XtremeDreamers: Bottom-Up Innovation Strategy

This blog is so close to my heart as this is the only post that am writing which is so relevant to the purpose of why this blog is created. As an ‘Xtreme Dreamer’ I tend to have this ‘’Innovations urge” and when my organization conducted a fabulous “Innovation Summit”, the volcano erupted. We are renewing our CMMI certification and L5 orgs should bring in process/business/technological innovations within their scope of market so as to be eligible for the renewal and this is why the org was on fire to do things differently. But as I always had this spark, which was turned into a huge firestorm, when everything around me had a tag that said “Innovations” in it, I intend to write this post. I know it'll be hard to gaze through the entire post but believe me the frustration has always had a witty end!

There was an interesting topic in my org’s community forum wherein the AVP has posted a thought about ‘Bottom Up’ Innovation strategy. The below crap of @#%$% followed is my reply to the thought process that was initiated.

I would like to throw some light on both “Top down” as well as “Bottom up” and the S curve that relates to three phases of an organization.

Whenever an organization enters into market it has got 3 phases in it growth:

• Formation
• Growth
• Renewal

During the formation phase we set strategies to grow wherein leaders bring in innovative plans to implement and we will have grand designs in place to reap success. Once the formula for success is known, we will be following the formula and continue to grow in all aspects till success becomes our habit. We will be in a routine using the formula and we will constrain ourselves into a box which we feel is safe. Thus we sustain doing repeated things and then we soon hit downfall as the market we face is a rapid changing one and doing the same thing is never enough for our customers where in it comes to a ‘reinvent or die’ situation. This is where we enter into the phase of renewal where in we change ourselves being back in phase 1 revisiting all our strategies and start to grow again.

In a “Top Down” approach, the contribution in all 3 phases as listed above will only be from the top/senior level managers who decide and people under them act. People in an organization will always need 4 vital things as they grow along – Direction, Coaching, Support and Delegation. “Top Down” approach is a management driven solution, which is so apt for people in organizations who need direction/coaching.

“Bottom up” innovation is the most matured level of strategy as this can only be applied when the people being demise of it should be so mature and ready enough to adopt and apply ideas thereby evolve to bring in growth to the organization that grows them. In this approach as all mentioned, we need to get ideas from the root and start nurturing the dream in the DNA of our associates – I totally agree. But are we matured enough to nurture dreams? The answer never depends on the ‘Associate Innovation Index’ rather the associates’ attitude towards these contributions. To frame a good “Bottom up” innovation strategy, I have came up with 3 vitamins that we need and as one of our associates mentioned in the debate during Innovation strategy meet – “We need Vitamins! Not Pain Killers!”

VITAMIN “A” doption: Adopting technologies and adopting already available tools was the main point that was stressed on ‘Managing Innovations’. We must start using all available resources before we invent. We should adopt existing ideas and consider them before making our own ideas into picture. The culture of inheriting what we have, should spread and then people should think on what we need. Somebody in this post mentioned of developing an effective forum like “FB” and am sorry to ask this – What more you require from this c2mash UI? Start exploring and you’ll find what you need before you start reinventing the wheel.

VITAMIN “C” ommunications: Effective/Improved communications makes the exploration lot easier. Communication models can be closely coupled or as loose as units confined to them. The idea is to effectively communicate within the group. Throw out problems to a larger audience instead of trying to solve it in your desktop. Share it with your unit or across the floor and soon you will hear solutions even WebBot would’ve never thought of.

VITAMIN “D” riving Passion: Every leader has a problem of motivating the members within, make them matured enough to think in a different way, come out with breakthrough ideas and invent something new. To all leaders who think “Oh Yeah! You hit the bull’s eye. This is where I stuck up” – the problem is not the team anymore it could be you. Every leader is the motivating factor of the team and every member will join you if you still have the verge of ideating, improvising and innovating. Leaders should start ideating and put it across, creating boundaries for them to think. Let us make the team to think inside the box first and make them eventually to think outside. This creates passion within the team and soon you’ll find the team buzzing all you with their innovative ideas. Rewards and recognition plays a vital role in this. Hear every idea; never leave any even though it sounds absurd. Recognize the best and reward them periodically which would create the “Wah” factor and this would help to sustain the momentum within.

