I fell – The Haiku

Fell on the road,
Stood up! You crossed my path,
I fell again.

Mirror – The Haiku

Mirror covered by water vapour,
I drew the eyes over it
Tears started flowing.

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Why a must read!

What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!

The year 2022 touches the 25-year milestone for the personal finance classic Rich Dad Poor Dad that still ranks as the #1 Personal Finance book of all time.

And although 25 years have passed since Rich Dad Poor Dad was first published, readers will find that very little in the book itself has changed ― and for good reason. While so much in our world is changing a high speed, the lessons about money and the principles of Rich Dad Poor Dad haven’t changed. Today, as money continues to play a key role in our daily lives, the messages in Robert Kiyosaki’s international bestseller are more timely and more important than ever.

Reasons to read this book:

1) Clearly explains and differentiates the mentality between the ‘mindset’ of Rich and Poor

2) How to not work for money, and make the money work for you

3) How to create and use every opportunity to the best extent for your personal success

4) Explains Fear and self-doubt are your greatest barriers to success

5) The Discipline that every individual needs to maintain in order to obtain wealth

6) The Power that money possesses over us and how we should take control of it.

7) The Importance of Financial Literacy

Below is the link to buy this book at amazon if would you like to buy one:

BUY at AMAZON

Umbrella

A whole day of rain,

It stopped finally, but umbrellas still open

Those tiny mushrooms on ground..

Accidental scientific inventions with Amazing intentions

The reason why experts ask us to keep putting efforts regardless of results, is that, even if we fail in a mission, in one or other way, we would be rewarded for the efforts we have already put in. Here are such interesting incidents in scientific world which seem to have proven this theory time and again. These are incidents I have heard, read, researched, inspired – and then collated with the pure intention of sharing the same excitement with each one of you. Here we go.

Man of Principles:

Hiero, the king of Syracuse, decides to honour the god by offering a golden crown. Hiero weighed out a precise amount of gold, appoints a goldsmith, and commanded him to fashion out of the gold a wreath worthy of the gods. The goldsmith obliged the king’s order, and with in few days, comes up with a beautiful looking crown.

The happiness didn’t last longer for the King after hearing the rumours that the goldsmith has mixed some amount of silver while making the crown. To resolve the mystery, the king now appoints a scientist to find out if any silver has been mixed in the crown, and what is the proportion!

Our scientist gave it a long and hard thought but could not find a method for proving that the crown was not solid gold. He gets sad, sickened, but still keeps the thought process ON, while enjoying the warmth of water in a bath tub. And suddenly some level of joy, some sudden excitement – The scientist jumps out of the bath tub and starts running naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” — or “I have it!” in Greek.

Why was he excited? What did he find out? I will tell you. While getting in to the bath tub, the scientist notices that some amount of water spills out of the tub. With that, he realises that the ‘Volume of water spills out is equal to the volume of the object (himself) immersed in water’. With this concept, he later analyses the crown by immersing in water and finds out that the volume of water coming out is not equal to that of the volume of complete quantity of gold. It means, some amount of other metal, say silver, has been mixed in it while making the crown. Thus, he resolves the king’s mystery and later becomes one of the greatest scientists of classical age. He is none other than ‘Archimedes’, and the concept he derived is known as ‘Archimedes Principle’

No sweet without sugar:

In 1889, two doctors at the University of Strasbourg, Oscar Minkowski and Josef von Mering, were trying to understand how the pancreas affected digestion. For that, they took the help of man’s own friend – A Dog! They took a healthy dog and removed pancreas from him for the purpose of testing.

A few days later, they noticed that flies were swarming around the dog’s urine – something abnormal, and unexpected. They tested the urine, and found sugar in it. They realised that by removing the pancreas, they had given the dog ‘Diabetes’.

Those two never figured out what the pancreas produced that regulated blood sugar. But during a series of experiments that occurred between 1920 and 1922, researchers at the University of Toronto were able to isolate a pancreatic secretion, and that is called ‘Insulin’.

Their team was awarded the Nobel prize, and within a year, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was making and selling insulin.

