Who deserves more credit? hmmm… very interesting question. I can think of two sets, one in the business world and one in my life as a software engineer.
In business world, I feel TATA motors deserves more credit that it gets. Ratan Tata has invested in in-house R&D way before other Indian automobile companies. The result is that Tata indica was the first truly Indian car. Also, the way R&D has progressed in tata needs to be applauded more. From the initial less-than-great Indica, they have moved on to awe-inspiring Tata Nano, which despite being the cheapest car in the world is able to pass EURO N-Cap test successfully.I would like to see Maruti or Hyundai cars do that…. Unfortunately Indian media likes to focus on the negatives rather than praising good engineering efforts. Just type “lamborghini” or “ferrari” car fire in google and you will get hundreds of images of these supercars burning. Yet, these foreign cars do not get any adverse publicity.
I just hope for the sake of innovation in India that Nano is a huge success. I wish that it becomes the best-selling car in year 2011.
On the software engineering side, i find that QA does not get the credit it deserves. Many people, including in my company, believe that testing is not skilled work. If someone leaves the company, he/she can be easily replaced with another person. However, I have been working with excellent people who have shown me what real testing is. The ability to test a piece of functionality in numerous different ways is true talent and skill that cannot be easily replaced. I also find that the more a person works on a product, the better the person tests.Most of the credit for a successful release will be hogged by the development team while QA gets only the blame if some issues crop up. The faster a company realises this, the better it is.
I realised this when we started working in agile. Scrum makes people work closely. Working closely helped me realise the skill that a good tester possesses. It helped our team realise what a big factor they are in the success of our team. So, the solution to “How to give people more credit” is work in agile mode.
Who do you think deserves more credit? Let me know.
Management Concepts & Book Summaries 