Special message from: incharge kalwa saraswatbank
Original rendering by Porus P. Munshi
HOW TO GUIDE BOOK FOR PROJECT LEADER
MOVIE LAGAAN
Date: Nov 1, 2007 1:37 PM
Subject: A TEACHER CALLED LAGAAN
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| A TEACHER CALLED LAGAAN |
| Porus P. Munshi
The film Lagaan is about many things —leadership, negotiation, team building, courage and, above all, project |
| management by a first-time project leader. |
| |
| |
| A still from the film, Lagaan. |
| |
|The film Lagaan is about many things — leadership, negotiation, team building and|
|courage to name a few. But it's above all about project management by a |
|first-time project leader.
A project is something with a definite beginning and a definite end, with a clear|
|objective to achieve with a limited number of resources. In the film, the project|
|is to beat the English cricket team in three months, using whatever resources |
|(including human) that are locally available. |
| |
|The project leader (PL), Aamir Khan, has a lot riding on this. His reputation, |
|the survival of the region (or company), future growth and prosperity are all |
|dependent on this crucial short-term project. The project comes to them when the |
|villagers go to protest a doubled tax rate imposed on them. They're given a |
|choice: either pay the tax or agree to a cricket match. If they win the match, |
|they don't pay tax for three whole years. If they lose, they pay a triple tax |
|instead of the current double tax. |
| |
|The challenge is posed directly to Aamir. The rest of the villagers want him to |
|refuse the challenge. But he accepts. It's a major crisis. They have trouble |
|paying twice the tax, how on earth will they pay three times the tax? But Aamir, |
|like most good leaders, recognises that a crisis is an opportunity. Whenever a |
|crisis pops up, it's an opportunity for someone or everyone to shine and benefit.|
| |
|In a project, when crises occur, often the junior-most team members benefit |
|first. When a project is running smoothly, these junior members are normally kept|
|on the sidelines and given minor tasks. But when a crisis erupts they suddenly |
|become invaluable and are roped in directly to help out with the crisis. The |
|crisis is an opportunity for them. If they do well — and most people do rise to |
|challenges, they will no longer be considered as `junior' or `weak'. They become |
|full-fledged, respected members of the team. |
| |
|For the PL, successfully handling a crisis increases not only his confidence and |
|his knowledge base, but also his status among team members and senior management.|
|He's seen as a capable leader ready for larger projects. |
|When Aamir begins his project, he does a detailed requirements gathering. He |
|checks out the specifications, the dependencies and inter-dependencies, and how |
|the parts make up the whole. He does this by observing the English practising at |
|their cricket, and also ropes in an attractive English lady to help him out. This|
|is what all effective PLs do. Carefully gather requirements — with or without |
|attractive English ladies. |
| |
|In the beginning of a project, there's a lot of uncertainty and it's only |
|compounded if improper specifications are gathered leading to work proceeding on |
|the wrong track. The rework necessary can easily throw a project way out of |
|schedule. For instance in Lagaan, initially the bowlers do not bowl over arm but |
|instead chuck the ball. The English lady shows them how to bowl properly. Imagine|
|if they'd gone to the match after practising chucking for three months and found |
|out there that they were required to bowl over arm after all? Gathering |
|requirements early in the project in as much detail as possible is vital to its |
|success. |
| |
|Project Leads play different roles depending on the situation. Some roles that |
|Aamir played as a PL in Lagaan are: information provider, ideas and opinions |
|shaper, tapper and developer of potential, provider of emotional, physical and |
|social support. |
| |
| Information provider: As information provider, Aamir ensures he shares with the|
|team all his ideas, skills, and feelings. He also ropes in an expert (the English|
|lady) to help out with knowledge transfer. Information leads to motivation. |
|People feel good at being kept in the loop. |
| |
| Ideas and opinion shaper: Aamir faces resistance when he wants to include a |
|social outcast in the team. But he sticks to his guns as the man is a natural |
|spinner. He insists that the project is of paramount importance. He |
| |
|paints the larger picture and then speaks to individuals in the group addressing |
|their inner views, drives and fears. This is a wonderful example of how |
|successful PLs handle resistance. They paint the larger picture and then address |
|individuals in the group and appeal to them directly. Don't give up when faced |
|with resistance. Shape opinions to move the project forward. |
| |
| Developer of potential: A PL's role is also to identify and develop talent. |
|Developing talent is done by structuring tasks around the individual's talent and|
|finding roles and situations where the talent can be used to great effect. For |
|Aamir, a chicken farmer used to chasing and catching chickens is a natural |
|fielder. A polio-stricken man with erratic control over his arm is a natural |
|spinner. A woodcutter with hardened hands is a natural to field and stop hard |
|hits. PLs constantly identify talent in their people and find areas where they |
|can use it effectively. |
| |
| Support provider — emotional, physical and social: As a PL, Aamir knows that |
|emotions are contagious. He therefore constantly exhibits optimism and |
|enthusiasm. When things go wrong, people are naturally low and demotivated. The |
|PL's role in providing emotional support either individually or to the group as a|
|whole becomes paramount. Throughout the project implementation stage (the actual |
|match), Aamir is everywhere - consoling someone who does poorly, motivating |
|someone who is facing a block, soothing another who is heckled. |
|Physical support is again an important part of project leadership. While a PL is |
|not expected to do actual work like writing code, if he can sit in at critical |
|junctures and provide the help required by doing the physical part of the work, |
|his effectiveness can only grow. Physical support is like an extra hand given at |
|the steering wheel. The hand is not kept there. Support is given at a crucial |
|juncture and then withdrawn. |
| |
|In Lagaan, a traitor is found out in the team and the rest are baying for his |
|blood. But Aamir recognises that this man can be a valuable contributor and gives|
|him another chance. He provides the man with social support till the rest of the |
|team accepts him. Some members, especially after a failure can be shut out of the|
|team. The effective PL provides him the support necessary to sustain him till the|
|others accept him again.
