Technology Articles Blog
Studies show that more effort is devoted to software maintenance (including software enhancement, adaption to new technologies and bug fixing) than for software development activities (that is about 40% for analysis + design + implementation). According to Boehm, the total effort spend during the software development life cycle is as follows – The following deductions…
Software Engineering is and will be the backbone and driving force behind the technological advancements that we enjoy and that will lead us to greater realms of information and knowledge management. Its good for us to refresh our basics and foundations. Software Engineering is a discipline which was conceptualized, developed and is constantly reviewed for…
A system analyst is a person of multifaceted role who has to deal with each and every function of a system. He is involved in the process right from the development of such a computer system. Other professionals in the computer field include programmers, hardware specialists etc who are concerned with only their limited jobs….
A system analyst is a person who conducts a methodical study and evaluation of various aspects related to business to identify the desired objectives and work out procedures to attain them. The system analyst is a person with unique skills – common sense, a structured framework and a disciplined approach to solving problems are a…
Product requirements need to be treated with suspicion as if they really needed for the essential capability for a product release. Always prioritize product requirements and keep the bare minimum and most needed requirements on the top of the product backlog with fine-grained description of the requirements which could be easily implemented using any development…
One would think that the a product’s success is directly proportional to the amount of complexity that it offers. In other words, majority of people think that a software product could be successfull only if it buries the user with complex features and functionalities. However it has been proven that the rule of thumb is…
Agile software development methodology is suitable for time-boxed iterative system development scenarios. The software product is released as various versions or releases, typically in time-boxes of a month. Agile development assumes and welcomes delays and late requirements or scope changes even during development/testing phase! Agile software development might not be suitable for all software development…
The standard Reengineering principles are as follows – 1. Organize work around its end results, not tasks According to this principle, it is optimal to determine the work’s end result rather than dividing the work into small tasks & units. We try to rearrange the work process so that a single person can perform all…
Companies are doing reengineering since they want to remain stable in the dynamic business environment while facing changing strategies, financial crisis due to weak / poor / outdated business processes, technological changes, change in customer demands & business competition. Everyone is going for reengineering since it usually provides a quick fix for the present problem…
Consider the case of approving a loan application. In the manual process, it takes 6 persons and considerable amount of time to accept the details, calculating risks and repayment capabilities and letting the application trail through hands of various functional levels. But, when we reengineer the above process, the whole process may be converted to…
While reengineering a business enterprise, we create a process based organization structure for the enterprise to avoid the inefficiencies and time wasting business process cycles as in a functions based organization. ie – the business process information systems and the enterprise wide information infrastructure are integrated in such a way that the people of various functions…
The three basic approaches to reengineering are as follows – 1. STREAMLIING 2. INTEGRATING 3. TRANSFORMING 1. Streamlining – Streamlining approach to reengineering the business offers a basic, segmented, quick-fix methodology for reengineering. It cleans up and treats symptoms but doesn’t necessarily transform a process nor find a cure for a bad process. It doesn’t…
We can generalize Business Process Reengineering (BPR) efforts as an eight step process as follow – Step 1: Formulate / Modify business visions, policies, objectives Step 2: Formulate / Modify business strategies according to changing customer requirements, technology changes and competition Step 3: Analyze the existing business process cycles & workflows and determine how they…
Re-engineering or Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is way of rethinking or redesigning the existing business systems both in technical and behavioral terms. The ultimate goal of BPR is to continuously improve the business process cycles so that a total quality is built to the business system, its processes & workflows that reflects as high quality products…
A classic example would be the project my company executed before the formal PM processes were implemented. The project’s core requirement was to generate reporting system for Medical Underwriting process. There was no Risk Planning for sure, otherwise the company would not have gone through two major design changes and the most worse cases of…
Suppose you called a meeting with your project team, various experts and the stakeholders, to start the risk planning process. One of the senior people asks, “Why are we doing this, anyway? It’s your job to deliver this project — are you saying that the project is already in danger of going down the tubes?”…
EMV is a statistical concept (with a defined formula) which calculates average outcome when there is uncertainty in the final outcome (more than one possible outcome), where as Decision Tree model is an enabling analysis tool to represent the available decision choices as decision tree with their monetary value and probability of occurrence. So I…
Project size and Project Risk: Another interesting topic in Project Management world. From my experience with software development, I think that project risk increases with the size of the project (I guess the size of the product would be directly proportional to the project size). Here is the reason – Consider that software product consists…
