SAST Wingees

Motorola has a thriving internal wiki/blog environment

Apparently, Motorola now has over 2,000 Wikis and 2,700 internal blogs with 4000-5000 out of 60,000 employees contributing and the rest reading them. Listen to Dan Bricklin’s podcast interview with Motorola’s Toby Redshaw. (Via Sajith Shankar)

The Why and How of affirmative action (reservations)?

Update: Prof TT Ram Mohan of IIM-A writes in the ET echoing some of these views in today’s (Apr 24, 2006) edition. The recent announcement from the HRD Minister Arjun Singh expanding reservations has touched off a raw nerve. Lots of heated discussions are taking place. Full disclosure: I support affirmative action. I remain committed untill affirmative action is proven beyond doubt to be useless.

Understanding the Law
First, there seems to be some misunderstanding about the scope of the constitutional amendment that has been passed. Some people have written reams on the assumption that this is targetted at having reservations at IITs/IIMs. So, lets first look at the Article 15 of our constitution as it stands before the amendment.

15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.- (1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds
only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste,
sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability,
liability, restriction or condition with regard to-
(a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of
public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or
dedicated to the use of the general public.
(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children. (4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall
prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

Text from Article 29 that is reference in Article 15.

29. Protection of interests of minorities.-

(1)Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any
part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own
shall have the right to conserve the same.
(2) No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational
institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds
on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.

Through the 93rd constitutional amendment, here is the amended clause 5:

2. Amendment of article 15.-In article 15 of the Constitution, after
clause (4), the following clause shall be inserted, namely:-
“(5) Nothing in this article or in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of
article 19 shall prevent the State from making any special provision,
by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward
classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes
in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to
educational institutions including private educational institutions,
whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority
educational institutions referred to in clause (1) of article 30.”.

Text of Article 19 referenced above:

19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech, etc.—(1) All citizens shall have the right—

(a) to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;

(c) to form associations or unions;

(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;

(e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and

*           *          *              *               *                               

(g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

Text from Article 30 referenced above

30. Right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions. — (1) All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.

(1A) In making any law providing for the compulsory acquisition of any property of an educational institution established and administered by a minority, referred to in clause (1), the State shall ensure that the amount fixed by or determined under such law for the acquisition of such property is such as would not restrict or abrogate the right guaranteed under that clause.

(2) The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

After analyzing these and the order that has been issued, we will now have nearly 50% reservations in all private and public institutions of higher learning (which of course includes IITs, IIMs). Only minority institutions are exempt from this order. Also note that it only talks about socially and educationally backward classes. Economically backward does not figure here for an important reason. What is Affirmative Action? I turn to the USA because the US has a few relevant similarities – it has had a few centuries of discrimination (India has had discrimination based on casteism for thousands of years) and is a land of abundant diversity (although much more diverse than India).  Also, USA has tried its hand at affirmative action and has been quite controversial and it continues to be. Additionally, as humankind, we have discriminated against women for the past 100,000 years and continue to do so. I picked this definition from a paper by Robert Fullinwider on Stanford University’s pages. This is a long paper and I consider it one of the best on this topic as it provides a very balanced view of the issues involved. I have borrowed heavily from it. Please read it at leisure.

“Affirmative action” means positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. When those steps involve preferential selection—selection on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity—affirmative action generates intense controversy.

