Blog 14 - The Poem - Talash

Talash
Dedicated to ISRO (INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANIZATION), If ISRO was personified.

Chal pada Hoon khud ki talash Mai..
Ye rastey anjaney hai par lagtey kuch kacchey hai..
Socha tha anjaney rastey mileyngey jaroor.. lekar ke jayengay Mujey voh meri manzil Tak, par hongay firbhi pakkey..

Jab thokar lagkar gira toh samja, Jab thokar lagkar gira toh samja, 
anjaney rasto par chaltey nahi asaaman ko dekh Kar,
Anjaney rasto par chaltey hai rah dekh Kar.

Miley kuch anjaney, lagey voh samjaney,
In raho par chaltey hai housala thamey,

Jab housla lagey dagmaganey yaad karna kushi key voh fasaney, 
mileyngey tab, mileyngey jab, pohochogay apney thikaney.

Mann kaheyga laut Janey,
Par sunna mat Mann ki, ye sab hai bahaney.

Sochna kyu nikla tha tu gharsey,
Khud ko dhoondney ya logo ko dikhaney.

Lageyga darr par tu bhi hai nidarr se nidarr,
Padav milenengay bohot saarey, sochna mat yahi hai Tere saharey,
Rehena chaltey jabtak mazil ke Miley na thikaney.

- Parag Phalak.
  09/07/2019 - CHANDRAYAAN 2 LANDING.

Blog 13 - Appearances

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly" - Richard Bach

It's been a long time since I have written anything.. taking into account the long weekend and the summer vacation I kept myself busy travelling.. but anyways in my travel, I realized that it would be great if I start observing patterns in the way people behaved. I saw many people including me in a constant loop of sticking and doodling something on our favourite companion, the cell phone. When a famous social media app (let's call it Z) was designed the researchers wanted to link it to the humans when I said link I meant to make it an addiction. They conducted numerous experiments that would determine a harmless factor that would be addictive to humans that would drag us coming back to the app Z. Its the same kind of feeling when we get when we pass an exam or shop something for ourself or even gossip. The harmless factor is the hormone dopamine*, or commonly known as the happy hormone.

Dopamine is the hormone that gives us the feeling of achievement in most cases fake. It's like posting something on the app Z and waiting for people to praise you for that, I've seen people posting weird stuff and their audience like it, praise it and share it too. What I've realized is that one can know about a person based on the types of applications that they have on their phone. Not all the apps are feeding us dopamine, there are other useful apps that help you in a number of ways other than posing ourselves in front of the virtual audience who we may never see in person. In this era of social media and the data generated by them, the huge data and we are manipulated by the companies handling that data. But apart from all this, I think it's the appearances that matter the most.

There are many schools of thoughts that describe how appearances are and how it is influencing our social life. One theory is what got my attention, as makes perfect sense for the different time periods that we had or probably have. Epictetus and his philosophy on appearances is that appearances to the mind are of 4 types, things either are what they appear to be, or they neither are nor they appear to be, or they are and do not appear to be and finally the 4th type things that are not there yet they appear to be. 

This 4th type is the kind of appearance is what I think we are living in. Let's see how.

I would like to suggest an experiment for you all, however, once you get the validity of the experiment it's entirely your choice to keep doing it, I would warn you that it's very addictive. 

Before you start with this experiment you gotta analyze the State of mind you are in, say normal, happy, ambitious or sad. Once you determine this take something from your phone's gallery be it any picture or any quote that you like and post it on a social media platform, I'll say the app Z, you can guess which app I am talking about. Make sure you post it as a story where you can see who has seen your post. You'll get a window for 24 hours. Once this time frame is over once again analyze your mental state and I'm sure you will feel towards the positive side of feeling good, Happy, ambitious or sad. That's the dopamine which will make you feel better. You can let me know the validity**

