Project planing and Marriage

Let me start with an apology, for the delay in this post to come up. Actually I got caught up in lots of things (some call it live) and couldn’t keep up with posting. But now I am back… and I agree it’s after more then 2 months but never the less I am back.

Coming back to the topic. In last two and half months I came to know of many well know and many lesser know love affairs to have changed to a marriage alliance. Add to that a large chunk of my friends I knew of sending me there wedding invitation. Suddenly IPL, movies, freaking out on weekends, and many more activities took a back seat and marriage was the order of the day/month for the guys getting married.

Recently I also had to attend a training set up by the HR of the company for brushing up the rusted brain. And in that Project planning or SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) was a part that was taught to us. The teacher who came to teach us was fundo. He starts of the class by asking us where does the SDLC start and end. And we all in a monotone, bored, lazed out and bugged voice said “Project Proposal and Delivery of the final project.” To this answer he said in a very amused tone, “And imagine the human life cycle starts at Delivery!” During this class I couldn’t help but to think how the SDLC is related to the life. Below is the sort of notes that I made in that class. I am putting just a small bit here so that this post does not become as boring as the class was.

Project Identification:- This is what is called finding the right girl. May it be love, or arranged. This can be finding the suitable boy too.
Project Proposal:- This is the part when the actual proposal happens.
Now here the feasibility study in case of software is already done in 1st part. But in life most of the time the feasibility study happens at this stage. This is true for the love (well to some extent). But in arranged marriage scenario the feasibility is done in the first step. (At least a part is already done by parents)
Agreement with Customer/Partner:-This is where the major stake holders meet and formally discuss the project and all the things related to it. So the Parents, elders in the family, the girl and the boy meet for what we know as “sagai.” Many times its also called a “roka.”
Project Kickoff:- Now that all the inputs are taken and all the formalities done, its time to formally start working on the project. This is project kickoff or what we can say as marriage.
Project planning:- Planning and re-planning goes on through out the full life cycle of the software and the human. Things like project scope, resource planning, cost management, time management and many more things come into play.
What will we do after marriage? (project scope)
We need to make space for parents. (Resource planning)
We need a policy for kids. Save for home, car, what’s the monthly budget…. (Cost management)
I need to finish my work and be back at home early and then go to shop grocery. (Time management)

Ideally no project can go as per plan and the same is true for life. In fact when ever you plan, life happens. Before you know you would be expecting parents. The full planning goes haywire and immediate crisis management takes the place. This goes on for quite a while. (At least till the kids are on there own doing good at job.) And then things settle down. The cycle repeats it self and this time kids are planning.

I can go on and on but let’s face it. I really can’t make this post too long or you won’t read it. So let’s close it here. And let me know what you think about this whole thing. And in the end I must say that the SDLC is being developed form the real life cycle.