Why Affirmative Action?
While in the US context, affirmative action is for minorities and women, in India, sadly enough, a significant percentage of the population seems to need affirmative action. I think its undeniable that the responsbility for this state of affairs is squarely on the shoulders of the higher castes. But focusing on the past does not lead us to concrete solutions but becomes a blame game. Instead, let us focus on what can be done now to correct the situation. Discrimination  puts people in a  virtually  in-escapable cycle of  backwardness. The grand parents  and parents were discriminated against and hence their children cannot get benefits and so on.  The discrimination that has gone on for such a long time cannot be corrected by just saying “from now on there is no discrimination and all of you are equal”. Its a proven fact that children from families that have a history of education in their lineage do better than those that don’t. There  does not seem to be an easy way of breaking this cycle without using affirmative action. Affirmative action in India is designed to correct social and educational backwardness which is a direct result of casteism. Social and educational backwardness can result in economic backwardness but the converse is not true.  For economic backwardness, merit-cum-need and need-based scholarships exist and the affirmative policy does not concern itself with economic backwardness. Okay, its fairly clear that affirmative action benefits the people that directly benefit from it.  But what about the people from the higher castes that are impacted by it? Diversity Argument [Copied from the Stanford Paper] Management pundits will tell you that diversity of the workforce is a key ingredient for success in any business. Associating yourself with people only from similar backgrounds is not conducive to long term success. Professor of Psychology Patricia Gurin has conducted research and found evidence on how diversity is helpful even in educational settings. [From the same stanford paper quoted above]

students learn better in a diverse educational environment, and they are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave such a setting.…[S]tudents who experienced the most racial and ethnic diversity in classroom settings and in informal interactions with peers showed the greatest engagement in active thinking processes, growth in intellectual
engagement and motivation, and growth in intellectual and academic skills

Integration Argument  [Copied from the Stanford Paper] One can argue that the institutions of higher learning produce the future leaders of the country, both in business and government. Now what would happen if such leaders have never interacted with other sections of the society and are not able to empathize with them at all. Therefore it is necessary for us to make our best efforts to create a diverse milieu for our future leaders.  Excerpt from Stanford Paper:

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes
of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be
visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and
ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have
confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational
institutions that provide this training.…Access…. must be
inclusive…of every race and ethnicity, so that all members of
our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational
institutions that provide the training and education necessary to
succeed in America.

^{There are some states like Tamilnadu which have been following these policies for a while now. In Tamilnadu, the reserved seats if you add all the quotas is over 70%. I think you can see the effects of both the diversity argument and the integration argument in Tamilnadu. There is a far greater acceptance of lower castes in all walks of life, and there has been a dramatic reduction in casteist discrimination. Yes, caste still plays a part but is more for political expediency than for discriminatory purposes. Although, a lot of credit for this goes to the social revolution led by EVR Periyar, I think the education system has also played an important part in this transformation.}

What about merit? Now, this is the biggest stick that the anti-reservation forces have.  Eventhough there is not a commonly accepted definition of merit, this is a difficult one to argue against. But the question to bear in mind would we rather have 20% highly meritorious individuals and 80% backward individuals or the other way round.

Is there an alternative to caste-based reservations? Its clear that we need affirmative action, but can we avoid using castes? I have not done any research on feasibility of implementation. Please take it as just a rudimentary idea. I have been thinking about the idea of using the educational track record of the family that is seeking reservation. After all, social and educational backwardness should be reflected in the track record because lack of access to education is the biggest cause of this backwardness. Again, i don’t know how many generations it takes to erase socio-educational backwardness, but let’s say it takes 2 generations. We can ask for the educational status of grand-parents and parents and determine eligibility of reservations based on that. However, i am not sure how we will produce such records in the absence of any records being maintained by the government. So feasibility is a big question mark. But I thought I will throw it out there.

<sup>References:
1. Case for Reservations by Dilip D’Souza.  Lots of good ideas. He also has an update. good read.
2. Saket writes against reservations in his usual no-holds-barred style. good read.
3. Positive Discrimination In India – A political analysis by Partha Ghosh (Via Mercatus Why Reservations are a Good Idea)  (Via Desipundit)
4. In defence of larger interests by Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Via Mercatus as well)</sup>

Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a class act

Just got out of the Buck’s Theater (YMCA, Nandanam) after watching Tim Supple‘s brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thanks to the British Council for this effort. It is innovative in many ways – he toured India and Sri Lanka extensively and selected artistes from various local language theaters and they speak their dialogues in their own language. So we had dialogues in English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali and Sinhalese.  Even though, we couldn’t understand many of the dialogues, we could make out the meaning from the context and also the general familiarity of this famous drama helped us to understand. We had the question as to why only these languages were chosen? Priya Raju made the observation that these seem to have a long tradition of theater and also have contemporary forms of theater which are still popular.  I am not sure if other languages have a continuing tradition of theater or not. If any of you agree/disagree, please write a comment. The actors were very energetic and delivered their dialogue with a lot of passion.  If you had expected a  traditional shakespeare drama, you were in for a rude but pleasant shock. Every actor had been chosen carefully and they played their part perfectly. The settings and the props were very creative, including the usage of red mud on the platform. Since the actors were running around and falling a lot, this must have definitely helped cushion their falls. Its an amazing experience to see a group of people perform with such passion and superb coordination. I think the entire audience loved the play, as Tim Supple and his team got a standing ovation in the end. I managed to get Tim’s autograph.  Actor Revathi was spotted in the audience and before I could get her autograph she had left the venue. If you reside in Kolkata, don’t miss this one. Its scheduled for 28,29,30 April, 2006 at the Tollygunge Club Ltd, Deshapram Sasmai Road. You can get free passes from the local British Council Library. Apparently, the 30th April show has already been booked for the schools in Kolkata. So that leaves only 28,29 for the rest. If you reside in the UK, you can see this play June 7-17, 2006 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Don’t miss it.

Why offshoring may or may not work for you?

Vinnie started it off with a link to a recent CIO magazine article. Sadagopan joins the debate and disagrees with the captive option being touted. In my view, I think the CIO magazine article is flawed not in the sense of the data being presented but rather the conclusions being drawn. Billions of dollars worth of software are being created using the Global Delivery Model and instances of successful relationships running for over 10 years are legion. I don’t doubt that it may have happened in the case study being quoted, but to say that after 4 years ROI goes down the tube because of a few cases is a hugely misleading conclusion. Let’s look at the 7-step solution being offered by CIO Magazine. Excerpt:

1. Don’t assume the hard work is over during the ramp-up period. Healthy offshore relationships require continuous improvement throughout their life cycles and extensive re-examination every three years.
2. Hold quarterly meetings with senior-level representation from both customer and vendor.
3. Rotate people out of the relationship management position after a few years to prevent burnout. Or consider having some permanently onsite at the offshore location. The travel required to manage relationships offshore can take a toll on employees.
4. Keep close tabs on vendor staff turnover. Pay attention to all levels, from the executive ranks to middle managers to line workers; defections at any level can have a negative effect.
5. Work with your offshore provider to cushion against the sudden loss of key employees. For example, on an important project place an extra resource who can be ready to jump in if necessary.
6. Make sure performance metrics mesh with reality. If they don’t, come up with new metrics that do.
7. Survey business users and internal IT staff about their experiences with offshored support or projects on a regular basis. They can be your best measure of how well or poorly the engagement is delivering.

The question I have is, why are these 7 steps any different for projects done with on-shore consulting companies or better still, in-house IT shops? To illustrate the point, let me rewrite the same 7 steps with some modifications. 1. Don’t assume the hard work is over during the ramp-up period. Healthy Business-IT relationships require continuous improvement throughout their life cycles and extensive re-examination every three
years. 2. Hold quarterly meetings with senior-level representation from both Business and IT.
3. Rotate people out of the relationship management position after a few years to prevent burnout. Or consider having some permanently onsite at the IT location. The travel required to manage relationships to the IT location can take a toll on employees. [Most companies have business users and IT people in separate buildings or in completely different locations. Agree international travel is a lot harder. But if the only way your projects will be done properly is by physically being at the location, its time to look change your IT group] 4. Keep close tabs on IT staff turnover. Pay attention to all levels, from the executive ranks to middle managers to line workers; defections at any level can have a negative effect. 5. Work with your IT to cushion against the sudden loss of key employees. For example, on an important project place an extra resource who can be ready to jump in if necessary. [Its standard project management practice to keep additional resources for contingencies] 6. Make sure performance metrics mesh with reality. If they don’t, come up with new metrics that do. [There is an old saying in IT, you can’t manage what you can’t measure meaningfully. Again an universal Software Engineering principle] 7. Survey business users about their experiences with IT support or projects on a regular basis. They can be your best measure of how well or poorly the engagement is delivering. I am not claiming that managing projects with an offshore component is easy. I am merely pointing out that its quite similar to managing IT projects in general and the techniques used come from traditional program management. In general IT projects are hard. In fact large projects are so hard that nearly 50% of them are cancelled. This statistic is from the renowned Software Metrics researcher Capers Jones.

