OB Mini Case (1): Development under Pressure

I was recruited at the middle of this project and I've been a project lead for a while now. I'm almost responsible for literally everything that relates to the .NET technology at the infrastructure department. I really like it. It feels good to be responsible and being able to keep your word. But being able to organize and plan to meet the milestones is also a heavy duty. Now let's mix the story with force majors, fat milestones, demanding project managers and final exams & projects!

I need to concentrate and prioritize issues, I need to choose and develop optimum solutions and I need to tolerate the ever growling developer who makes a big deal out of a small issue, sometimes his own mistakes, from the other department. Those are what I'm doing right now!
So what's the problem? It's the old story. It's how normalities turn into anomalies. It's when you miss the support you need. It's when you are responsible for failures but not successes. It's about development under pressure of time limitation and being deep inside the various software layers, makes you a good target for blames!

These are things I'm worried about as we progress. We have been good so far and met every milestone we set. But I'm feeling the stress and that's not a good sign for the rest of job. You may think that management could get involved for more support. But that's not likely when they are facing the most stress. I think I need to read more about management under stress. Anyway, it's development under pressure!

[Update: 7/20/2010 1:31 AM]: "Charisma appears to be most successful when the follower's task has an ideological component or when the environment involves a high degree of stress and uncertainty." ~ (Robbins, Judge, 2009:450)

"Joooooone & Jobs" Against the Adobe Flash

It's not new. Adobe Flash is facing tough challenges. But this time, it's not about Jobs and his iPhone. It's about Joooone!*
I was reading yet another topic about Flash and it's enemies till I reached a hilariously familiar name. Ali Joone or rather Ali Davoudian, the founder and owner of Digital Playground, according to wikipedia, "... one of the five biggest porn studios, and in 2006 was described by Reuters as one of the handful of studios that dominate the U.S. porn industry" is going to stop streaming with Flash.
But the strange part for me is neither about Flash nor about Jobs. It's about feeling a paradox...

* Joone is an expression of great joy or excitement and implies "Oh [my] life" in Persian.
P.s: I preferred not to continue writing about the origin of the paradox. It's not like that everyone feels it.

Link (8): Graduated in Vain

I've just found a great story about graduating without having enough knowledge to compete in the market. Read it here. You could then read my old post regarding this issue.

Photo (5): 23rd Imperfectional Book Fair

Is there any way to access the Internet? Asking the information gal.
There is no cable connection, you've got to have a wi-fi enabled device, she said.
That's great! I've got one and I couldn't connect to the Internet. Could you help me? I replied.
That's all we have. There is no Internet connection actually. Use a coffee net outside. She answered.

photo: omidqrose.com

OB Mini Case (0): I've been a MS Evangelist!

From now on, I'll be writing some mini organizational behavior cases from my own point of view and hopefully mixing them with the taste of software development stories. If I'm lucky, I'll be posting or receiving commentaries from my professors, scholars and even my colleagues. So let's face my first real small story:

Things have changed in my new workplace. I've worked with various software development teams with different expertise and sizes. We've had almost always lived in peace. But this time, we've been wasting time in purposeless debates of .NET vs. Java!

I believe both sides have profound capabilities. They share identical concepts and are more effective in various specific cases. Anyway, guys are still engaging in stressful discussions of future trends and possibilities of job loss!
From a senior developer side, the debates seem fun but not cool in middle of schedule deadlines. Looking from the glasses of a MBA, they are leveraging the stress levels and might cause job dissatisfaction in long term since some guys apparently have lost hope of their current position based on the outcome of arguments! So unfortunately, IMHO they are loosing the drive to bond*. Are those discussions useful? Are they affecting people in a good manner or not? What about the impact on employee motivations and emotions? I'm not sure. But I think they should be somehow controlled. The problem is how to.

* The drive to bond refers to the four drives that underlie motivation from Harvard Business Review | Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee, July–August 2008: Employee Motivation A Powerful New Model.

Happy New Year!

It's been a year since I started blogging and today is another new Persian year. I wish you all a very nice year. Here is a photo of Si-o-se Pol bridge at Esfahan and a happy Nowrouz tag from the bing:

Excerpt (3)

In the case of the Trinity, however, the Qur'an asserts that this mistaken doctrine is the inevitable result of the limitations of human imagination. If theologians do not recognize that no matter how deeply they probe, no matter how sophisticated their discourse, they will never truly understand the nature of God, they will always end up with concepts that restrict God in a way that is not in accord with his nature. Thus, the claim that Jesus is God's son is criticized in the Qur'an as a kind of "exaggeration" in religion.

39:3 tsotq