I had attended an Agile Project Management session this week. I have never executed project in agile mode yet, but have read/evaluated methodologies for quite some time. I think the fundamental philosophies (better collaboration, prototyping / visible working software, customer involvement, prioritized requirements, self managed team taking responsibility without assignment, just enough documentation and processes, adaptability) is something that should be practiced irrespective of the methodologies used, even if it is waterfall.


One thing though – there was one statement that “people don’t know what they want, until they see it”. Maybe corollary is that “when they see it, they would want something changed still”. It is so true in real life. I am going to go off on a tangent. I keep hearing so many things from people about what they want to do – one thing is common, most of people want to do something other than what they are doing, but don’t know exactly what. I feel those who know what they want clearly and be sure that they will be happy when they get exactly what they wanted are lucky (and must have done their research well or have great clarity of mind). If only we could work towards what we want (“see / experience / prepare for / learn about” the thing we want) while trying to reconcile with what we have now in the best possible way..

Obama

Once more, people are writing off Obama – there are articles about how he could be one term president (he said he would rather be good one term president one and half years back). So the story continues with another twist.


I have been following Obama’s story since almost four years. I first heard about Obama through a Time magazine article when he was a senator – it was portraying him as potential presidential candidate. From then, I have watched the speech at DNC which made him a contender overnight, read the profiles of everyone associated with him – his mother, father, wife, advisers like Plouffe, Axelrod, Jarret, Gibbs, signed up on his election website to receive news, followed primary by primary, every debate, elections, through every up and down, inauguration and state of the union addresses and got familiar with sites such as TPM, DailyKos and even know which columnists are his fans and which are not. It is a fascinating story – or the media and his PR sells it like it is fascinating like everything American sold as larger than life (“leader of the free world”, “world series” etc) – either way it is an interesting story.

His was a long odds victory – maybe at a time when nobody else was eligible or credible enough after the disaster of Bush junior. At multiple points in the campaign it looked like he will surely lose. When videos of his pastor denouncing 9-11 came up or when he was associated with a domestic terrorist since they were in same neighborhood, fears of him being Manchurian candidate, fears that he is Muslim (his middle name being Hussain), fear of him being socialist etc. The guy has delivered every time to turn them around.

By the time he was elected, stock market crashed, auto industry was going bankrupt, two wars were going on and depression was imminent. Stimulus worked to an extent, auto industry was saved, one war is closed at least on paper, another getting closed on paper, avoided getting into third at least directly and things were starting to turn around. Then came healthcare bill and brutal battle in which again he almost failed only to turn it around at last minute – he was called granny killer, Nazi, Hitler. Tea party came up with still doubts on where their funding is coming from.

Now he is being written off yet again as someone who cannot close decisions, ”leading from behind”, not being able to empathize, professor rather than a leader, inexperienced, weak, good campaigner but poor execution etc. May be most of it is true. He seems to be seeking compromise in everything and as they say “those who stand in the middle of the road get hit from both sides”. It might be a failure of too much compromise.

Other thing is, when and how to decide if someone is poor performer or if truly situations are against him. There are some who have made up their mind long back that he is going to be a failure and exactly why. He seems to say always that he is doing the right thing which will take longer time to realize and don’t judge based on short term news cycles – that factor (of long term planning and thinking) was there to witness at least during campaign (how they plotted winning the primaries by numbers and the 50 state strategy etc).

So now another twist is setup. Fear of yet another recession, Fed outlook says economic situation will continue until 2013, expecting more cuts which will be unpopular etc, it again looks like lost cause. So they have set it up as another underdog story with a villain as well (extreme right wing).