Conclusion |
|To conclude, Lagaan is a wonderful example of project management in action. |
|Aamir, the PL, does a wonderful job of building the team, motivating it and |
|guiding it to success, all the while managing the project too. A long time ago in|
|India ... we had PLs too.;
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Friday, November 2, 2007
Lagaan-Movie-Leadership-Tutorial
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
asp2.readspeaker.net
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/02/06/mobile_browsing.html
by Robert Jones
http://asp2.readspeaker.net/cgi-bin/oreillyrsone?lang=us&voice=Paul&customerid=171&url=http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/4598
02/06/2004
WAP, WML, and XHTML MP
WML it has been
superceded
XHTML MP (Mobile Profile).
WAP 2.0, an evolution of the delivery mechanism.
First
You must use double quotes around each attribute in a tag (such as align="center") and you must match each tag with a closing tag (such as
...
). That is, except for the tags that don't follow that rule, most notably
and . You have to write perfectly clean code or it will not be displayed on your phone. Trust me, this gets very frustrating very quickly.
Secondly,
you should install a WAP browser simulator on your PC. Simulators are essential tools for anyone developing content for phones. Running on your PC over a regular Internet connection, they load pages much faster than your phone, they avoid the frustrations of using the phone keypad, and they can provide information that helps debug problems. In fact, they are so useful that I recommend you install two of them!
The first, and easiest to install, is from Openwave and can be found at developer.openwave.com. It is available for Windows only and is free of charge, but you do need to register with Openwave. The equivalent software from Nokia is available from
forum.nokia.com. Drill down through Tools and SDKs until you find the page for Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit 4.0. Again, the software is free, but you will need to register. You should download the entire toolkit, which includes a Mobile Browser Simulator (NMB), a WAP Gateway Simulator, and the toolkit itself (NMIT), which is an application containing editors for the markup languages, images, and multimedia messages. The simulators look like this :
The real benefit of installing the Nokia software is the NMIT, which provides "language-aware" editors for WML and XHTML MP. This is extremely useful in troubleshooting pages that do not display on your phone. Chances are the problem is XML-related, such as a failure to properly quote an attribute. This screenshot shows an example of that:
Robert Jones runs Craic Computing, a small bioinformatics company in Seattle that provides advanced software and data analysis services to the biotechnology industry. He was a bench molecular biologist for many years before programming got the better of him.
wap
O'Reilly-Rober-Jones
MP (Mobile Profile).
Wireless Markup Language (WML) as a first crack at the problem.
WML content is served by a regular HTTP server like Apache, but its delivery mechanism involves a gateway device that sits between the phone and the server. This mechanism is referred to as the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and specifically, as WAP 1.0.
First of all, both WML and XHTML MP are XML-based languages
In Part 1, I will describe the basic features of the two main markup languages,
WML and XHTML MP, and will show how you serve them from a web server. In Part 2, I will show how you can identify the phone that has requested a page and deliver content that is tailored for that device.
Users in the UK alone downloaded 8 billion pages to their phones in 2003. A huge audience; but bear in mind that most of them are viewing sports scores or downloading custom ring tones, and not a lot else. The opportunity for developers like us to serve up imaginative and useful content to their phones is tremendous.
Read more On "wap"!
hockniyzer-bighugelabs
Well, a cool tool I just heard about for Flickr didn’t make it into my Flickr how-to. It’s the Hockniyzer from BigHugeLabs. I used the Hockeniyzer to make the goofy image. That’s a bonus Flickr clue that you won’t find in the eHow article.
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