Relating this with the ‘S’ curve as I discussed earlier, in bottom up approach there will be a group of bottom up innovators doing an excellent job in phase 1 (Formation) and the rate at which the organization enters into phase 2 (Growth) will be phenomenal. But remember what happens when we are reaching phase 3 (Renewal) – everything around just looks great! The sales figure would be high, org will be rapidly growing and its success stories all over. Then there’s a downfall that await us and if we don’t readopt ourselves then no wonder an iceberg could do a shipwreck! This is where “Top Down” helps. The top-level management should drive from front, closely followed by the army of innovating leaders, which would help us grow without hitting the roof, rather I would say grow beyond the roof. Thus a right mixture of both the approaches would constitute in our case.

Please refer: http://bottomupinnovation.blogspot.com/2009/07/bottom-up-innovation-and-s-curve.html to know more on bottom up approach and “S” curve. My thoughts were projected clearly agreeing to the author of the post mentioned.

After a post that is this big which am definitely sure none of them could go through and me still anticipating getting comments on my thought, I hereby post this to a larger audience so that "pirkaala sandhadhiyinar idha padichu pathu therinjikatume!” :D

XtremeDreamers: Test Automation – When and when not!!!!

“Test Automation is not our silver bullet, but it can help us solving our problems.” 

- Couldn’t recall the reference

If it isn’t a silver bullet then what is it? 

Test Automation is the key to solve our major problems related timed delivery, but that cannot replace manual testing. Manual testing is unavoidable, but should be minimized, whose part is carried over by Test Automation. Thus test automation is just a monkey wrench of your garage and it can never replace the skilled mechanic who does all your jobs. Automating the test cases nowadays is misunderstood to assumptions like

• We will be able to automate all testing! 
• Test automation will increase productivity so much that we’ll be able to do all the testing with fewer people (eliminate staff). 
• Test automation is so easy that we won’t need to do any training. 
• Automation will reduce our whole testing workload. 
• We won’t need to do any test planning. 
• That time-intensive test design effort will no longer be necessary. 

When a manager has perceptions like these, he/she is strictly warned in not planning for automating the process.

So where does test automation fits in? As I said earlier, it is just a tool in the toolbox which will assist us, but not take over the whole job a manual tester can do and that doesn’t mean we can automate all testing!

Automation is the concept which is applicable for highly redundant/recursive tasks or scenarios in a routine which may tend to cause human error, tasks that are repetitive and in need to reduce the effort and costs involved and focus on more testing than regressing things. These should be the motive behind automating things and not ROI alone.

Automation means less effort on regressing things and more effort on testing…

Process or Delivery?

Process or delivery… Which one would anyone choose between these two, considering the time factor is a shortage? This blog I write, is because I was inspired by the QA legend Shrini’s (as most of the testing geeks know) one of the post asked this to the reader. The choice I believe is the war between the development and QA team across the organizations all over the world. The real understanding of this will throw the light on the ignorance which both sides have.

 “The choice is already made. Understand the choice.” – Oracle to Neo in Matrix Returns

 The above dialogue is posted here because we are speaking about choices and that the choice is already made. Understanding the choice is the maze here. “How?” is the only question that goes though the mind of anyone who came this far. I can explain this with a simple logic. “Motive” is the keyword behind that. Motive is the one which decides destiny and destiny is made when we make a choice. So the real motive behind any development of a product is delivery. Thus process is one which adheres to the standards to bring out the delivery on time.

 Process is nothing but like a liquid or gas which takes its form according to the vessel it is kept on. This was referred to metrics by Shrini in his blog which I adopted to this. Thus process can be bent to make the right delivery and also to stress on, it can never be neglected.

