My profile -11 years of experience in cooking and in IT (Automation). I have worked with the US, European and Asian clients in the corporate world. However, the customers I had for my cooking were only my family and friends. I understood that, which ever part of the world people belong to, the emotions and the way they react to situations is almost the same. After many years, I realized a few commonalities between cooking and software development. I immediately started to pen down these amazing facts.
My experience with Cooking and S/W Development:-
1. The first time you do it, (cooking and s/w dev) will give you nightmares. You become better as you keep doing it. However, you can also be one of those who do it 'first time right'.
2. Cooking a very tasty dish and developing a bug free product once or twice is easy. Doing it every time consistently is challenging unless we have true passion for it.
3. Though the recipe is well defined, we can still show innovations to improvise the taste. This holds good only when we are an expert in cooking. The requirements are well defined during software development, however there is still scope for improvising, provided we are an SME.
4. Most of the simple mistakes done while cooking a dish can be rectified when we taste it and identify the issue. A badly made dish can still be given a different avatar and made to look like a good one. A buggy product can still be delivered with quality, provided the testing team uncovers the bugs and the development team fixes it without any ego. However, the architectural issues will let the product down.
5. If you are a beginner in cooking, and the target audience (consumers) are aware of that, then how much ever quality you give them, they will still think the final product is from an amateur and is of very average quality. In the world of software development, the customer's first impression, will be having your years of experience in mind. Although, this can be changed when we build a good rapport with them.
6. The above issue for the people in the entry level can be overcome by using simple but effective mantras like, 'Building trust/rapport', 'Marketing', 'Communication' etc.
Building Trust and having a good rapport:-
As an amateur cook, I used to think that a tasty food will always bring appreciations from the consumers. Though it is partially true, it is not always the case. You must know to market yourself and your product. If you are not confident about your own skills how can you expect this from the consumers? After so many years in the kitchen, I have learnt how to do pre-sales marketing. Before the dish is being served, you can say how many times you have already prepared this dish successfully and your confidence and hold on the dish.Other information including your knowledge about the product and how much it is popular in other countries and how Italians (For eg:-if it is an Italian dish) crave for this dish etc. will prove to add more value. There is no need to feel guilty about marketing yourself and your product as long as you are honest. Above all, a person will like your dish only if he/she likes you and has confidence in your cooking.
A simple fact I am trying to bring here is that, it is the human relationship that brings customer-satisfaction, appreciation and in turn a successful project. You can call it trust or rapport or communication. In the end, we do business with human beings and not with products. As a fresher in corporate world, I used to wonder why certain projects were successful and certain projects were not. Now I understand that, deep inside, for the success of a project there should have been a good rapport and trust between the individuals involved. For the failure, again it is the lack of it. Though quality of a product is really important, it is time we shift our focus to the human aspect involving communication, rapport and trust.
It is easy to cook a tasty dish. You have lots of videos on youtube these days :). However, it is not very easy to satisfy your consumers. It is easier to build a quality product than to build trust with your customer. Most of our effort and focus is already on the quality whereas the actual success lies on the human aspect of it.
