Now a days, in my workplace, we are all (working hard, trust me) trying to meet deadlines and get the product out of the door! This does involve a lot of stress with meticulous planning and making sure we do not pass away important things. And I myself do realize the fact that there is no limit to writing code and there is always scope for improvement. And most of the time, when there is a great product idea, one cannot wait to see the idea become a reality. When I conduct the meeting every day, I always keep in mind the following:
1) Keep the scope as simple as possible and take "baby steps" - Don't try to everything at one go. The more you try to do, the more it gets complex because the time-lines do not change but scope does increase adding to hell lot complexity.
2) Perfection is the enemy of completion. Try to get the product the "good enough" state and not really THE perfect state.
3) My favorite 80-20 rule applies here too. Concentrate the most of 80% use cases and not 20%. Kill all the features that will be used by 20% of clients as they are really not mandatory for completion.
4) With the constant change in technology and high competition, one needs to make sure to get the product out fast in a good enough working form as simply as possible.
And, remember every product has a scope of improvement and also possible to add more and more and MANY MORE features :-).
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Online social networks
Did you ever wonder why Social Networking was able to take off. Online social networking has almost changed the way people communicate, work(http://purwajain.blogspot.com/2010/01/power-of-social-media-for-business.html) and also PLAY! There was time somewhere in 1990's (when I started using PC's) where people were very reluctant to disclose their identity on the web and now almost all age groups are on some networking site. As rightly said by Charlene Li, "The social networks greatest achievements has been to bring humanity in place that was once cold and technological". It is also a awesome tool for mass communication. Like on facebook, I simply set my status and my friends and sometimes the world know about it. Moreover it has actually become a habit for me to update my status everyday. This just shows my ability to "Want to communicate" to all. These sites have also made people's personal relationships more visible. Even today, many companies when planning their product launches make sure that a part of their marketing budget is reserved for communication over social media.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Data Warehousing
Yesterday, I was discussing this with my colleague in office who was trying to break her head in a apt design of a warehouse and why is it not very scalable. Here is what I came up with:
Warehousing is nothing but just one component of business intelligence. The overall goal of BI is to provide information that is required to MANAGE a BUSINESS. This simply means that BI provides data that helps in decision making process and hence many a times also called as decision support system. As we all know, the 3 generic strategies to provide a competitive advantage is:
1) Cost leadership
2) Focus
3) Differentiation
BI should provide data which will help u to reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction and in turn increase profitability.
When you are designing the warehouse architecture, you need to remember that:
1) Change is constant - Business requirements will change
2) Take an incremental approach, do not over design!!!
3) Make sure your existing applications (OLTP as well as warehouse) continue to work
4) Need to allow more data and new type of data to be added
5) The BI view should be intuitive, obvious, visible and memorable
6) When people are thinking, they do not want their thinking process to be interrupted. Make sure you provide necessary drill downs at just one click.
Most of the OLTP systems are modeled as entity- relationship modeling. A warehouse follows dimensional modeling. Every business process is separated in form of a data mart. Make them denormalized and follow the hybrid approach. Need to explicitly well design the data acquisition process (ETL - we could use tools or write our own scripts for the same). Very important to remember in the ETL scripts is sequencing, transaction management (commits and rollbacks), performance and last but not the least Data cleansing. Data Acquisition and cleansing form 50-80% of the effort in a typical warehousing system. Always document the data marts! it is very important to see a consolidated view of a data mart. Enforcing some of a standard across the WH always helps in better undjavascript:void(0)erstandability. Make you document the standards too!. Design the metadata architecture in such a way that it allow sharing across various data models (OMG standards). Last but not the least, the WH must have "a single version of truth". You can use Datawarehousing Bus (conformed dimensions and facts). Most of the companies ignore this as Capacity Planning is a very critical part of the warehouse. Always be ahead in capacity planning to ensure smooth functioning and delivery.
Warehousing is nothing but just one component of business intelligence. The overall goal of BI is to provide information that is required to MANAGE a BUSINESS. This simply means that BI provides data that helps in decision making process and hence many a times also called as decision support system. As we all know, the 3 generic strategies to provide a competitive advantage is:
1) Cost leadership
2) Focus
3) Differentiation
BI should provide data which will help u to reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction and in turn increase profitability.