 

Has the spine of India been changed?

Mahatma’s words marked “Farming is the spine of this country”. Is this really true? Does the economy of the country at present state, rely on this? When I think on these I get this feel like are we going in a right path obeying all those Mother Nature’s rules? Then I could say never, because we don’t even follow the traffic rules, then how in miracle we would follow the rules of nature?

 I could recall those dialogues from the famous movie ‘Wall – E’ “These are called plants. Vegetable plants, Pizza plants…” and goes on. Will this ever happen to us? Will our children forget what we’ve done for our survival in this so called green planet? Nowadays the country I believe run behind the mania called IT and related services and I hope the major part of our economical growth relies there. This IT Titan ‘Goliath’ took all our country’s economy on its shoulders but and for a term we all felt high and now I believe is the time of ‘David’ who could slay this Titan down. What I call as David is the economic glitch, financial crisis moreover the Obama factor that’s happening around us.

 IT - this word ruled this country for the past years. This was like a crown for the GDP growth of ours. The economic blooms, the hike in rates, the inflation for everything it was IT which was addressed and that’s the truth too. But is what we did all right? We focused largely on one sector which gave us all creamy pies and now when a financial crisis happens, the infrastructure of ours stands helpless against all evils. Why can’t we make up an infrastructure which helps us to grow far better than helping some one who lives far yet being the deciding factor for our growth?

 India the land of plateaus is rich in for resources needed for vegetation. Why can’t these technological developments bring in those ecological improvements to the country which would bring trade? My view on this is like, why a country with marvelous minds is always a slave to people who knew us 200 years before. Why can’t we bring in a change that could be a roar to this world? 

All UN Nations are really afraid of one small country called CUBA. Ever wondered a reason for that? It’s not the country powered with nuclear energy, powered with real good infrastructure but with real good people. It is the individual that needs a change to make the change really happen.

 It is the awareness for a individual about the ecological state which on failing tends to this filthy economical state of ours. So “Go Green!!! Go High!!!”

Is it my fault to be in Bench?

I should’ve posted a different topic here today. But an incident drove me here to write this. No wonder I should be writing it here as this is for one special reason though and for a special person who will find it when he reads it. I don’t mean to say that this is a special note to a person rather this is just a scribbling from a miniature’s mind about the globally occurring trend in software industries.

We would’ve noticed people around us enjoying their time mostly, gazing all through the internet, reading the tabloids, making things which is far beyond our imaginations and some of us even would’ve experienced it. The management calls them people in bench and I believe them as people having potential to craft their own path. What is a bench really? 

“Bench, is an inventory in waiting to meet Business demand, it is part of any Organization supply chain not just limited to IT Industry (in the form of material in other industries).” 

– This is how a saga (friend) of mine expressed his view. Seems more technical uh? So lez juz come down to a layman’s definition of what a bench is. Bench is commonly referred to a group of resources whom are the backup for any organization’s needs when a series of deals is in pipeline. So what happens when the pipeline is broken? There starts the chaos. Every organization deals it in its own way and there is one common term which is referred to it called “Lay Off”. 

My intention is not to speak on “Lay off” or something related to it. The reason behind this blog is to discuss that do I really deserve it? If so why me? This I believe is the unsolved maze in everyone's mind. Let us come out of what the topic says. It is not about finding fault for one’s state but to analyze what can be done in that state. When one is at the mid of the chaos happening around, he / she should realize that it’s not him / her who is responsible for it. He / She should also understand the fact that the organization has spotted no other way to tackle the situation. 

I hope that a person in bench has a lot more capability to create than others in the routine. Every single person has their own uniqueness but many fail to express them or don’t know when and where to express them. So start expressing them in a way that it serves the organization and let us pat on their head and say we don’t deserve it. It is a boon and not a bane to be in when we really identify ourselves in it. Being dejected is not the end to all. Begin and progress the way that the management should turn back at you and say atleast a sorry for not identifying the potential that created this outbreak.