MSD vs a term at Great Lakes

Its over a month and half since I have landed in Chennai. Looking back I realize that MBA makes you do lot of things together, it forces you to learn multi-tasking, time management blah blah... It's a very small time to claim that I have perfected even some of these management arts, in fact I am far from it. It was proved from the fact that I messed up with the exams badly (i hope not very badly :-) ). I scheduled most of the stuff till the very last week, which was a bad idea... I always do the realization late... well last minute Macro Economics assignments kept most of us engaged for many nights, as the submission time use to be 9am the next day... and the lucky ones or rather the hard working ones who were abreast with the class proceedings in other subjects found it easy to handle...

Well coming back to the thought behind writing this piece was an idea to compare my work as a DBA and my first one month in Great Lakes... I actually dreamt about this idea in the class... confused ?? one gotta sleep to dream... how do you expect people to be awake after the assignments... gotcha... :-)

As a DBA we use to have deliverable for every MSD (Monthly software drops), and here at Great Lakes we do the deliveries in form of End term tests... Obviously you can't do the deliveries at the month end until you prepare for it... and there were low level designs as compared to pre-reads, planning as to classes, running test scripts as to surprise tests, daily update calls as to assignment submission, customer interaction as to attending guest lectures... and finally the delivery as to End term tests...

This idea of comparing MSD to an MBA term applies to a one year course, you do a delivery approximately in a month and here you complete a term in around one and a half month. You might miss a MSD as a DBA if you don't have enough customer requirements but there is no dearth of courses in an MBA term to give you a sigh...

After doing all this you wait eagerly for the customer feedback and here you sit back and don't wait for the result especially if you have bungled up your exams...

The Saravana experience

Today in the evening we reached T Nagar passing through the busy Usman road. We entered Saravana stores and the store was as crowded as the street outside. Each floor had just enough place left for people to walk and get past. Being my first experience at these stores I was surprised to see such a wide variety of goods, be it furniture, general house hold items, interiors, beds, you name it and you will get it here.

After sometime I started telling my friend about Kishore Biyani's book "It Happened in India" were he mentioned about the shopping environment in India. In his book he mentions about Saravana stores and concludes that in India people prefer shopping not in peace but in full rush, rubbing shoulders and waiting at the billing counters. It was at this time when it became very clear to me about what Kishore Biyani meant.

During our shopping here we bought 3 tables from one place, 3 chairs from other and then went back within 5 minutes to buy 1 of each from the same places. Meanwhile the earlier 3 had disappeared probably for delivery which was supposed to happen the next day. After this we also went on to buy some expendable FMCG products :-) bought a few things from 3 different places... no computer, no bar codes... just hand written notes from everywhere... and then went to the counter to make the payment, wondering where would the deliveries be made... miraculously all the things appeared at the delivery counter in one carry bag... that too in just 5 minutes... checked the packet because we were a bit skeptical about the process... you see lack of technology made us think twice... I was stunned to see their delivery method, even in today's technology age this store uses hand receipts!

Initially it looked like all the shops on Usman road are as busy as the streets or the Saravana store but again to my surprise the shop next to it, as big as this one with as many varieties as this one, had not even a single customer until we got in. Such is the brand Saravana in Chennai.!

We incidentally entered in one of the Saravana dinning halls and in the menu card read about their presence in UK, US, UAE etc. Post dinner as soon as we reached home I googled on Saravana and was baffled to see the list of things they are involved in.