When you are designing the warehouse architecture, you need to remember that:
1) Change is constant - Business requirements will change
2) Take an incremental approach, do not over design!!!
3) Make sure your existing applications (OLTP as well as warehouse) continue to work
4) Need to allow more data and new type of data to be added
5) The BI view should be intuitive, obvious, visible and memorable
6) When people are thinking, they do not want their thinking process to be interrupted. Make sure you provide necessary drill downs at just one click.
Most of the OLTP systems are modeled as entity- relationship modeling. A warehouse follows dimensional modeling. Every business process is separated in form of a data mart. Make them denormalized and follow the hybrid approach. Need to explicitly well design the data acquisition process (ETL - we could use tools or write our own scripts for the same). Very important to remember in the ETL scripts is sequencing, transaction management (commits and rollbacks), performance and last but not the least Data cleansing. Data Acquisition and cleansing form 50-80% of the effort in a typical warehousing system. Always document the data marts! it is very important to see a consolidated view of a data mart. Enforcing some of a standard across the WH always helps in better undjavascript:void(0)erstandability. Make you document the standards too!. Design the metadata architecture in such a way that it allow sharing across various data models (OMG standards). Last but not the least, the WH must have "a single version of truth". You can use Datawarehousing Bus (conformed dimensions and facts). Most of the companies ignore this as Capacity Planning is a very critical part of the warehouse. Always be ahead in capacity planning to ensure smooth functioning and delivery.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Exploring the rural telecom opputunity
Because of the operators and the of course Governments support, the growth is taking off in semi urban and rural areas for the industry. Therefore in near future, majority of new subscribers are expected to come from here. With cell phone operators and mobile phone manufacturers seeing an immense growth potential in the rural sector, they are now devising new ways and trying to grab a larger share of the rural pie. From launching low-cost handsets to bringing down the tariffs and organizing street plays to advertise, the real battle among telecom competitors is now being fought in the rural market.
We will be able to penetrate the market with Voice services offered by the operators. MVAS players will need to focus more on providing value added services for the rural like regional content, outbound calls in regional languages, local news, etc. At the same time one will also need to think that with reach achieved, how is it monetized to its best. Like reducing the distribution cost for a company like HUL using mobile, opening bank accounts without branches but the phone acting as ATM terminals to transact, etc. The post office is the only medium today that has reach to rural today, should all MVAS players/operators not consider the working with these post offices to achieve all of the above?
We will be able to penetrate the market with Voice services offered by the operators. MVAS players will need to focus more on providing value added services for the rural like regional content, outbound calls in regional languages, local news, etc. At the same time one will also need to think that with reach achieved, how is it monetized to its best. Like reducing the distribution cost for a company like HUL using mobile, opening bank accounts without branches but the phone acting as ATM terminals to transact, etc. The post office is the only medium today that has reach to rural today, should all MVAS players/operators not consider the working with these post offices to achieve all of the above?
Sport day today in Siya's school
Today Siya had her sports day in school. She actually rocked the day. There were two events for her class and she managed to come to finals for both the events. I was like thrilled just to hear that and then she won too in both the event!!! Isn't that great!
But why sports, why do I prefer her to be more in sports as compared to academics. I somehow feel sports teaches one the true spirit of living life to the fullest. It make you so strong that you take your failure to your stride and at the same time also celebrate someone's victory. If you win, you win, if you loose, you learn. And why should one run away from learning at all!
Siya, keep up the sportsmanship! Mommy loves you!
But why sports, why do I prefer her to be more in sports as compared to academics. I somehow feel sports teaches one the true spirit of living life to the fullest. It make you so strong that you take your failure to your stride and at the same time also celebrate someone's victory. If you win, you win, if you loose, you learn. And why should one run away from learning at all!
Siya, keep up the sportsmanship! Mommy loves you!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Focus and Passion
Today, while i was discussing at my work place with my boss, something really clicked me and made me question myself on what actually am I doing.
