The true color of IT projects

Can you imagine someone placing you on a cockpit of a plane. Then you are asked to fly and the plane.

You have been selected as pilot based on your physics degree and understanding of aerodynamics.

You have also flown a plane before but not like this plate and the controls on that plane were very much different. For example, the throttle control on previous plane is same as landing gear in current plane.

There is no manual defining your controls. Your manager asked just to operate each lever, switch and discover what it is used for.

Will you be a passenger on that plane? Probably not.

This situation analogous to what happens in thousands of complex IT projects. There are no documentations and code which was supposed to be an agile testing proof of concept, becomes live version. The original developers left the company with the knowledge in their heads.

The passengers (end users/customers) are still being served (flown) by pilots (developers) who don't really understand what they are doing.

The IT projects still seriously lack any standardization. People still expect adding wings to a car will make it a plane.

What is driving pleasure?

My following discussion is purely for driving on normal roads and does not include track racing!

I often hear people say "this car is dull to drive, that car is thrilling, that road is boring" etc.

Then I start to wonder, what exactly makes a driving enjoyable?

So, I prepared a list of attributes that required for driving enjoyment. This is my personal list so others may differ.

Driving pleasure often associtated with psychology of driver. Same road in same car, one might find interesting while others may find it boring. Once mind must be in a state of good mood to enjoy driving. Seldom people enjoy their daily drive to work!

I think driving pleasure is a combination of following parameters

1. The state of mind of driver
2. The road
3. The car

Let's talk about roads. Nobody, as I am aware of, enjoys driving on a congested stop-start traffic in large town. But nearly everyone enjoys a scenic drive along country side. People tend to like twisty country roads more than straight motorways.

So, we can rank roads like this - town (worst), motorway/long straight roads (medium) and twisty country roads (best)

However, I get panicked if I have to drive thru a single track road, with bushes both sides. So, just a sceneic route is not enough. The road itself should encourage relaxed drive.

Next the car, probably the most important bit. Same route, driven in an expensive and luxurious car will feel different (at least for first time). As soon as you start to drive a better (in your mind) car, your mind automatically climbs up a higher level of achievement.

But you can have fun in same car which you drive daily. I noticed that body and mind feel thrilled when the car producing high power, which happens at lower gears with high RPM. The sound of engine roaring and feel of power along the road gives rise to thrill in mind. That is why it is often said a drive in sports car is thrilling.

A sports car offer following features over most standard cars

* A powerful engine
* A lower seating position - where you sit lower to ground which gives a feeling of high speed ride (compare a video shot at car's bumper level compared with that of in normal windscreen level)
* A high RPM engine experience (as stated above)
* The mental feeling of driving something special

However, as I already mentioned, one can have driving pleasure in normal car too. Provided it is driven to spawn thrill.

An off road driving is also very thrilling with a good 4x4. I was quite spellbound in my first ever off road experience with Land Rover.

Surprisingly, I did not find any difference in driving pleasure between manual and automatic cars!

Black Swan Event

How did Black Swan name came into picture?

For a long time, people used to think all swans are white only. It was only when black swans were found in Australia, a long-time notion was changed!

Taleb tries to explain how Black Swan events happen in real life and what are the impacts of it.


Identifying a black swan event

Based on the author's criteria:

1. The event is a surprise (to the observer).
2. The event has a major impact.
3. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight, as if it had been expected.

Taleb suggests that since most Black Swan events are without any precedence, it is almost impossible to predict such events.

So, one can only accept the events after they have happened.
The main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict Black Swan Events, but to build robustness against negative ones that occur and being able to exploit positive ones. Taleb contends that banks and trading firms are very vulnerable to hazardous Black Swan Events and are exposed to
losses beyond that predicted by their defective models.

See Wikipedia for more.