Ray of hope:

In 1895, a German physicist named ‘Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen’ was working with a cathode ray tube in his lab. He was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass, where he observed a fluorescent glow of crystals on a table near his tube. The air in the tube was evacuated, and when a high voltage was applied, the tube produced a fluorescent glow. Roentgen shielded the tube with heavy black paper, and discovered a green colored fluorescent light generated by a material located a few feet away from the tube.

He soon realised that some significant, and an extremely capable ray is coming out of the tube as it is able to penetrate the heavy paper. He calls his wife and asks to place her hand in front of the ray, which then generates the image of bones in her hand.

Well, roentgen has discovered a sensation in medical history which seem to be benefiting millions of people around the world even today. Being an unknown ray, Roentgen names it as ‘X-Ray’.  News of his discovery spread worldwide, and within a year, doctors in Europe and the United States were using X-rays to locate gun shots, bone fractures, kidney stones and swallowed objects. Honors for his work poured in–including the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901.

Author’s take:

Almost in every profession, the strongest motivational factor for putting efforts is the end result. The recognition, the joy and the fame that the end result brings in. One wants to see that as sooner as possible – And that motivates the person to do a good job, and also achieve the end result.

But unfortunately, that’s not the case always with the scientists. Many of the scientists have spent years of time, and even the entire life to research and find out something. It is definitely a chain reaction when it comes to science. One has to do some findings by spending his entire life. Later someone else picks it from where he has left, and continues the journey. It goes on and on. And finally, one day, we get to see the end result. It could be after 10 years, 100 years, or even 1000 years. Who knows! The actual creator of an idea might not even get the final reward, but, but my friends, we all are benefited by the final reward because of his idea.

So what stands out for me between all these excellent inventions is that the selflessness of those scientists who have spent their entire life with the pure intention of helping out the mankind, without expecting anything in return for them. And that’s what has trigged me to take up this article, and that is the reason I dedicate this write-up to all the scientists across the world.

Sculpture of Archimedes in a bath

The funny side of hidden agendas

Somewhere in a news magazine, I remember reading that the Russian researchers have built an AI based tool, which reads what people are actually thinking in their mind based on their brain waves.

Over a period of time, I started observing what triggers a person to question us something or say something, and ended up completely laughing over it as the outcomes turn out so funny. Some people do have some ‘Hidden Agenda’ in mind, but they put it across to us as if like they are talking or asking us something completely different. Here are some of such instances which I have tried to depict in a humorous way with no certain intention of hurting anyone at any cost.

Facebook:

Facebook being a widely used social platform we can see a lot of categories of people carrying such agendas. I’m very much impressed by the below top two categories.

Category A: This guy will be very devotional to the ruling party and its leader. All his posts will be praising the actions of the party/leader. In case of any criticisms raised towards his party, that’s it. He will come up sharing so many write-ups justifying why the government has to do all these things; he won’t leave you until you go to him and agree ‘Sir your party is a temple and your leader is a living God’.

Category B: This guy will be completely against the ruling party and its leader. He will share the achievements of Canada PM, mastermind of Singapore PM, Knowledge of Britain’s PM, etc., But nowhere he will accept or highlight the significance of his own land and leaders.

Both these guys are equally funny. If you ever got a feel that someone unnecessarily commenting on your posts, and even consider some very lighter things as offensive, they will be from either of these categories for sure. I usually ignore such extremists and move on.

The Boss:

The role of bosses demands to have a hidden or set agenda always. This is how leadership has been taught to us – Those who are experienced in people management would definitely agree with me.

Everyone wants to be a good boss and being loved by all of his sub-ordinates. Though it is not practically possible, one such attempt bosses normally take to ensure this is arranging a ‘Team Lunch or Dinner’. They feel very proud after arranging a meal through company’s fund, and there after expect you to be a Super productive, all-round, multi talented, and also a most effective resource like ‘Chitti 2.0’.

Who on the world will become a ‘Supreme talent’ overnight, after having a glass of beer and a slice of Pizza? If such things are arranged without any agenda, purely to show gratitude to the team as a leader, then it is perfectly commendable.

Another instance – I happened to notice this interesting conversation once between a boss and a sub ordinate a while ago.

Boss: What plans you have for this weekend dude?

Employee: I have an extreme emergency situation to go to my hometown; so I booked a KSRTC bus, for Friday 10.30PM, and the seat number is 5A.