Interesting question as I wonder this situation (Risk of failure due to interpersonal issues) is often less addressed anywhere. I shall address the situation using formal approach. Definition of Risk and symptoms: I would consider that the Risk (Project failure due to interpersonal issues within the team or between the team and other stakeholders) is already…
What kind of team-building exercises and/or motivational practices have you used, or participated in? Would you recommend them for use by others? Have you been involved in a project that did not use such an activity or practice, but could have benefited from it? Team building experience: The crux of all the team building methods are…
One of the major Software Quality issue that I experienced is with product xyz which my current employer deployed as the Version control and Change control system (SCCM). xyz is one of the major players (not the top performer) which offers composite package of Version control and Software Change Control management (SCCM). Our company was…
Define one or two aspects of IT product quality that should be considered when planning software project activities. How can they be measured? What are the foreseeable consequences of poor quality from your example(s)? How can the negative consequences be avoided? Interesting question. Some of the most important software quality aspects are – Scope aspect of quality that…
What quality programs, formal or informal, have you experienced in your work? How well do you feel they were implemented? What was the level of management involvement? If you have not experienced working in such an environment, what would you look for to determine whether a company’s quality program was working? I have had experience…
Describe how you would go about finding the root cause of unsatisfactory Earned Value measurements on a project, and what measures you might take to bring the project back into plan. Please be specific. Let’s say that two members of the team, working on unrelated tasks, have both run significantly over schedule in the same…
How do you feel about the concept of such time accounting for technology professionals? (e.g. compared to just reporting progress via e-mail or a progress reporting form.) I guess, this is one the easiest ways to track actual cost/effort estimates for any IT project, so best suited for IT professionals. Reporting progress via email or…
System Background (circumstances):Most of the employers uses a web based time logging application that falls into the category of time attendance systems that we are addressing in this discussion. The goal of the system is to track employee hours spend during a working day under various project heads. The idea is that the top management…
I guess, since we have lesser amount of time left (6 weeks as opposed to 1 year), I would certainly let the sponsor know that we need to utilize ‘Crashing‘ method to compress the schedule and would make sure that the sponsor is willing to put in money for extra resources to do the remaining…
If you were managing a software development project that was a year away from completion and the project sponsor asked you to cut a month from the schedule, what would you tell him or her? What factors would you consider? How would you determine an answer? I would warn him about increased cost in terms…
One of the projects that I executed for one of my employers was an internal employee goal tracking system. The system enables employees from CEO to bottom level, enter their goals supporting their superior’s goals. According to user levels, there is ability to view/edit/approve/reject goals and there are mechanisms to conduct performance management. This project…
Change in IT projects’ life cycle is inevitable. This points at the importance of establishing means to identify, control and document change in a formal approach. There will be changes in Technology, resources and organizational priorities. Equally important is change requests that initiates from the customer/user. In my experience with software development, these change requests…
Project background: Developer xyz was in the middle of a project that went several scope changes while in UAT. The project is about implementing capability in the current Underwriting software to do pre-issue Medical Underwriting. The project was initiated by client request to modify the software to account for some new insurance product feature. The system…
I would prefer the mind mapping technique to arrive at WBS (work break down structure), due to my liking for problem solving by visualization and modeling techniques. Another reason to like that technique is that it is very much similar to various modeling tools that we use during the System Analysis phase of product development…
Project description: Project for xyz that included development, maintenance and enhancements to the official web site and web-based intranet applications that supported integrated work flows within various departments. I was leading a team of team members including developers, web-designer and Mr X. Communication Issue: During my tenure leading the project, I have encountered situations where I had…
Project Management skill is very important in information management area. Let me paint a historical (early 2000) projet lead role where I was responsible for managing the E-governance project for the state of Maharashtra, India. Let me frankly state that, we had no defined project management process in place that adheres to PMBOK guidelines. The project processes…
Strategic alignment of IT resources – A case study in Grocery industry (Part 2) Japan UK Spain US Effect of economic situation The effect of recession has prompted Japanese to be more cautious while selecting grocery stores to shop. This situation is breeding ground for underdeveloped private label market in Japan to capitalize…
Strategic Alignment of IT Resources Grocery Industry Kathleen Chan, Deepesh Joseph, Raymond Jones, Paul Walleck Introduction To investigate how and why grocery companies are aligning their information and communication resources (ICT?s) (hardware, software, networks, databases, service offerings, processes, and portal layers) around a focal strategy. Grocery Industry Introduction • NAICS 445110: Supermarkets and Other Grocery…
Before addressing the question, it would be beneficial if we understand what baselining and re-baselining is. Baselining is the common project management method where we lay down the cost and effort estimates and schedules based on assumptions that we have at hand. Once baseline is created, project plan is laid out based on this baseline….
GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide is very extensive and gives us clear details of federal IT initiatives. The guide, together with OMB circular and IT dashboard web site gave some important hints towards how concerned and vigilant is US government in reviewing and evaluating Federal IT projects. The Cost estimating guide highlights customized methods…
If Rohr would have written his book in the present year, it would have a clear shift from the focus on defining what a perfect public administrative function is (which focused on employees themselves) to defining how a public administration be made more fruitful in satisfying the original essence of Constitution to bring about effective…
This reading materials as listed in the Bibliography, sets the stage for deeply analyzing the origins of the most long lasting government setup of the world and how does one appreciate Lincoln’s far reaching vision of – ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – as related to various points of…
Federal IT Dashboard
Offshore outsourcing is a highly debated topic. It would be nice if we reflect on the reasons that has lead to offshore outsourcing – 1. Highly skilled workforce for cheap labor – Most of the developing countries offers education that is highly specialized and with focus on international job economy. Difference in dollars and x…
Some tips will be – 1. Make a point that one would not visit web sites such as mass advertising web sites as they are usually infectious with ad-wares and browser hijackers 2. Switching on those pop-up blockers. This would reduce the chances of a malicious ad-ware/spyware process getting run. most of the web sites…
The educational system should revise the curriculum according to the current technology demands in the society and to build creativity of students. I think the engineering schools in US are already doing it. If not, it is sad and the management should take necessary actions to consult the industry and experts to see what subjects…
Intel’s Maloney’s words – “It’s about the Web more than anything. I have young kids …….. doesn’t have access to the Web is overwhelming” – is very striking. OLPC efforts might be an answer to this concern. Strategy and plan alone doesn’t work when we are talking about reforming developing nations, cost effective infrastructure is…
The lesson learned should be lack of effective direction and control in implementing the plan. I remember from IST 601 that we should control technology, reverse should not happen. As wise users of technology, we should devise clear plans as how technology will be used, especially when it is to be used by kids. If…
Here is a nice article on what determines the usage of XO type laptops in developing countries – http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/india/ . The article can be used as a base for understanding how various levels of developing economies see and plan the usage of low-cost computers such as the ones envisioned by OLPC.
I think OLPC program is making a sincere effort with a clear vision from Negroponte. The idea is that it is not the only means to get rid of Digital divide. But carefully implementing it will do a great deal of work in reducing the digital divide. Just by placing the laptops in children’s hands…
I think we should encourage funding on social impact research as it would lead us to explore and find answers to long disputed or rather complex issues. One major area in which funding can be flown in can be reaching out of computers and Internet in mass usage in the rural and village areas (talking…
Java (SunMicroSystems) and ActiveX (Microsoft) are two major technology platforms that has evolved itself a long way from years of R & D and support from the developer groups. In case of Java, Sun has invested a lot of money and effort to develop, innovate, maintain and release Java which can cater to all industry…
700 Mhz band is being developed and utilized with the intention of allowing entrepreneurs with less capital to establish broadband services, since it offers cheap means to setup service. This is the reason for the major players influencing Congress to gain an upper hand so that they kill competition and innovation. The term “public” means…
Again this is an instance of protecting consumer rights and freedom in utilizing the digital medium. The carriers have a very important role in maintaining a healthy pipe that is effectively utilized. There should be efforts to setup regulation and standards to avoid piracy and unauthorized usage of network traffic. At the same time the…
This reminds me of the most common issue – when should government leave the publishing of information to the private?. Intended quality and convenience of service determines the cost of the service. So its straight forward to believe and allow distributors to charge differently for different types of traffic. Faber’s view point is not different…
From the literature and court cases, FCC is less obliged to regulate broadband distributors as common carriers, as “Computer network Information” services are not subject to common carrier telecommunication service regulation under Title II of the federal Communications Act. (NCTA v. Brand X Internet Services et al., U.S. Supreme Court Nos. 04-277 and 04-281, June…
Here is another analysis article on a widely asked question – “Should treaties like the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS agreement be modified so developing countries can ignore software patents without facing WTO retaliatory measures?” Read along.. In my opinion, IPR should be preserved anywhere in the world. Making strict TRIP regulations has its major advantage…
Here is an short and to-the-point article on a most debated topic that I would want everyone to focus on now – “Should the Linux and Open Source communities be protected from software patent challenges?”. As a matter of fact, if we look deeply into the patents that various companies says Linux Kernel has violated,…
This article is a good resource for those who want to know more about the most raised question – What is the impact of software patents on innovation in the software industry? Read along .. Interesting that I found this online petition against Software Patenting – Petition Against Software Patents. The petition states that Software programs…
This article is a good resource for those who want to know more about the most raised question – Is there a need for legal and technological protection mechanisms that are uniform internationally? Read along .. I reviewed the Betamax case (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)) from Wikipedia. See…
This article is a good resource for those who want to know more about the most raised question – How can the intellectual property community protect their intellectual property without the DMCA safeguards? Read along .. In my opinion, DMCA safeguards are a necessity for the IP community to keep up in business, although we…
This article is a good resource for those who want to know more about the most raised question – Should the prohibition in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against breaking intellectual property safeguards be modified? Read along .. I agree to the general consent that DMCA should be amended to shift its view from complete…