEs(Subjewct matter experts) make apps ?

Subject Matter Experts making software application ! Does it sound practical ? Not really. Is n't it ? I am sure it is hard to beleive that someone who does not have any software design and development knowledge and experience, would be able to make a software application. Today it sounds like someone talking about mobile phones and facimile communications in 1950.

Is IT innovation progressing in a healthy manner ?

What is the future of computing ? Is it yet to be uncovered ?!!

In my view, the biggest leap in IT industry was the abstraction of application creation independent of the physical computer on which it would be executed. This has allowed the hardware and software to become independent industries and could progress with independent research.

As zillions of lines of code has been created by millions of computer programmers worldwide, the order of our world has been changing in all walks of life. Computer programs are becoming smarter day by day, more areas of automations are being unfolded, the information technology is doing miracles across the universe. 

It is exciting to observe the success of IT innovations and its benefits to mankind. But….but….hmm…Something is bothering me…is this all innovations are going in a natural and healthy direction?  

Visionary technocrats have consolidated the collective knowledge existed at every point of time and matured into the new era each time improving on the pitfalls of the methods existed prior to the emergence of their ideas, resulting in a new generation of thoughts, technologies and tools. We have seen several such trends and trend setters. But overall, the systems have become far more complicated to create and maintain. More over once built, to modify or enhance the systems, we need to do patchwork and rework on system leading to breaking the design of the system itself and such changes even badly weaken the architecture itself.

Why not : 1.     Subject Matter experts should be able to make software based on the knowledge of subject rather than the knowledge of software engineering methods and techniques, that changes so rapidly.

Why not : 2.     End user should be able to subscribe and use what he/she/it requires and not what the engineers are fabricating as per their understanding of business needs.

I have my views on this and I will surely enjoy your views too.