We believe in what we perceive to be there irrespective of taking the efforts of digging into the truth. The truth is going nowhere but we got to hear it if it is true not just assume in the back of our minds that something is there. The 4th type can be applied to everything, humans, animals, movies social media posts actually everything. In animals, imagine a tiger stalking a gazelle and the gazelle watching the tiger, this is one situation which is there at the present where the tiger sees the gazelle and gazelle sees the tiger. On the other hand, the gazelle stays in constant fear of insecurity where it imagines the tiger being stalking it taking in to account the camouflage that the tiger has in terms of the stripped skin, hence the 4th kind, things that are not but yet they appear to be. The fear is the driving force behind the belief that the gazelle has. We can apply the same analogy to humans where our insecurities do not let is see the things the way they are and the things that just appear to be.

Be curious, dig deep, feed your knowledge don't be a normal goose in the breadline.

Blog 12 - ''Structured Water''

Water is life, thousands lived without love but no one lived without water.

As we all know and might have experienced that one of the blessings that living creatures have is water. Many cultures believe that water is something that is divine or something that is a gift from the divine. Water has been on our planet for more than billions of years. Life started in water and then it evolved. Water is essential for everything. With all that said, I wondered would it be possible that water would hold the information about our past and probably our future. I was curious enough to search if there are any traces of water holding any information; I was shocked to learn that a few years back people have done experiments to determine the very fact if the water holds any information about the events that occurred on our planet. Let’s come back to this in the later part of this blog.

In many cultures, for a number of rituals, water is considered as a medium to communicate or to present the offerings to their spiritual entity. It is the humble nature of humans that makes us grateful to the things in life that we get, thus to show respect to the supreme force that governs this we make a number of offerings to it. Some cultures have termed the water bodies like the rivers or lakes or seas as deities to worship. The Ganges in India is considered as a sacred river for this very reason in the Indian culture. But there is an interesting scientific reason why the Ganges or any holy water source is so important.

If we notice, the human settlements around the globe, the major factor that matters in flourishing these settlements is the availability of water. Even animals migrate to far distances in search of water be it on land or in the sky. Living creatures procreate when there is an abundance of water, which in turn guarantees that presence of food in different forms. In our quest to search for a habitable planet in our solar system, water is considered as the primary element for the development of settlements.

Coming to the research on water and the information it holds, the lead scientist was Dr. Masaru Emoto from Japan. His hypothesis was to determine the structural changes water demonstrates when exposed to different phenomenon, words, pictures or music. The experiment concluded that when water is exposed to the depiction of Happy events our history, the crystals that are formed after freezing this water show beautiful structures, same goes when the water is exposed to stories of great people. On the other hand, when water is exposed to depictions of horrific events the crystal patterns that are formed are just random and ugly. Thus water from different places can have different effects on humans, water can be structured to have a positive effect on the living creatures. Check the pictures of the experiments with both the scenarios. (just for reference, I do not own the copyrights)

There were many theories that scrapped down this experiment; they termed it something called as pseudoscience. It was also publicized that Structured water is a Marketing strategy used by the packaged water companies to sell their product for a higher price. However, I realized that the experiment makes if not complete but relevant sense to me. There have been many instances where water is used to cure some illness where this water was termed as holy. To mention some sources like the water from the Ganges or the water from Mecca called Aab-e-zam-zam or the water from the Holy-Grail* all have traces that say water has magical or healing properties.

Somehow I think there is a link between the experiments performed by Dr. Masaru Emoto and the importance of water mentioned in the holy books. Well it might sound like a good fictional story but think on this for a second, why would anyone term water of all the things as holy, there has to be some relevance to it. It can be like a wild goose chase to keep thinking why not, the science says it the books say it, what matters if we believe in it.

Blog 11 (Self-Help) - Sleeping Better

''Closed eyes see darkness'' - Japnese Proverb.

