Mind Slivers

Any success requires team work, and team work needs alignment - in this fast crazy world that we are living in, communication becomes the greatest challenge when you are working in a team; even if you have all needed documentation, meetings, design sessions...you are bound to hit some point as a team member and you get confused, you get frustrated, you do not see the big picture, you lost it somewhere during the crazy cycles....STOP and ASK. You should raise questions for things to be clear OR for things to be different....It is part of your duty as a team player...

I always say that as we are building our way to the top, we are not only fighting to build the needed internal culture but sometimes we find ourseleves fighting some wrong attitudes that we get out of our country culture...Somehow, and i m in no position to judge how, we have a rooted conviction that we are always led not leading, that mafeesh fayda....

Some would say i encourage "el lamada" but begad curiosity and need for knowledge made humans evolution and revolution; this is the plain truth!

While attending an intenal IT meeting yesterday, a question from one of the developers regarding a certain aspect of the project, opened up a whole conversation that uncovered a very big problem that all team was unaware of....Understanding what you do is your responsibility, no one can own a task or a job without understanding, appreciating its importance and scope...Managers should help with the big part of it, and if they don't ASKKKKKK! It is your task, your delivery, you wanna do great, trust me: The only stupid question is the question that goes unasked!  

Software Development is a complex and speacial business - NEVER under estimate an effort that was done when you attend a sign off meeting and you see a happy client and a good project closure. This moment signals the success of serious team work that committed on delivering successfully, it signals that a lot of sweat, inspiration and brainware was invested all across from the most senior to the junior developer. I attended a closure meeting last week and it made my week!

Responsiblility is something that is sometimes totally lacking in our developer community - you have to see more than yourself, you have to own up to the projects you are being assigned to....I just was amazed lately by a one of the developers, who had an overseas assignment in a critical project and then decided to quit in the middle of the assignment because he could not go back home in the Valentine's day to meet his fiance! Not only he had bad delivery for two weeks continuous which was embarassing in front of the customer as this was on the premise assignment, but a bad attitude that overloaded his fellow team members who were already overloaded with the pressure of delivery in a critical project, and they have been in the situation for so long.  A Wild contrast with a person who, least i can say about him, is a man of honor, a man of duty in all situations, Mike.  

It is everyone right to decide to walk away. It is the timing and the approach that differentiate a responsible and irresponsible. I just wanted to express that a person road to success is an accumulation of successful behaviors and attitudes. Every assignment you take and honor, comes back and honor you, even in the toughest situation, you would at least learn something.

I know that someone would jump and say that the guy was akeed overloaded, that the manager was akeed a jerk, i just wanna say that doing a good job is a personal responsibility. I personally worked in terrible conditions, yet i could not just close a task that is incomplete and say this is what i have and this is what i can do, because simply this is MY task, my honor and my pride. I would never compromise my name for anyone or for anything. I would like to sleep at night knowing that i did my best and nothing but the best. This is a simple formula my friend, walk away, and this would be your life style!

My post is not meant to hurt anyone, any similarities with any situations might be a coincidence, only reality is that Mike is a a great man of honor :) I just hope to see even more responsible and dependable developers in our community.

I am happy that this site is finally out, our local community for developers in the Middle East where we can exchanged our ideas and interact to address our problems both technical and indusry wide.