Kewat's Proof-of-concept

In Ramayana, when Sita and Ram went into exile to the forest, they had to cross a large river. There they meet Kewat, a boatman. Kevat brought his boat to bring them across but first he offered to wash Ram’s feet. Kevat had a suspicion regarding the holy touch of Ram’s feet. He heard the incident of Gautam rishi’s ashram when the cursed Ahilya retains to her original form after touched by Ram’s holy feet. Kevat said to Ram, “O my lord, without washing your feet, I shall not ferry you across the river. The power of your feet is wondrous. After their touch, stone turned into a woman and my boat is made of wood and helps my family to feed and clothes. What will I do if my boat turns into a woman?”

To clear his mind Kevat brought a wooden pot and put Ram’s feet into it to wash it. Boat is made of wood hence he used wooden pot to wash the feet. If the wooden pot will not change into woman then surely the boat will not. Finally Kevat got confirmed after washing the feet that the boat will not change because the pot didn’t.

Kevat used the proof of concept, more generally POC. POC is a rough prototype of a new idea, new product/solution or new service. From project management perspective it is very critical to a project manager to involve the implementation of POC of the project with proper sign-off from all stakeholders. It helps to understand the behavior of newly developed product or solution in realistic environment. Ideally the things behaved very well in lab conditions but it usually fails in real life scenarios. Failure may be in terms of technology, design, requirement gathering & analysis, development, implementation. 

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