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Many of the indian cities today were part of planned development and expansion several decades ago. Plenty of  self sufficient segments of land which could be administered very well by local civic body comprised of cities. These segments had a water tank/lake, playgrounds, schools, libraries/community centers, health care centers, bus depots and segregation of commercial and residential areas. Then there comes a boom in economy and the demand for revenue generating buildings rise. Land becomes a premium and suburbs begin to become part of an extension of the city.

What was once considered to be essential like schools, libraries and other backbones takes a backseat. The focus is on converting as much land as possible into dwelling units and business centers. The demand of of schools, health care centers, libraries, playgrounds are all proportional to the population. As the growth of the suburb is not organic, the essential backbones get built much farther away than in the desired localities. People spend a great deal of time together with their families during transit to work, school and clinics. Simple tasks which was once very easy to accomplish because someone lived in the city becomes a tough task which keeps them occupied for a good part of their productive weekday. Reduced physical connection, long commute times, erratic food habits, irregular sleep patterns comes as freebies because of an unplanned rapid development.

I have observed large software projects which start small with a plan in mind. Backbones like continuous integration, testing frameworks, common goals for the team gets set and progress starts. The ramp up of the team is done slowly and organically such a way that the new members gets a good idea about the goals of the team and the individuals. The code begins to grow and a conscious effort is needed to monitor to modularize or improve its design to increase efficiency. At some point if the business decides to increase the spending on IT to add more functionality in a short period of time, the immediate tangible number which comes to mind is the number of people and the amount of work done. It is even more easy to use those numbers and set up a metric in place to monitor progress, create plans based on extrapolations/number crunches and execute them as necessary.

Sadly the metrics driven development is like building skyscrapers by counting just the floors built without a second thought about the long term habitability of it. An illusion of progress is created as more functionality is added in a short time by the sudden increase in team size, which makes the other not so visible aspects of a software project like design, code quality, usability to become invisible. More effort gets centered on the deadline with added functionality and individuals become more focussed on the task at hand ignoring the other aspects. Gradually the mindset shifts from building a castle to laying the bricks in order.  It is necessary to acknowledge that an organic ramp up is necessary and limit the team size to a level where plain interactions and code base are enough for communication. If there is a need to increase the team size to get more work done, after a careful analysis work should be split, parallelized and a new team has to be forked off.

Image: Damian Brandon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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In the movie matrix Agent Smith says to Neo “But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned” as an answer to why an Utopian matrix was a disaster.  So many inventions which have been dreams to our ancestors are now an indispensable everyday need in our life. Right now an individual with an average income is able afford phones, computers, automobiles and so on which was not so easy to possess just a few decades ago. Yet we crave for better ones and we keep getting them.

Countries where first civilizations surfaced and lived a life ahead of its times were later colonized by more technologically advanced nations which sometimes were much smaller in area and people count. If the civilization stops advancing then it is destroyed or taken over by an advanced one.

There has to be a constant urge to keep pushing ourselves to improve, upgrade and innovate else it is very easy for us to be pushed out of existence. The fact does not apply only to civilizations, it is for individuals or organizations as well. The pay check after easy days at office gives a false sense of security as it takes care of immediate and long term basic needs. Jobs are easy if there is not a slight stretch or push; a stretch or push means we are out of the comfort zone learning and unlearning, if we are learning and applying then we are advancing. If we advance then dreams become true through inventions and they become necessity.

As the advancements in technology and methodologies keep going sky high, the amount of preparation an individual goes through before landing at the workplace is also increasing. That puts a greater emphasis on effective and efficient learning right from childhood that will keep going on and on and on. Workplace always has a cycle of tight work, vacation and lean days, we can plan our continuous learning such that we don’t get burnt out and at the same time we are not left behind.

Every morning in Africa, a deer wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest deer, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or deer – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

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It was the eve of a festival and I was returning back home from another city. The gateway to my home town was choking with unusually high traffic with everyone trying to rush to meet their near and dear ones. A stretch of few kilometers took more than an hour. It is at this time I witnessed a miracle. There was a sound of an ambulance siren approaching, on hearing almost every one on the road made their best effort to make way for the ambulance. In such a dense choking traffic there was a pathway made under a minute good enough for the ambulance to pass through. The patient who must have survived her illness might not even realized how tons of strangers on the road help save her life.

We humans are altruistic by nature and some how from inside it makes us feel good when we help others. Reader’s digest also mentioned in one article that may be only humans who were helpful to each other survived droughts, war and other adversities so that trait is deeply ingrained within us. There are also some beliefs about collective intelligence being superior than the sum of all individual intelligence. This is very evident from team games like football where the understanding between the team members a mix of skills gets the team to win. I have observed the striker scores more goals than anyone else in the team and most of the times ends up being the most valuable player. In my opinion the striker who scores a goal is largely enabled by the other 10 in the team.

Workplaces are no different, at many workplaces team work always matters; and many of those workplaces have awards like employee of the month/quarter/year or super star awards. The awards definitely help a lot to life the spirits of those who win it but it also puts a dent in the rest of the team’s spirit as the winner is enabled by the team and hardly there is a credit to the team. It is better to do away with these kind of awards and much energy can be concentrated on removing negative influence in the team like someone who exploits the system and team setup. It takes only one selfish person to bring down the morale of a high performing team, we must make sure our workplace does not offer any dividends to someone who tries to exploit; instead make the workplace such a way that the more cohesive the team becomes the more rewarding and enjoyable it is to work.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net