Becoming curious by his very detailed and micro specific answer, I asked him why it has to be this detailed. Then this guy enlightened me. He said, there is a good chance of people working extra time during this weekend for our project, and my boss is indirectly checking my availability for the same. And I also indirectly answered him that ‘Sorry, I’m not available’. LOL, hidden agendas!

A friend from nowhere

Sometimes we do get texts or calls from someone completely out of nowhere. We would have met them years back and forgotten, or not even have met yet. But suddenly they will start the conversation more like a ‘Chuddy-Buddy’ or like a very close friend. Most of the times, they will end up belonging to any of the below categories:

• An LIC agent
• A network marketing agent
• A religious preacher
• Or a fraud (unfortunately)

Ofcourse, once you find that out you will try to run-away. But it is not that easy though. They will try as much as they can to make you believe what they believe.

I want to tell them that, ‘You guys need more practice man. You very obviously sound unreal and seem to waste a lot of our time’.

There are still some guys calling and asking the ATM card number, and there are still people who are providing the same even with the PIN number. The cruellest way of earning money is betraying one’s trust man. And you guys are shamelessly doing it.

Politicians

This topic will not end without me mentioning about our own politicians.

I met this guy accidentally a few years back in a friendly gathering.

I asked him, ‘what do you do?’

‘I’m in Politics’, he replied.

“That’s great to hear. What do you do for living?”, I asked again.

“I’m in Politics”, he replied the same again.

Oho! Politics has become a business long back and also a source of living. I thought it is a service. Poor me!

Another incident – This I noticed during my school days in my hometown. I was standing outside the school which had the polling booths. A Scorpio-like four wheeler reached the place and from that I saw a few guys came out carrying a old lady to help her casting her vote.

Once  the old lady finished casting her vote – That’s it! The complete scene got changed. The guys just placed her in the veranda outside the school, and happily went back to pick another old lady to vote for their party. A lot of people were laughing by looking at this scene, without knowing the impact of those Scorpio guys becoming our future leaders in the days to come.

Every field has got some really good people who do their service with upmost honesty. We are not talking about them. We are just trying to look at the funny side of those who are coming to our lives with all these ‘Hidden Agendas’. Please share and comment for any such funny and thought provoking experiences you have come across. Good Luck!

Shell of a Conch

Empty vessels do make noise
Realised while holding you in hand
You lovely little Conch Shell

Failure – A blessing in disguise

Black, Dark, Missed, Fallen – What did you feel after hearing these words? Most commonly, something negative! Are they really negative? – No, they are just another colour, another possibility, or another dimension. It’s just that our assumptions and illusions make them look so negative. If we are ready to spread our dimension a bit more, we can clearly visualise the hidden beauties inside all these coated negatives.  Likewise, hearing the word ‘Failure’ might sound negative for most of us. But trust me, it is no lesser than success; and it definitely extends our skills and experience even more than success does.

Failure and People

A person who has seen only success, or mostly success, might not learn or experience some key things in life, and hence for me that person is not anyways fully successful. One of the biggest advantages of failure is that, it clearly allows you to gauge the people around you – Accurately.

Let’s do this experiment – Just for an instance, fail once big time, and observe who around you are enjoying it mostly. Yes ofcourse, there will be your enemies, rivals and competitors in that list. But to your surprise, that list will also contain some of your close friends, your blood relations, your drinking partners, your selfie buddies, your gossip mates & your shopping mates too.

Also, observe who around you are not so happy about it, or even care about someone like you failing. To your more surprise, there will be people with whom you have never spoken properly, whom you have once disrespected, whom you judged to be egoistic/arrogant, or whom you never wanted to be friends with.

So what it conveys? Not everyone close to you likes to see you succeed; And not everyone away from you are willing to see you fail. In other words, your close circle is not made good enough with people who are well wishers for you, or you missed including some really good people in that list by thinking that they are your opponents, or strangers, etc.,

Are you getting my theory right? Let the mind think over it..

What happens when you lack this clarity on people?

This will make things more messy for us. You would start trusting, focusing and respecting some set of people more, but you won’t get the same in return because they are not in genuine terms with you as you actually think.

