Mentoring from Chak de India

Recently I have watched the movie Chak de India(not that interested in movies so mostly I watch the movies much later). It was a wonderful movie to watch. Everything in that can be corelated to life. I liked the way it was shown on how a perfect team can be made and also how important the mentor is to the team. Mentorship was one of the important things that we can observe and learn, apart from patriotism, unity in diversity, etc.,
We all form teams in our worklife for various tasks that we do. The team is usually made up of people with different backgrounds, different workstyles, etc., it is now the role of the mentor - may be an external person of the team or team lead in most cases to show the path to the team, get the teamwork and team going inspite of all the hurdles, problems (internal or external) to achieve the task for which the team was formed.
What is mentorship?
Mentorship refers to a developmental relationship between a more experienced mentor and a less experienced partner referred to as a mentee or protégé -- a person guided and protected by a more prominent person.
It again depends on the number of members in the team. Mentoring can be one-to-one, one-many(team), etc.,

One of the most important things in a mentor is to enable others grow, that is it also requires that the mentor be sincerely interested in someone else’s growth. Mentor may not win any awards, but he/she will have the satisfaction of having done an important job.
Following are some of the types
Team mentoring offers a methodology for facilitating the learning of an intact team.
Facilitated group mentoring allows a number of people to participate in a learning group and to benefit simultaneously from the experience and expertise of a mentor or mentors.
Peer-group mentoring brings together peers with similar learning interests or needs. The group is self-directed and self-managed. Source

How can mentoring be useful in work life

Even in our worklife, it is important for a mentor to train the team, to show them the direction and to orient them in performing better. The experienced members may become informal mentors and share their experiences, approaches to the babies in the team to enable them to know that approach to perform better. There can be various hurdles one might face during mentoring the team especially when one has to mould the team to go in one direction. There will be all kinds of members in the team having different experiences that may be related to that work we are performing or may not be related. For example in a software testing team working on one particular project may consisting of three or four members. Here each one may have different experiences on various projects or various amounts of experiences, etc.,

It is the challenge of the mentor to overcome these hurdles, to let the team/mentee understand the hurdles, know when to take what decision, utilize all the resources, set a feeling of oness in the team so that the task can be easily accomplished, improve the confidence of the team, eliminate the differences that may exists among the various members, improve the morale of the team, etc., and get things going on track.

Learn from everyone we meet and people learn from you :)

Need for certification !!

Is there anytime in professional (or personal) life when we say... life is routine. Though it may not be exactly, because we may do things or tasks in some different way everyday, but still we may feel there is no zeal to do. Then at that time we need to sit back and analyse.. am i doing something different or new.. do i want to do something different to get going the enthusiasm. Well it may learning to do a new task or technology or tool or concept or anything. We may be "too busy" in our work life but that does not mean we need to stop learning new things. Learning in later stages of life may come mostly from the need rather than the interest. But as long as there is that feeling to do something new or satisfaction that it made the difference.. it is enough.
There are instances for both these cases in my life
Need - We were doing manual testing for some of our projects and though we wanted to learn automated tools, we never took off time from work for it. The project that we were working on was a very big one and had a lot of scope to learn automation as there was much of regression and retesting to do. But when suddenly there was a requirement from the client, then there was a rush in the team to try out various tools. So the urge to learn and try something new came from need.
Interest - I was getting bored of the routine chores at work.. testing the application, etc.,.. so wanted to do something different. Then came the idea and interest to do a certification wherein i need to put efforts to read the concepts, understand them and corelate with the work that i was performing. Though there were many things that i did at work, for some of them i actually did not know the terminology untill i read the book/material or related articles. Undertaking a certificate is really a boring thing which needs a lot of interest and urge to do it (depends on the certification though). so this needs interest.
One way for learning is certification. We may not be learning everything new required in the certification but may also be implementing things in that, like the ISTQB certification for basic level has many concepts that we are actually implementing in our daily work. Though most of us may feel why do we need to do certification when we know many things that may not be covered in that certification or for that matter there may not be a need for someone to certify that we know something, it may be one of the tools to let people know that we are well qualified. like we may do a educational course but the certificates of the course only tell that we actually did it or prove the fact of our course. Certification in most instances may be a way to market ourselves, our organization.
But we need to realize that either as a need or interest it is definetely a value addition in our life.

My Sweet Keyboard

Having done my schooling in a missionary school, we had singing classes every year where sisters (nuns) used to teach us catholic songs like When I was just a little girl... Que sera sera, .... i started getting interested in the piano. I always wished to play one.. then once i got a casio keyboard as a gift from one of my cousins. I loved it a lot and started learning small songs.. i dont remember them now at all... And even now my passion for keyboard/piano still continues and recently I have bought one. And that is PSR-E403, one of the latest models on Yamaha. I will be soon learning it and would continue my interest in music. :).

Niagara Falls- a wonderful experience

I have been to the Niagara Falls from Toronto in August 2005 and it was a wonderful experience, one that i cannot forget for the rest of my life. I have been there along with my brother who came from US and we had a wonderful experience. I loved the falls and would love to visit it 'n' number of times. This gorgeous falls is also called as Horseshoe Falls. There will be a boat ride to go into the falls. It's The Maid of the Mist. And this will be a lovely feeling where we can feel the falls as if there are water droplets on us. The sound of the falls is soooo great... There is the Skylon Tower and the view from it will show the actual horseshoe shape of the waterfall. The falls is said to be more beautiful and visible from the Canada side than the US side. There is also an aerial view of the falls from a helicopter.




View from the top - there you can see the Maid of the Mist boat


View from the Maid of the Mist


Lost in the waterfalls




The bridge connecting US and Canada
this is one of the lifetime achievements that one can have :). In case you ever get to visit Canada or USA, do visit the falls.

The feel of being a Certified Professional

I have recently completed a Testing certification. The very fact of me handling testing is still not digested. I have come from a varied background and testing was not what I wanted to do at any point till now. But I always take up the opportunities that I come across. So I took up testing. Then came the thought when I wanted to do some certification because it was almost an year that i was into testing and thought of doing something more constructive. A colleague of mine actually completed and then when asked for advice. He encouraged me that it is easy, but then also I was not that sure I will make it. I thought I will give a try again not sure of the result though. I always want a change in life.. be it personal or professional. That change will be a motivator for many things. Worked hard for 2 weekends. Could not get much time on the weekdays. Then finally I took the exam. Had to wait for the results to come. Finally I MADE IT. Now I am a certified professional. Though it was a level 1 certification of ISTQB, it made a BIG difference. It made me feel more confident than usual and excited that i could do it so easily.
Hmmm... but yes added to that was the additional responsibility in my organization.. Aaahhh something i could not expect so sooon :(. inspite being an MBA. Hardly 2 years old as an MBA, the managerial role was shooting up for me... But YES again.. I am right now enjoying every minutes of it... The certification and the additional responsibility has brought a new phase in me.. where I get to explore, know and learn new things.. where i am enjoying every moment of it... got to be much more responsible at work, wherein any mistake can cost and make a dot for the company and me...
Finally..... I want to continue making some small changes like this in life and make big differences.. there should be some change in life to go ahead and be smart... and going ahead plan to do more certifications..