Lucky are the people who sleep as they get into the bed, on the other hand, some have to take efforts. Which one are you? Nothing bad about it. It’s a natural thing but with a complex mechanism behind how we get to sleep. I’m going to discuss the transition you can go through to help understand the mechanism better and improve your sleeping patterns.

When we sleep, our sleep is mainly divided into 3 stages. First is the immature stage where our mind tries to shut down the ongoing thought processes, our mind also puts our body into auto mode assigning activities to our body these activities are the reflex activities that our body does when we are sleeping namely breathing, changing sides from left to right or vice versa, digestion of food and if you have kept an alarm the mind instructs the ears to respond to it. Once these processes are done the mind goes into the second stage that’s the deep sleep stage. In the deep sleep, we are totally in a state of rest. Although the brain doesn’t stop working our memory doesn’t really remember whatever we think in our deep sleep. The third stage is the pre wake up stage where our memory gets active and we can sense whatever the brain is thinking, it’s called seeing a dream, this is because our body has totally recovered from the previous day fatigue and now our biological clock is asking us to get ready to wake up or in some cases to wake up.

The reason why there are 2 types of sleeping patterns is that some people have an active mind which is normal, they can sleep quickly, most of the time. On the other hand, some people have a hyperactive mind, these are the people who have to take efforts to sleep. Let me be very clear, there is nothing wrong with either of this kind of people.

The problem starts when we don’t get to sleep at all or in some cases we sleep for a brief time and then we can’t. Have you ever got really tired and just went to bed without even getting into your pyjamas? Or do you feel sleepy while reading a book? Or while studying? Or after a heavy meal? Or during a boring meeting? Or a lecture? The mental fatigue is the major factor here. Our brain is a very complex organ that is governed by numerous factors like interest, love, hunger, excitement and many more. When it comes to feeling sleepy during your not-sleeping hours during the boring stuff, the brain tries to go into a minimum energy conservation mode, however, to avoid the brain from sleeping the body has a coping mechanism that it initiates, it’s called yawning. It is kind of a boosting your brain technique taken by the body. The body boosts the brain with a large dose of oxygen that’s why when we yawn we breathe through our mouths open and sometimes we get tears in our eyes. These tears are the residual liquid in our eyes that needs to be discarded from the body to replace it with fresh oxygen-rich liquid to make us active.

With all that's said, what can we do to sleep better? How can we sleep quicker and how can we get into a deep sleep so that we feel refreshed when we wake up. There’s is a technique that I’ve been following for years now. Firstly make sure that the place where you sleep is having the temperature that you can withstand without taking a blanket, not too cold not too warm. If you want to sleep really quick make sure there is no bright shining light on your eyes. When you sleep to make sure the maximum surface area of your body is in contact with the bed or the sleeping surface. Don’t get the habit of putting music or any kind of sounds to sleep better. Once you are done with the physical attributes now comes the interesting part, that is closing your active brain processes. 

For centuries now, people have advocated the thought of counting numbers till the time you get to sleep or much more boring counting sheep. I am not saying these techniques don’t work but what if you have a better technique that will connect our mind to the deep sleep mode and moreover it will be in your control? Sounds great, isn’t it?

So, to do that imagine you are in the front of an engine on the tracks that have twists and turns. And you are travelling through those twists and turns up and Down. While doing this you have to keep in mind 3 things to observe. First, how the track would look if you see them, second imagine the tracks go in tunnels through curves that go up and down, and third try to add some special effects like an ice tunnel or an underground tunnel add waterfalls, you can even have the rail tracks going into the sky!!. Subconsciously our brain will slow down the active thought processes and we sleep in an instance.

Maybe this video will give you an idea of what you are supposed to imagine. From personal experience, it works 9 out of 10 times. 

If you benefit from this blog share the word!!

Blog 10 (Professional) - It's all about preferences - Waterfall or Agile?

‘’What is measured well, can be planned well’’

With reference to the experiences shared by my colleagues and mentors (Names mentioned below), this article tries to summarize the project management methodologies and the preferences as the projects in different sectors can be executed. It will be a long read but I’m sure it will give you the insight as this topic is critically analyzed by real-life experiences.