And the same concept even applies and extends for one’s relationship too. What if we don’t invest our love on a right and trustworthy partner? Its like showering tons and tons of love on a flower, which is just made out of a paper. It will neither grow, nor give you a fragrance which a flower actually does. They won’t give their love back to someone deserving like you, rather they will save it for those ‘Road-side Romeos and Juliets’ only. My apologies – I’m intentionally making a stressed and strong point here, because it is that important to have a clarity on person whom we are choosing to live with.

 Why failure and people?

Infact, I can talk about a lot of advantages which a failure could bring in. But in this article, I purposefully limited it only towards its relation with people so that it gets the weightage and importance which I actually mean here. It is very important for one to structure her/his close circle clearly and promptly, as it plays a major role in one’s successful life.  As per me, one can achieve everything in life if this is assessed and set right in the first instance.

People who are honest, real and wishing good for you – Allow only them to easily break the wall and enter in to your world. And the rest can be restricted just to Facebook, Whatsapp or Instagram only.

The great Thiruvalluvar said this few thousands years ago

You can keep talking a lot about the connection between failures and people. Infact, I have written here a bit more too. But all this has been said in just two lines by Thiruvalluvar in his holy book ‘Tirukkural’ (Meaning Sacred Versus) a few thousand years ago, as below:

கேட்டினும் உண்டோர் உறுதி கிளைஞரை

நீட்டி அளப்பதோர் கோல்.

 In English (as it sounds):

Kettinum undor urudhi kilaingarai

Neeti alappadhor Kol.

Meaning:

There is a big advantage in our failures and setbacks too. It is a scale with which one can clearly understand and gauge the people and relations around.

Thank You

 

The First Job

The First Job!

I got it after a long & long days of struggle in Bangalore in 2007.

I belong to the majority of Majority. Majority means ‘Engineers’, ofcourse, and Majority of Majority means those who weren’t fortunate enough to get a job in a campus recruitment.

Welcome to the world of job searching. You just got only 12,437,2514 engineers to compete with you.

Having not learnt any technologies, and not being someone who can lit up the stage with his English accent and vocabularies, I knew it is going to be a big challenge, but I was up for anything at that moment.

The frequent enquiries and taunts from your haters (we call them as relatives in India), the cluelessness of not knowing what is in the store for you, and the way failures becoming a day-to-day routine – These were all the discouraging factors for me.

Strong Motivation, Believing in own ability, Hunger and Thrive to win, Training, Will, Vision, and a well wishing mother – These were all the encouraging factors.

I used to follow everyday job adverts and do walk in randomly. Most of them were call center interviews, run by some consultancy every day, and the candidates will be selected through the ‘Self Inroduction’ itself.

Well, that used to be the first round, and my elimination round too.

However, it didn’t stop me from attending interviews daily. Because the goal is set; And I’m working hard towards the process. Results will definitely come one day – I believed so.

Things started changing slowly…..

That north eastern HR who surprisingly appreciated my accent,

That Start-up MD, who offered me a Team lead role, when I just went for a Data entry job,

Those collegues who genuinely welcomed me when i joined an internship for a credit card company,

That experience gathered in doing a part time with my uncles’ business,

They all helped big with my confidence to take me one-one step closer to my goal.

I tell you what! Confidence and Positive mind set works wonders for you. You can cut the mountains in to pieces with the knives made out of Bananas. It happens when you are confident, and it happened for me too.

Finally, the ray of hope. With all the experience gathered in this process, with all the learnings taken out from the struggles, I got my first job. I was as excited as the sunflowers seeing sun for the first time. I felt like a new born baby started hearing her first music.

Success…. Makes everyone your friend, and makes everything look very easy. A happy phase. And Indeed a no stopping from there.

There will be ups, there will be downs, but remember the key is this. ‘Focus the goal and put efforts towards the journey’. Some might stop you in the middle, some might pull you down, some might even try to destroy. But those are all temporary set backs. They give us the biggest experience which no institutes can teach us for lakhs. Go through it, learn from it, and if possible, make sure those learnings help the people around you.

I thought that sharing this small experience might help someone in need. I wish good luck for everyone who is reading this. Trust me, You are special & You are going to do wonders.

 

Importance of Risk based testing in Test management & Agile

Overview:

A Risk based testing is an approach in which the test efforts are focused on high risk areas, where the risks are assessed based on business criticality, usage frequency, defect prone areas and also the complexity. The tests are sequenced based on risks, where the high risk modules are tested first and also with extensive test coverage. Generally, it is an understanding that the risk based testing is performed only when the teams have limited time and resources, but in the real world it is not the only way it has to be used.

