Option for "not to vote" in Indian Constitution

Know Indian Constitution provision: 49-O

Did you know that there is a system in our Constitution, as per the 1969 Act, in Section "49-O" that a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked and convey the presiding Election Officer that he doesn't want to vote anyone!

Yes such a feature is available, but obviously these seemingly notorious leaders have never disclosed it. This is called "49-O".

Why should you go and say "I VOTE NOBODY"... because, in a ward, if a candidate wins, say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes more than 123, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the Candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision on them.

This would bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for election. This would change the way, of our whole political system... it is seemingly surprising why the election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public....

Please spread this news to as many as you know... Seems to be a wonderful weapon against corrupt parties in India... show your power, expressing your desire not to vote for anybody, is ven more powerful than voting... so don't miss your chance.

So either vote, or vote not to vote (vote 49-O), its up to you, but the present Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) didn't have the provision to account the Section 49-O of the Indian Constitution.

The people of India can really use this power to save our nation" use your voting right for a better INDIA .

Project Managment - Best Practices

In the last article we discussed in general the challenges faced in Project Management. In general there are lot more challenges we face than mentioned. Let's first discuss the best practices in Project Management before we end up with more challenges.

Best practices followed in software project management to maintain a well-orchestrated team to create and claim sustainable values. The points mentioned here are not in any order of priority.

1. Customer Focus
When you encourage the team, definitely they will put in great efforts to come out with an excellent product that delights the customer. At the same time, you need to make sure that the team understands the pains of the customer and also the impact of bad products on the brand name of the organization.

As this is a primary concern of any organization, you need to work on this activity constantly and continuously throughout the execution of the project. This helps you to sustain the relationship with the customer and also get repeated orders. Needless to mention about the good will and the references you get, when you delight the customer.

Moral: Customers is the real boss; you need to keep him happy

2. Recognition
Nothing can motivate the developers to a great extent as recognizing the great piece of work done by them. When you recognize their work, they feel honored and important. It also brings in a feeling of belongingness and great satisfaction to the developers.

The project managers can use email facilities and team meetings as effective tools to recognize people. You can send out an appreciation mail or praise the developer in the team meetings, which are within your scope. When you couple this with the recognition awards of the organization, it can do wonders as recognitions improve the performance of the individual as well as the team.

Moral: Recognition is the greatest motivator

3. Communicating the Project Plan
Communicating the project plan to all the team members is as important as creating the project plan. You need to keep the team well informed about the plan so that they can visualize the bigger picture.

Moral: Understanding the plan is the first step towards delivering a quality product

4. Strategy
You need to devise a good strategy to successfully implement the various aspects of the project plan. You might have derived a good plan, but still, if your strategy is poor, it can yield disastrous results. You as a project manager need to liaise with the architects and senior developers while framing major strategies.

Moral: Strategy can mar or improve the effectiveness of a plan

5. Suitable Methodology
It is highly important that you need to be careful while choosing a proper methodology for the project execution. A process life cycle, which is an excellent fit for a project in one area or domain, may not fit in other domains or areas.

Moral: One manager's food is another manager's poison

6. Business Functionality
You need to ensure a good understanding of business functionality among the project team. With all the technical knowledge in this world, one may not be able to beat a person who has good functional knowledge. That explains the importance of having good functional knowledge among the team. You as a project manager need to ensure that the due diligence documents are constantly updated to reflect the knowledge gained during project execution.

Moral: Knowledge is power

7. Project Review Meetings
A weekly/fortnightly Project Review Meeting is very much required for a project. Besides helping to keep track of the project execution, it helps in keeping the team focused. It makes each and every member of the team know what is happening in the other part of the project, which is required to understand and visualize the project in bigger picture. You can share
all the important and significant organizational changes/initiatives in the meeting. You need to ensure that action items are noted and recorded in the Minutes of Meeting (MOM) document and tracked to closure. If you look at this meeting as more of information sharing and execution point of view, rather than as a statutory requirement to comply with Quality Management
System (QMS), you can benefit more out of it.

Moral: A map is of no use if you do not know where you are

8. One-on-One Meetings
Unlike the Project Review Meetings mandated by the QMS of the organizations, a one-on-one is very special in its kind. The purpose of one-on-one meeting is to create a continuous learning environment, which is very much essential in the software industry. One-on-one meetings build
trust between the project manager and the team members. Since it is on a one-on-one basis, the chances are more for the team members to freely share their views, discuss issues, and express concerns in an open manner. You can understand the concerns of the team members and resolve them at an early stage through these meetings.