This could be the most discussed topic among project managers when it comes to agreeing on which methodologies should we use in the project life cycle, be it waterfall approach or agile approach. I wanted to share some of my insights on how I decided which methodology should be used. I have executed a number of Infrastructure and software development projects; the difference in these projects is the key to decide which methodologies can be used.

Waterfall approach is preferred when there is extensive planning involved in the initial phases of the projects and the execution is something that works like clockwork. More generic predictive tasks are a part of such projects also the involvement of clients is nominal until the project is in its final stages of completion. From my experience, the service based Infrastructure projects are considered to fall under this category. As the scope of these projects is seldom prone to change and there is no new product that is going to get delivered, however, what is going to get delivered is service or the entire project that in turn transferred to set up operations.

‘’Fail fast and recover faster ’’ or ‘’Fail early but recover faster’’ or ‘’Not to Fail at all’’

From a QA preference, agility is better as the change requests are easily manageable, there is a flat operational hierarchy in the team means there is no boss, and every person on the team is equally responsible for the tasks. The daily status updates make it easy to have clear visibility of work done and work pending. As the QA role is more focused on inspection there is flexibility in adopting the changes post inspection, which is swift in an agile atmosphere. The major emphasis is done on capacity planning as its sprints are driven instead of planning the entire project till the end unlike in waterfall approach.

I remember working on an Infrastructure upgrade project for a client where we had to plan the project with respect to the types of equipment that we needed to procure from a vendor in China. My project team was actively involved in the initiation and planning phase and all the tasks were planned as per the requirements are given by the client, as contingency measures the number of pieces of equipment that were prone to operational damage were taken into consideration and were ordered extra with the concern to the budget and the client. The project was executed once the equipment was procured and the whole process worked as planned with successful completion of the project. Thus waterfall approach worked for me in this case. From my experience, a waterfall approach is best suited when we are dealing with clients that raise frequent changes to projects still adhering to the tight deadlines. Waterfall approach results in few change requests as there is no ripple effect throughout the project. Scenarios like this can be supported by most of the infrastructure professionals.

Large scale implementation project that is on high risk is seldom prone to change but when these projects are delivered, not in the waterfall but with an agile approach, the overall client satisfaction is increased. As I see it, every project is a waterfall in approach but splitting it into more doable pieces would make it sure that the project is delivered successfully in the end rather than having our contingency reserves depleted if the project goes out of schedule or goes into scope creep.

From the perspective of a fellow Business Analyst, the methodology depends on the complexity and deliverables of the project. Although the waterfall approach can be used for any project, when it comes to dynamic requirement gathering a more agile approach is used to accommodate the changes that are required by the stakeholders.

There was a distinct observation by one of my colleague who is an IT consultant, the waterfall approach is preferred by project managers where similar projects are executed by them previously. According to his experience, where he was implementing a project in an agile workflow for the first time. In first time projects there are a number of known unknowns, thus the methodology that should be used should accommodate the changes, as per the clients and the stakeholder, that are involved in the project.

There is one approach as explained to me by a fellow Infrastructure PM that is based on the time and nature of the project. The approach is to go with agile where the project has tight deadlines and are comparatively complex. Usually, complex projects are high budget projects and the stakeholders have a very low tolerance for risk as the success of this project is of vital importance to the organization.

I recently attended a session on agile methodology. The topic revolved around the agile manifesto, a potentially ship able product by the end of a sprint is the sole objective. Instead of waiting for a product till the end of the project small products are delivered with iterations towards improvement till the time a final desired product is offered to the client. In agile projects, clients’ involvement is crucial and the whole process gets a product delivered that is made keeping continuous improvements in mind. However, in waterfall projects, there is very less liberty for clients involved in the project unless the start or the end.