Excerpt from his article “Software Project Management in the 21st Century“
Table 1: Software Project Outcomes By Size of Project
Size Early On-Time Delayed Canceled Sum
1 FP 14.68% 83.16% 1.92% 0.25% 100.00%
10 FP 11.08% 81.25% 5.67% 2.00% 100.00%
100 FP 6.06% 74.77% 11.83% 7.33% 100.00%
1000 FP 1.24% 60.76% 17.67% 20.33% 100.00%
10000 FP 0.14% 28.03% 23.83% 48.00% 100.00%
100000 FP 0.00% 13.67% 21.33% 65.00% 100.00%
Average 5.53% 56.94% 13.71% 23.82% 100.00%

As can easily be seen from table 1, small software projects are successful in the majority of instances. The risks and hazards of cancellation or major delays rise quite rapidly as the overall application size goes up. Indeed, the development of large applications in excess of 10,000 function points is one of the most hazardous and risky business undertakings of the modern world.

The global delivery model is not for the faint of heart but it gives plenty of advantages to ones that know how to use it effectively. If you pick the correct companies and more importantly cultivate an open mindset within your company, it will beat your expectations and then some. If its not working for you, first look at your general IT project management practices and you will find the answer. One of my favorite clients was asked by someone “Does offshore work” and she responded “It works exceeding well for me and it will for you if you have the commitment to make it work”. I rest my case. Technorati Tags: offshoring, global delivery model, software project management

The Politics of Time Zones

Updated Again (see Bill’s comments below): Sri Lanka is finally officially switching to the GMT+5.30 time zone (same as in India) after a decade of confusing back and forth changes to daylight saving time (GMT+6.30), Sri Lanka Time (GMT+6 because GMT+5.30 is India’s time zone). Apparently, the rebels never agreed to the time zone switch of 1996 and have always been in GMT+5.30. Sri Lanka is not the only place with time zone politics.  

Daylight Saving Time in the US has always been confusing with some states like Arizona and parts of some states like Indiana refusing to observe daylight saving time. As if that is not enough President Bush has signed a new law that includes a highly controversial extension of Daylight Saving time which takes effect in 2007. Given the controversy surrounding this, I was not sure if this provision made it into the final bill. After some searching I found the entire text of the law at the Department of Interiors Site [Caution 3MB PDF file]. The relevant provision extracted below:

SEC. 110. DAYLIGHT SAVINGS.

(a) AMENDMENT.—Section 3(a) of the Uniform Time Act of 1966

(15 U.S.C. 260a(a)) is amended—

(1) by striking ‘‘first Sunday of April’’ and inserting ‘‘second Sunday of March’’; and

(2) by striking ‘‘last Sunday of October’’ and inserting ‘‘first Sunday of November’’.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—Subsection (a) shall take effect 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act or March 1, 2007, whichever is later.

(c) REPORT TO CONGRESS.—Not later than 9 months after the effective date stated in subsection (b), the Secretary shall report to Congress on the impact of this section on energy consumption in the United States.

(d) RIGHT TO REVERT.—Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedules once the Department study is complete.

If you read it carefully, The effective date is March 1, 2007 because the law was enacted on Aug 8, 2005. Interestingly, provision d allows the US to revert the time back to 2005 schedules! Now why couldn’t they simulate the savings using some modeling tools and then decide one way or the other instead of putting everyone in major league turmoil? All this confusion could help IT consulting companies make a lot of money helping companies switch all the software systems back and forth to accomodate this.

Meanwhile, if this site is to be believed, parts of Indiana are switching to Central Time Zone and some other parts are switching to Eastern Time Zone.

Update: Vinnie adds some interesting facts about time zones across the world.

Next time you call someone anywhere in the world, check the time zone one more time, politicians may have switched day for night in the time zone you are calling!