It's amazing how some companies make good money and run profitably.
Take, for example, an advertisement I saw behind an auto-rickshaw today that offers holograms, at 1 paisa per piece. I couldn't believe it - 1 paisa is the selling price of something? I am wondering how much can the seller earn out of this? Assuming that he's selling it at double the cost, it would still get him just 0.5 paisa of profit per hologram. And because it's a company, 50% of that would be taxed. That leaves 0.25 paisa per hologram. Now, if he needs to employ one factory worker for a modest salary of Rs. 5000 per month, just count how many holograms he must make per month?
5000*100/0.25 = 20,00,000 - Twenty lakh holograms! Just to support one factory worker!
I am amazed how this works out. There must be hundreds of people working in that company - many of who would be getting much much more than 5000 Rupees per month. In addition, it needs to invest in all the massive infrastructure and logistics, and advertisements like the one I saw today.
Churning out hundreds of crores of holograms is one thing, but getting sales deals closed for such a massive amount, month on month, every single month, is another astonishing feat that I can't even imagine how it's done.
It's not just with this hologram company. Chocolates that sell for 50 paisa in small retail shops - they have a huge distribution chain to support in addition to being profitable to the manufacturer. Assuming that the retail shopkeeper gets 10 paisa, the middleman gets 10 paisa, and the manufacturer sells it at double the cost price, and pays 50% tax, he gets 80/(2*2) = 20 paisa per chocolate. And it's not at all clear to me as to how you could make crores of children eat your brand of chocolate, each month, which is what you must accomplish to remain profitable.
Fantastic, isn't it? I would love to discover how this works.. maybe some day I'll figure it out.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Agile Agile
No doubt Agile is interesting.
One of the most beautiful arguments Agile makes is that creating a grand plan upfront is not the best thing to do, because such a plan would invariably be based on a limited knowledge of what you're going to be building. That is true - as you progress on the work, you get to know more of it, and there's no point in sticking to a plan that you made when you were in ignorance of this new knowledge.
Now, let's apply the same thing to Agile itself.
Let me explain. Look at the whole thing at one level above all this. You've got a set of people who want to build something. Now you need a process that orchestrates these folks and gets the work done. Is it fair to pick a process out of the blue and apply it to the system and stick to it? You picked the process when you had limited knowledge on how it would behave. As you worked your way forward, you know more about the system, and naturally, it makes no sense to stick to that old process that you picked upfront when you were in ignorance of all this new knowledge of the system.
So, it's OK to begin by saying that let's have two-week iterations, a stakeholder demonstration at the end of the iteration, a retrospective meeting, daily scrums, planning poker, story points, incremental builds, unit tests and all this.
But then, you must *consciously* modify the process, based on your experiences of how it's going. Process changes must not come out of frustration, angry stakeholders, and sev-1 issues. It must be in the form of a proactive meta-process that continuously modifies the process to suit changing circumstances.
If someone says that "here is a standard Agile practice, follow it" - treat him with suspicion. There is really no standard. Agile is for self-motivated, self-organizing, self-improving people. It is not for those lambs that want to be told what to do. Any team that works on a set of imposed standards is a set of lambs - expect nothing heroic from it.
One of the most beautiful arguments Agile makes is that creating a grand plan upfront is not the best thing to do, because such a plan would invariably be based on a limited knowledge of what you're going to be building. That is true - as you progress on the work, you get to know more of it, and there's no point in sticking to a plan that you made when you were in ignorance of this new knowledge.
Now, let's apply the same thing to Agile itself.
Let me explain. Look at the whole thing at one level above all this. You've got a set of people who want to build something. Now you need a process that orchestrates these folks and gets the work done. Is it fair to pick a process out of the blue and apply it to the system and stick to it? You picked the process when you had limited knowledge on how it would behave. As you worked your way forward, you know more about the system, and naturally, it makes no sense to stick to that old process that you picked upfront when you were in ignorance of all this new knowledge of the system.
So, it's OK to begin by saying that let's have two-week iterations, a stakeholder demonstration at the end of the iteration, a retrospective meeting, daily scrums, planning poker, story points, incremental builds, unit tests and all this.