I am always been drawn to a lot of things, it's because people think I enjoy rush I feel when I am trying something new. The 80-20 rules applies here also. You might be able to learn 80% of a skill in 20% of the time it would take to master it. That quick progress is addictive and fun. This is exactly what has happened with me too.
It is only then I realized that in work, jumping from one thing to the next doesn’t necessarily pay off. You would land up in competition with people who have focused on one thing much longer than you have. You loose on competition!!! That is the reason focus is very important. One of the rewards of being really great at something is that eventually you’ll have the time and luxury of being able to try something else professionally.
And how does one ever figure out what should he focus on? It should be something that you are really passionate about (remember 3 idiots). Focus is important, but what happens when the path you’ve taken is more difficult or longer than you anticipated? That is where passion really come into picture. Passion can keep you from quitting when you feel like there’s no end in sight. Passion can help you enjoy the road to your destination enough that you don’t have to only rely on your focus to drive you.
These two things are good enough to rock your career right? :-)
I am always been drawn to a lot of things, it's because people think I enjoy rush I feel when I am trying something new. The 80-20 rules applies here also. You might be able to learn 80% of a skill in 20% of the time it would take to master it. That quick progress is addictive and fun. This is exactly what has happened with me too.
It is only then I realized that in work, jumping from one thing to the next doesn’t necessarily pay off. You would land up in competition with people who have focused on one thing much longer than you have. You loose on competition!!! That is the reason focus is very important. One of the rewards of being really great at something is that eventually you’ll have the time and luxury of being able to try something else professionally.
And how does one ever figure out what should he focus on? It should be something that you are really passionate about (remember 3 idiots). Focus is important, but what happens when the path you’ve taken is more difficult or longer than you anticipated? That is where passion really come into picture. Passion can keep you from quitting when you feel like there’s no end in sight. Passion can help you enjoy the road to your destination enough that you don’t have to only rely on your focus to drive you.
These two things are good enough to rock your career right? :-)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Power of Social Media for Business
Social Media - is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers (Source - Wikipedia).
Social Media is a very exciting medium offering a lot of ways to you as business owner, to engage the masses in marketing efforts.
For me, the new Web 2.0 acts as a social amplifier. This allows anyone to become a author (blogs), or a journalist or a actor(video) as well. In fact, during the terror attack in Mumbai, one of my friends (very bold I must say) clicked photographs and uploaded them on web even prior to news channels. That is also journalism. With this, one as a business owner has a complete different way of marketing.
The most important step is to leverage the powerful social media sites to your advantage as you get unlimited real estate spaces for free to establish yourself. Create profiles on the major powerhouses like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Youtube. All you have to do is participate. You can do this by having your own blog where you post quality content that is useful. Update your blog regularly and distribute them as feeds to your accounts on other major social media sites. My boss does that everyday (emergic.org)! Users can add these feeds and view them in their news reader of choice.
A big mistake that happens many a times is people create these web properties and do not update them or maintain them. (I feel rather ashamed to say but I did that for my blog too). The strongest aspect of social media is its virality, news spreads here with word of mouth. If your offering have value, the best way to market the same is via Social Media !
Social Media is a very exciting medium offering a lot of ways to you as business owner, to engage the masses in marketing efforts.
For me, the new Web 2.0 acts as a social amplifier. This allows anyone to become a author (blogs), or a journalist or a actor(video) as well. In fact, during the terror attack in Mumbai, one of my friends (very bold I must say) clicked photographs and uploaded them on web even prior to news channels. That is also journalism. With this, one as a business owner has a complete different way of marketing.
The most important step is to leverage the powerful social media sites to your advantage as you get unlimited real estate spaces for free to establish yourself. Create profiles on the major powerhouses like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Youtube. All you have to do is participate. You can do this by having your own blog where you post quality content that is useful. Update your blog regularly and distribute them as feeds to your accounts on other major social media sites. My boss does that everyday (emergic.org)! Users can add these feeds and view them in their news reader of choice.
A big mistake that happens many a times is people create these web properties and do not update them or maintain them. (I feel rather ashamed to say but I did that for my blog too). The strongest aspect of social media is its virality, news spreads here with word of mouth. If your offering have value, the best way to market the same is via Social Media !
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