You can effectively use these meetings to groom and mould the team. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to do a formal annual appraisal and give the review feedback, the project manager can take the one-on-one meeting as an opportunity to give informal feedback to the team members about their strengths and possible areas of improvement. Since it is not a formal appraisal, chances are very high that the team members will respond to the feedback in a more positive way and would discuss with keen interest to improve their strengths or overcome the shortcomings. On the other hand, it provides the project manager an ample opportunity to assess and gauge the team members at work on a periodic basis and encourage them to learn or improve continuously. It is human psychology to work more to achieve a goal when there is a sense of urgency. For instance, the students at college study with all sincerity just before the examinations. As it is true at work places too, you can utilize the one-on-one meetings to create the sense of urgency. You can set short-term goals to team members in one of these meetings and evaluate the progress in the subsequent meetings. You can also use these meetings as an opportunity to drive the organizational changes, though that is not the main purpose. The success of a one-on-one lies entirely on the way it is conducted. You need to conduct it in a totally informal and friendly manner, of course without losing the focus. Care should be taken to make sure that no unrealistic promises are made to the team members to fulfill their aspirations. You can conduct these meetings regularly once in a month on convenient days when you are free from your routine activities.

Moral: Run as fast as you can, just to stay in place.

9. T-Cons
In this industry, often we work with people who are geographically apart. At times emails create two islands of people communicating over a sea of misunderstanding. This, besides distracting the environment, creates an unhealthy atmosphere. Teleconferences (T-Cons) between onsite and offshore parties help eliminate most of these communication problems. You can use T-Cons to communicate effectively with your customer and build mutual trust with them. It is a good practice to include the entire team in T-Cons whenever possible. This brings all the team members to the same level and also, helps you to groom the team indirectly in communication
skills. You should prepare the MOMs at the end of every call and send it to all the participants to ensure that every issue is understood in a proper way and track the issues to closure. As a thumb rule, one should not get onto emails unless otherwise warranted.

Moral: Voice is better than text

10. Encourage Finding Bugs
You need to encourage your team members to find as many defects as possible in the work products. Earlier they find, the cheaper it is to fix. Concerns regarding linking of defects and performance appraisals are to be removed as otherwise the team members might hide the bugs.

Moral: A stitch in time saves nine

Project Managment - Challenges

Software Project Management differs from other project managements in several ways.

The Project Manager, like a captain on a ship, is ultimately responsible for the success of a project. The project manager, besides being the focal point for the project execution, is responsible for driving organizational initiatives and changes, and keeping the customer delighted all the time. Most of the software projects fail not because they are inherently complex, but mainly because of the poor project management. You can be a smart
programmer capable of writing complex programs, but it is not enough for project management. The project management skills are quite different. It involves getting the work done by others, the way you want and yet making them feel happy about it.

Challenges in Software Project Management

Software Project Management is different from other disciplines or fields. Some of the factors contributing to the differences are listed below, and these factors complicate Software Project Management:


1. Working Remotely: At times, you need to work with people living geographically at different locations, which you might not have met. This leads to a lot of communication problems.

2. Invisibility of the Final Product: Though there are intermediate work products in each phase of the software development life cycle, the end user and at times the developer are not able to visualize the final product through the various software artifacts. In contrast, in case of a bridge or building construction, the end user and the worker can actually visualize the final product evolving.

3. Knowledge Workers: Working with well-educated people is easy as well as tough. As the developers are smart and equally educated as the project manager, managing them becomes easy. It becomes more difficult mainly because of the knowledge level differences in a particular technology or domain where the developers may have more knowledge.

4. Technological Changes and Market Openings: The software developers have to continuously improve the knowledge level due to the technological changes. This, on the other hand, paves a way to them to acquire jobs that lead to high attrition rates, which ultimately lands the project manager in trouble.

Thinking of how to handle these challenges.

How to Start a New Company Without Quitting Your Current Job?

Here are 5 ways to use your current gig to launch a new venture.

1. Use Your Salary as Funding: The idea is to continue working in your current organization, do your day job for survival, use your salary to invest in the startup as much as possible before jumping ship. Hire a developer, spend your evening and weekends, and build up the company in your dreams. This is the best option I could think of, in order to have an internet startup company in my dreams!
2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan: You know that a feature your customers are always asking for? If your employer won't deliver it, maybe you should.
3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester: Since you know what your current firm might want, develop an application to cater them and sell to that organization!
4. Take Advantage of Your Company's Reputation: Turn the brand value, reputation and halo your previous employer had into seed capital.
5. Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner: if you have an innovative idea and your employer listens to, then you may be able to start a new division of the company.

