Non-linearity — COVID19 lock-down Day 17

2020, When wheel stopped (or slowed down)…

Week 1 [Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7]
Week 2 [Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14]
Week 3 [Day 15, Day 16]

Non-linearity

Countries, orgnaizations, people are usually prepared based on linear prediction models. When a chaos arises, all the linear predictions are shaken. The chaos could be anything, could be a natural disaster, terror attacks, a ground breaking innovation.

Today we are challenged by Chaos, to which many are unprepared. Infact, a little more than a month ago, many of my friends are looking at how much pay rise they would get, today the perception is changed to how long the jobs would not be effected.

Usually a 10% error is commonly accounted in many project plans, development plans. That would mean in a worse situation, budget may overshoot 10%, schedule may slip 10%, 10% of people may not be available. But, today the situation forced 90% of people to stay back at home and try hard enough to keep wheel spinning. This is unprecendented, right?

But as I mentioned earlier in my other articles, if wheel is still spinning, it is due to digital revolution happened over past 3 decades. And the revolution will take new turns very soon, because the needs are more demanding now.

In Software architecture, one analogy I usually like is “What happens if John (the Architect) gets hit by a bus?”, which refers to documenting all necessary things to keep system “process dependent” rather than “people dependent”.

Have a look at best processes closely, the fundamental thing is all about discipline, teamwork, productivity and continutiy.

There is dark side to this, what if the process comes in path of your creativity? If you try to fit a square in circle, you will never achieve 100% perfection. So fundamentally we need different processes for different activities.

There is also a famous saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” which means it is irrelevant how much plan you have on paper, it is useless if people are not aligned with it.

Coming back to non-linearity, the COVID19 lock-down just raised uncertainity factor in every equation used for predictions. This uncertainity factor can only be controlled by people involved in system.

Imagine this scenario, a company in “country A” asked a foriegn national to work at “country A” office location temporarily because they felt bringing people close improves productivity. Today, there are many such foreign immigrants and all are working from their temporary residences in “country A” (or foreign land). As one can imagine, this is expensive process.

What happens when companies start realizing it doesn’t matter to bring people together physically? The wheel still spun during lock-down. In my opinion, this non-linearity just changed course of future of every human being on this planet. (There are numerous examples from history, Just some in no particular order, When 9/11 attacks happened, it changed course of USA, when 26/11 attacks happened, it changed course of India, When WW2 happened, it changed course of UK, USSR, USA, Germany, Japan).

A big thank you to every person who is keeping the wheel spinning in this tough times.

Containment Zones

The place of my residence is declared to be a COVID19 hotspot by state government and my residence area is now a “containment zone”. This means, the lock-down may be extended or there may be more stringent policies of people movement (including me).

But the worrying part is when we look at map of all 12 containment zones declared, the three sides of Hyderabad city are evenly covered. This means, without stricter measures and restricted movement, a high probability of COVID19 spread is possible.

Meanwhile, there are many awareness videos made by police of Indian states. Search for COVID19 awareness videos by police and you will be amazed by number of videos you will get. Every one of it is made with good amount of creativity and responsibility.

Stay safe….
Stay locked for we still need to win the war, do not spoil by early celebrations…