Nasal Surgery

This winter was not that great for me. Very cold and I could feel that my nasal blockage is getting worsened during winter. One of the December saturday evenings when we visited Nair aunty after the Church, she mentioned about an ENT doctor. Dezouza consult with this doctor and heard that he is really good. We went to the doctor, Ravi Kaoushik in Jayanagar east end circle during Jan 1st week and he told my nose is really blocked and asked me to go for a scan. There is a big polip and he suggested surgery at the earliest.

Life in the times of recession

It was morning 8.00. I was just starting my work at office. I got a call from a number which is not saved in my contact list. I could recognize the voice of Damodar, one of my team members during my Novell System Testing days. He is from Orissa, married and built his house in Electronic city few years back. I know that he has moved out of Novell after I left. "Baiju, I was in Orissa for new year vacation, came back and went to office on a Monday and found that I have lost my job". He sounded not shattered with this. I thought about his family, his housing loan, what would have he told to to his wife when he first heard this bad news, to his parents. I am glad about his optimism. Otherwise its very difficult during these tough days.I told him don't worry. Lets try out.

Christmas 2008

This is our first Christmas in our new house in Bangalore. Earlier we used to goto my hometown Pallipuram (Kerala ) to celebrate Christmas and New Year with parents. This time all of us met in our home in Bangalore.

This is the Christmas crib we set up this time.

Reading 'Vanka' (by Anton Chekhov) on a Christmas week

Christmas is just few days away. Today Chekhov's 'Vanka' was published in Malayala Manorama daily, a Malayalam translation of it. Vanka is one of my favorites from Chekhov. Its the story about a lonely boy writing a letter to his grand father on a Christmas eve ,to save him from the current cruel realities of loneliness and the cruel master and friends. When I read Vanka again after few years it took me to the same old Christmas feelings...of reading Vanka during my college days...Vanka's hopes ... being nostalgic, snowy nights , love of grandfather...

Here is a good collection of Checkhov's stories.

My first 90 days @Yahoo!

Sep 4th(Thu) was my last day with Ariba and I joined Yahoo! on Sep 8th (Mon) to head the Quality Engineering for the Emerging Markets(EM) business group. Today its Nov 9th. I have completed my 2 months with Yahoo. Its really an exciting journey. I am liking my new job.New challenges and responsibilities mixed with lots of things what I used to do in my previous QA job at Ariba.

Jaya, Ariba India MD was mentioning about a book "The first 90 days - critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels" by Michael Watkins in one of the steering commitee meetings. I have read this book and used the learnings and philosophy for my transition into Yahoo!. It helped me a lot. One of the first thing this book talk about is "accelerate your learning of your new job" and match strategy to situation by diagnosing the situation to develop the right strategy. I have developed a simple quality engineering maturity assessment framework to diagnose the current situation and created a simple dashboard for all the EM products (aka properties). This is helping me to set up my Q4 goal and track the progress on a monthly basis.Team is good and I have a good manager. Impossible is nothing. I have big dreams and need to execute my dreams to make big wins for Yahoo!

Oct 26, Sun: Villju moved to his new apartment (Mahaveer Dazzle) @ Hoddy circle, whitefiled. Nimmu had her dance programme at Malleswaram , part of Genesys (her dance school) anniversary. She danced for 'Sing is King' and 'Bang ...Bang...'

QoD

Impossible : Impossible is nothing

• “When no-one else believes in you – believe in yourself.”
• “Push yourself further, and you find out what you’re really made of.”
• “You will go through tough times. It’s about coming through that.”
• “No matter how bad things get, make the most of what you've got.”
• “Keep moving forward and do what you love.”
• “If you keep on putting one foot in front of the other, you¹re going to get to where you need to be.”
• “People putting you down can drive you to do things you didn’t even think you could do yourself.”
• “The things you fear, you just fear them in your head.”
• “Where you start isn’t necessarily where you end up.”
• “You have to fight for every step of the way to your impossible.”
• “Sometimes bad things can turn out good.”

Perfection : "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it" - the surrealist and uber eccentric painter Salvador Dali

Leaving Ariba...

Thank you and adieu
I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I am leaving Ariba today.

Transitioning from Ariba is an emotional decision, as I have enjoyed working at this company for many years. I have learned a great deal from my managers and many other leaders at Ariba. Ariba is a big part of my life and I will always cherish the fond memories of my years here. I am proud of what we have built together at IDC, and I am so optimistic about Ariba's future. Thank you all for the support, guidance, and encouragement you have provided me during my time at Ariba.

Please keep in touch, I can be reached at my personal email address baijuglad@yahoo.com . I am also in linkedin.

Thanks again to all of you, and I wish you continued success in the future.

Regards,
Baiju

Last weekly meeting with team
Today is my last week at Ariba. When I joined 5 years back we were just 6 member team owning 5-6 features and some of the automation. 2 years back we have started owning the Quality responsibility for the entire product set. Doing some innovations from India and getting it recognized in Ariba world wide was another big dream. We have proposed , prototyped and demonstrated Selenium as a tool for test automation. We have been working on this for an year and last March it got accepted as the common tool for Ariba world wide. I have learnt a lot on Scrum while working here. Learnt a lot in the Steering Committee meeting. Thanks to Ariba. Today while sitting in the farewell lunch I have been thinking about these. Its time for me to get down from the journey and catch another train.
We have Monday team meeting as usual. Today one of my parting message to team was to focus on testing to improve quality. This is the summary.
Disciplined Testing

• Testing risky areas early
• Change in code is risk – so test around the change immediately
• Focus on where customers are reporting more defects
• Communicate to your developers and appropriate internal customers regularly
• Test status
• Defects – go and show the defect if it’s a blocker to your scrum team
• Write your defect reports with enough details and follow the best practices
• Analyse the defects little more in detail – product log
• Understand why is it not working – need to know the feature block diagram