But then, you must *consciously* modify the process, based on your experiences of how it's going. Process changes must not come out of frustration, angry stakeholders, and sev-1 issues. It must be in the form of a proactive meta-process that continuously modifies the process to suit changing circumstances.
If someone says that "here is a standard Agile practice, follow it" - treat him with suspicion. There is really no standard. Agile is for self-motivated, self-organizing, self-improving people. It is not for those lambs that want to be told what to do. Any team that works on a set of imposed standards is a set of lambs - expect nothing heroic from it.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Power cuts in the night
When it's night, not so deep, though, .. 7 o'clock - 9 o'clock that is, houses and streets are lit by electric tube-lights, bulbs, lamps and the like.
People are awake, and that's why they want the lights to be on.
And if there happens to be a power cut, as it happens not-so-infrequently these days in Bangalore, the lights go off.
So what do people do then? They light candles, kerosene lamps, battery-operated lamps, and backup generators. When people know that a power cut may happen, they prepare for it, so that they can get back to their work.
The larger picture is that the Sun doesn't shine all the time, and even when it does, it isn't everywhere we want. That's why we need artificial lighting in the first place.
When the Sun cuts off its power, we use our backups - the power grid, the tube-lights etc and do our work. And when our backups fail, we fall back to our secondary backups - candles, generators etc and do our work. When our secondary backups fail, we fall back to our tertiary backups - torches, cell phone flashlights etc, and do our work.
What happens all these backups fail? We open our eyes wide open and try to suck in any little piece of light that happens to stray around, and try to do our work.
And this is where the most interesting point is.
As long as we can feed our eyes enough light, we can get work done. If you want a lean-and-mean system, just do the minimum that gets the work done. The Sun is free anyway, and we don't need to worry about it, but the backups that we maintain come at a big cost. What's the point in spraying light all around in the street when there's nobody looking? What's the point spraying room full of light when the eyes in the room are not looking everywhere, every time? A lot of our backups are wasteful, and I believe that sooner or later, there will be widespread measures to contain this waste - at all levels.
I see a future where the night, even the urban night - would be dark - like a dark forest. There would be lights, of course, but just-in-time and just-the-minimum that will enable people to comfortably see. And, oh yes, everyone would have devices on their eyes that will magnify the tiny pieces of stray light - probably, something of a contact-lens that doubles up as a night vision device - or worse yet, people getting born with genetically modified eyes that can see in the night.. like a wild animal, you know..
People are awake, and that's why they want the lights to be on.
And if there happens to be a power cut, as it happens not-so-infrequently these days in Bangalore, the lights go off.
So what do people do then? They light candles, kerosene lamps, battery-operated lamps, and backup generators. When people know that a power cut may happen, they prepare for it, so that they can get back to their work.
The larger picture is that the Sun doesn't shine all the time, and even when it does, it isn't everywhere we want. That's why we need artificial lighting in the first place.
When the Sun cuts off its power, we use our backups - the power grid, the tube-lights etc and do our work. And when our backups fail, we fall back to our secondary backups - candles, generators etc and do our work. When our secondary backups fail, we fall back to our tertiary backups - torches, cell phone flashlights etc, and do our work.
What happens all these backups fail? We open our eyes wide open and try to suck in any little piece of light that happens to stray around, and try to do our work.
And this is where the most interesting point is.
As long as we can feed our eyes enough light, we can get work done. If you want a lean-and-mean system, just do the minimum that gets the work done. The Sun is free anyway, and we don't need to worry about it, but the backups that we maintain come at a big cost. What's the point in spraying light all around in the street when there's nobody looking? What's the point spraying room full of light when the eyes in the room are not looking everywhere, every time? A lot of our backups are wasteful, and I believe that sooner or later, there will be widespread measures to contain this waste - at all levels.
I see a future where the night, even the urban night - would be dark - like a dark forest. There would be lights, of course, but just-in-time and just-the-minimum that will enable people to comfortably see. And, oh yes, everyone would have devices on their eyes that will magnify the tiny pieces of stray light - probably, something of a contact-lens that doubles up as a night vision device - or worse yet, people getting born with genetically modified eyes that can see in the night.. like a wild animal, you know..
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