In conclusion, the agile approach is preferred by most of the professionals in the IT sector; however, a waterfall will always be a part of the Agility but as a version 2.0 or in other words more accommodative. The Kanban terminology is getting widely used in this context as it combines the rigid planning in the waterfall approach along with the change accommodating perks of an agile framework. Every project, in software development or in infrastructure, starts as a waterfall in the initial phases and it unfolds towards completion on agile terms.

It is truly fascinating how organizations are structured today all over the world, IT or Non-IT. The team involvement is paramount and always favoured as it helps to build a sense of value in the team; it gives a feeling of doing actual contribution to the organization and not just working for a paycheck. We also cannot ignore the success factor of projects that goes high when we are agile as all the stakeholders are actively involved in the project from start to end.

I invite all to share their views on the same.

- Parag Phalak, MBA, PM.

With special thanks to the responses and feedbacks given by Daniel Girma, Pritish Vaity, Krutika Dhatavkar, Hector Sandoval, Monwar Hossain, Vipul Tillo, Jay Perry and Huw Williams

#itinfrastructuremanagement #agilepm

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-all-preferences-waterfall-agile-parag-p-/

Blog 9 - Memories, Singularity and Immortality

"In the man-machine symbiosis, it’s the man who must adjust; the machines can’t" - Alan Perlis

Since the 18th century, man is obsessed with the idea of immortality which seems to be possible after 3 centuries. Be it Frankenstein or the Holy Grail. It has been a constant struggle to pursue the things that might give or add some extra years to human life. Think to yourself why you would pay a handsome amount of money to stay fit or eat only organic food to be healthy or adopt a vegan diet so that your metabolism will not always work out fast. We all are possessed by the thought of living forever. I remember a saying that I read a few years back “everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die” ask this to yourself and you’ll be shocked to know the answer.

Let me ask you one question, have you ever thought of staying alive for eternity?  Yes of course. The time travel is ruled out as there is no dominant proof in the present. Apart from a few hoaxes of people coming across time travellers, the general populations haven’t had frequent déjà vu feelings which are the sign of fluctuations in the time fabric.

But, there is always a but, it is said when artificial intelligence will reach singularity the possibilities of humans for mortality will be numerous. Not just living forever it will be possible for humanity to stay as long as they want. It is predicted that mankind will reach a technological singularity by 2040, it doesn’t matter what the exact time would be for now. Technological singularity means a time period when machines will surpass the humans in every field, the machines will know everything better than humans; it is the time when the machines will replicate humans and human behaviour. With the recent advancement in the field of artificial intelligence, I personally believe that the transfer of our consensus to a machine is or will be possible. For now, the challenges that are faced in this particular phenomenon is the ability or the algorithm that humans have to deal with emotions. Emotions have always been complicated. Great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle have tried to jot it down on paper but as there was no solid scientific reasoning to how humans have emotions the theories are just if, but and then. Maybe it could be the topic of another blog.

Life is worth living if we have memories to live for. Imagine getting immortality at the cost of wiping off your entire memory, it doesn't seem to be fair. Thus, the key to immortality is hidden in the memories that we create. a few years back there was a hypothesis that could replicate your happy memories and relive the moments that have passed. When it comes to living forever I think this experiment would be the key to sustain our thoughts not in mortal life form but in computers and memory sticks. The memories that we have would determine our personality and based on that with the help of complex machine learning algorithms we can create an entity that could behave or replicate our thought process, once that is achieved, with neurobiological applications we can connect the machines and our mind to equally coexist and thus attend the phase of being immortal. Moreover, this entity can be transferred into a biological form what we call as the human body, but a different one, one which is young and healthy. the machines can become a bridge to connect the 2 life forms together. All this is possible only when we achieve technological singularity in the near future.

Summing it up, I would say it's apt that humans will eventually become immortal, the question is when and how. Till then we need to make as many cherished memories to live for and also take good care of ourselves.