Some Common words & its real meaning!

1."We will do it" means "You will do it"

2."You have done a great job" means "More work to be given to you"

3."We are working on it" means "We have not yet started working on the same"

4."Tomorrow first thing in the morning" means "Its not getting done "At least not tomorrow!"

5."After discussion we will decide-I am very open to views" means "I have already decided, I will tell you what to do"

6."There was a slight miscommunication" means "We had actually lied"

7."Lets call a meeting and discuss" means "I have no time now, will talk later"

8."We can always do it" means "We actually cannot do the same on time"

9."We are on the right track but there needs to be a slight extension of the deadline" means "The project is screwed up, we cannot deliver on time."
10."We had slight differences of opinion "means "We had actually fought"

Heart Attack or Myocardial Infraction

What is a Heart Attack?
A heart attack (myocardial infraction) is the death of heart muscle due to the loss of blood supply. Usually, the loss of blood supply is caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery (an artery that supplies blood to the heart muscle) by a blood clot.

What are the features of a Heart Attack?
Pain: is the cardinal symptom of a heart attack. The pain is often described as a tightness or heaviness in the chest. It is often severe enough to be the worst pain that can be experienced. The usual location of the pain is in the center of the chest but it frequently radiates to the left arm or the jaw.

Some heart attacks though can pass unrecognized; these painless attacks are called as ‘silent infracts’ and are particularly common in diabetics.

Anxiety: Fear of impending death.

Brightlessness,
Nausea and vomiting,
Sweating, pallor and a fast pulse.
Sudden death: Loss of blood supply disturbs the orderly transmission of electrical impulses in the heart and as a result the heart stops to effectively pump blood. Permanent brain damage and death can occur unless oxygenated blood flow is restored within five minutes. Approximately 40% of people suffering a heart attack die before reaching to the hospital.

What causes a Heart Attack?
A heart attack is almost always caused by the formation of a blood clot on a cholesterol plaque located on the inner wall of an artery to the heart (coronary artery). It is believed that the process of formation of these plaques starts in the late teens. Over a period of time the accumulation of cholesterol plaque causes thickening of the artery walls and narrowing of the arteries; a process called atherosclerosis.

Many factors have been found to influence this plaque formation. It can be accelerated by smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and diabetes. Whereas, factors like exercise, low fat diet, avoiding stress seem to help in retarding this process.

Ultimately, the arteries narrow to an extent where they are unable to supply enough blood to the heart muscle during periods of increased demand like during exercise or excitement. This results in a condition called ischemia which leads to chest pain called as angina.

Occasionally, however, for unknown reasons, the surface of the cholesterol plaque can become sticky, causing blood clotting. When a blood clot forms on top of this plaque, the artery becomes completely blocked, causing death of the heart muscle (heart attack).

How is Heart Attack Diagnosed?
The initial diagnosis of a heart attack is made by a combination of clinical symptoms and characteristic electrocardiogram (ECG) changes. An EKG is a recording of the electrical activity of the heart. However, confirmation of a heart attack can only be made hours later through detection of elevated creatinine phosphokinase (CPK) in the blood. CPK is a muscle protein enzyme, which is released into the blood circulation by dying heart muscles when their surrounding membranes dissolve.

What is the early Management of a patient of a Heart Attack?
Most of the patients of heart attack are managed in a dedicated heart care unit. Following are the elements in the management:

· Bed rest

· Oral Aspirin

· High flow oxygen

· Intravenous analgesia with morphine

· Monitoring the E.C.G.

Reperfusion: The immediate goal of treatment is to quickly open blocked arteries and restore blood flow to the heart muscles; a process called “reperfusion” Early reperfusion minimizes the extent of the heart muscle damage and preserves the pumping function of the heart. Many drugs are available to dissolve the clots and restore blood supply. Drugs like tissue plasminogen-activator (t-PA) and streptokinase given intravenously can open 80% of the blocked arteries within 90 minutes.
How can I prevent a second heart attack?
The best chances of preventing a second heart attack come from a combination of medications and change of diet and lifestyle.

Drugs: Aspirin and beta blockers (drugs like Tenormin), have been shown to reduce chances of a second heart attack and improve future survival.

Diet: Reducing weight and dietary fat.