Importance of Risk based Testing:

The fundamental testing principles of ISTQB states that ‘Exhaustive testing is impossible’. It means that whatever the maximum test coverage we are doing is already a ‘Risk-based’, as we do not necessarily cover all the multiple/possible sets of test data or test conditions within our scope.

It might not be possible to deliver a ‘Zero defect’ product all the time, but by identifying risks properly and ensuring that testing covers all of them, one can atleast be sure that we don’t run in to the production issues which will lead in to any major customer dissatisfaction, or something which costs the reputation of the organization.

Imagine a scenario like this – Your CEO gets a major complaint call during his holidays at night while celebrating his birthday in Paris. And that’s because of one critical defect, resulted from that one test case, which you missed to identify and execute. Well, we should never even imagine creating such scenarios, but these things can be mitigated only by a proper risk analysis upfront.

How does it benefit Agile?

Enhancing Customer experience: We do testing not just to uncover defects. If that is the case, a lot many tests can be run and a bulk of defects can be found. But we do testing ultimately to keep improving the ‘Customer experience’. Risk based testing adheres to the fact that customer experience is taken as a prime priority. With multiple releases in Agile, team has to be aware of key risk areas all the time and testing has to cover the same, whenever a release is happening.

Every risk is mitigated: We are in the world of continuous integration and delivery. With the help of automation, it is quite possible to do extensive as well as repetitive testing. But still we need to understand the fact that 100% automation is not possible, and there is always some manual element left out to consider. Risk based testing helps here to prioritize tests in both manual and automation areas, and there by gives the overall coverage of risks and helps us to mitigate them at the earlier stages.

Cost effective: The frequent deployment and releases happening in the Agile world demands the testers and developers to be highly effective with time management. Risk based approach enables the team to give more output in a lesser period of time, and hence it ensures cost effectiveness at its best.

Risk based testing approach in Agile:

Epics, features, Backlog items and User stories are the test basis in Agile model, and they are also the best candidates to extract the ‘Risk items’. The process starts with the much important phase of identifying the Quality risks. They can be identified at a higher level during release planning by all the stake holders, and in a detailed level during each sprint planning by the Scrum team.

One of the most beneficial and also a light weight risk based testing technique used in Agile is ‘Risk Poker’. Just like planning poker, Risk poker is a team based activity, where decisions are made by achieving consensus. After listing out the risks, a scoring will be done separately for the likelihood and impact of the risk, which helps us in concluding the level of risks.

Once the risks are identified and prioritized, a suitable testing technique or approach can be finalized to mitigate the same. There are a lot of formulas and models being used by different organizations for Risk based testing, however, I have given a simple table which illustrates the same with few examples as below:

Risk	Level of Risk (1 being High & 5 being Low)	Test approach	Test Coverage
Change involves adding new table in to database	1	Include database testing in scope	Extensively test the data mapping, CRUD operations (create, retrieve, update, delete), schema, triggers and stored procedures in database
Incorrect calculations and numbers in a banking system	1	More focus on functional testing	Requires extensive functional testing with more story points
User will upgrade to a newer version of platform	2	Include backward compatibility testing in scope	Requires extensive testing with more story points
Software will be used specifically/majorly by the people with disabilities	2	Include Accessibility testing in scope	Requires extensive testing with respect to Accessibility and related guidelines

 Conclusion:

Probably the only model which enables the teams to achieve maximum results with in a minimal given time, and still ensures that a quality product is delivered to the customer is a ‘Risk based testing’. Some of the huge advantages we derive from it in a real time are:

• Helps the team to take some crucial calls like when to stop testing
• Defects/Problems can be identified early, and controls can be implemented sooner
• Customer experience and quality will be met with a good level of assurance
• Continuous monitoring of risks helps the team to stick in to Test strategy, approach and goals

Considering the enormous amount of values it bring in to the table, teams should start getting the most benefits out of this technique and ensure that our products and results are delivered with upmost perfection. And do make a note of this – A wise man once did testing and said that, ‘Quality is never delivered by fluke‘, and ‘Excellence can never be an accident‘.