A mid-air scare & a rough landing

30 minutes before our flight landing at Calgary my daughter(Ana) who has a pervious history of SVT suffered a rapid irregular heart rate. By the time we touched down at Calgary international airport her heart rate had crossed 200 and could no longer be detected via an oximeter.  We were rushed to the emergency at the Alberta Children’s hospital right from the aircraft, bypassing all immigration and customs. The staff was most caring and considerate. After a nervous and painstakingly long 15 min procedure they were able to get Ana’s heart rate back to normal.

I will be forever grateful and deeply thankful to the folks at the Alberta Children’s Hospital  and the Canada Border Services Agency.

So while Calgary might not be as sunny as SFO, its defiantly ‘warm’ !

Center Vs Centre 

I have been Canada quite a few times earlier but never been as a keen observer as my 9 year old daughter. One of the first things she spotted was how ‘center’ was spelled in Canada as ‘Centre’ . Of course there were oother things like Miles VS Kilometers and Pounds Vs Kilograms, but this somehow struck her most.

Calgary is a small town and there is kind of laid back attitude compared to the Silicon Valley. Its kind of a humble environment, not to be confused with slow or lazy. I quickly learnt that Calgarians are very active.

A never ending home run

After a mid air scare and a rough landing things have started to calm down a bit but its still far from settled.  By far the biggest issue has been finding a place to call home. What i have heard so far is the available rental occupancy rate is just 15% of the demand. For now I cannot validate that, but I can certainly say that its not easy to find a place to rent out irrespective of your budget. Of course there are luxury high-rise condos available for an exorbitant price.After living in a two story house in the heart of Silicon Valley a high-rise might not be a bad idea. Time will judge that and I will save that for a different blog post.

As for this blog, Around the CHAOS will still be active but of-course it will now cover a wider range of topics. Also as before the views and opinions expressed are solely mine and do not reflect my Organization,investors or my clients.

So what’s common between Scarlett Johansson, A Foxconn supplier in China & Wired journalist Mat Honan? They all got hacked!

While an enormous amount of time and money is invested in enterprise security its amazing that how less we think about securing our personal digital life. Thankfully, securing your passwords is neither complex nor expensive. In fact you can setup a very secure system in five easy steps for free.

Why would you get hacked?

Hackers are motivated by a variety of reasons ranging from fun,money or vengeance.If you are not moderately famous,rich or inflectional, the chances of you getting hacked might be relatively less but not unlikely. Regardless of  the chances the consequences can be particular devastating, specially in this connected world where we have so much information online. For example a couple of years back if someone were to hack my personal email, they would have got instant access to much more than just a bunch of old email. They would have good access to a bunch of personal documents, my bank account information numbers, they would have easily hijacked my online identity on social network sites. If they were really creative they would have got me fired and ruined my reputation beyond repair.

Secure for free with Lastpass & Google Authenticator in 5 easy steps

1. List what you want to secure – Prepare a list of sites that you want to secure and generate some really good passwords for them. There are number of resources that can help you generate secure passwords. Here is something to start with http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/06/the-ultimate-guide-for-creating-strong-passwords/ .Alternatively you could use a password generator. Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed with the need to remember each of them. When you are using a password manager like Lastpass, it will remember the passwords for you and also manage them.The Lastpass master password is the only the only password that you will have to ever remember.
2. Download and Install Lastpass – Lastpass binary installer is available across platforms including Mac,Linux & PC.For a complete list https://lastpass.com/misc_download.php. I personally like the Google chrome extension version.I can access it across PCs and Macs seamlessly.If you like to carry your privacy on a portable USB, you can also install the portable USB version that supports both portable Chrome and portable Firefox.
3. Setup & Configure Lastpass – If you do not already have a Lastpass account create one. You can do it either form the Lastpass site or directly from the browser extension. It is really important that you choose this password carefully. This is your master password. It needs to be both secure and something you can remember (without writing it down or storing elsewhere).The master password is the only way to access your password vault and Lastpass does not store this.
4. Add Sites & Test your passwords – Next add sites to your vault that you want to secure. This is as easy as visiting the sites on your browser with the last pass extension installed.You can also add the sites manually at the Lastpass website.Once the sites have been added to Lastpass, every time you visit the site, Lastpass will populate the authentication for you.if you prefer, you can also manually retrieve your passwords from the Lastpass password vault online.Additionally you can create groups within your vault to organize your sites and passwords further.Lastpass also provides a unique security check feature that allows you test how secure your passwords are across individual sites..Once you have setup and added your sites to Lastpass, I would strongly recommenced you to run the security test. You might be surprised by the results. Take corrective action if required.
5.  Enable Two Factor Authentication using Google Authenticator – You have setup secure passwords for your sites and have configured Lastpass to track them. Now imagine if the hacker were to get access to your Lastpass master password. Lastpass allows you setup multi factor authentication using Google Authenticator. Once enabled, in addition to the master password you will also need a pin to access your Lastpass password vault. The pin is generated by the Google Authenticator app which comes free both for iOS and Android devices. You will first need to install this on your mobile device and then register the Lastpass application with the Google Authenticator app on your device.You could take an extra step and enable Google Authenticator for your other supported applications as well, but at the very least you must enable it for your Lastpass account.

You can use this method with any other password manager, but I personally like Lastpass. It’s free, extremely secure and supports multi-factor authentication.

No matter how much sense it made to the IT team on how we structured our sprints based on technical features or capabilities we still had the challenge of getting our key stakeholders i.e the business testers to participate in our sprints. So back we went to the whiteboard to figure out the missing link and then there it was – the sprints either independently or as whole for the release were missing a viable product that would add business value. Yes we were bringing in tons of data and writing really complex ETLs and interfaces to extract and manipulate the data, but the actual business functionality was getting released in future releases and further planned out sprints.In an ideal world we still would have been able to succeed with our current planned approach, however in the real world we could sense the risk of our stakeholder’s patience running out. So we replanted our sprints and releases focusing the minimum viable product (MVP).

What is a MVP

A MVP is a subset of the scope or the feature list that has a tangible business value that can be used by the end users, client or customers. The way you define and identify a MVP will vary with the type project or product. However what is constant is that these are a minimum list of features that justify the investment of time and resources for the sprints early on. A minimum viable product is different from a minimum desirable product. A minimum desirable product goes beyond viability to include more scope and features from the requirement or scope document. Ideally you should plan a agile release or sprints with a MVP progressively moving to the MDP state in the next iterations that would deliver maximum business benefit and customer delight. Did I hear someone mention scope creep? , I will pass it for now for a different discussion.

How do you identify the MVP

Don’t start building or executing your sprints until you have identified your MVP. The below 5 step process to identify and define a MVP worked for us

1. Identify stakeholders who are responsible for defining the MVP. Based on your project, it can be either the product owner or the business sponsor along with any other key team members. What is important is that this individuals or the group is identified so they can make decisions around the MVP.
2. Use the scope document or the product backlog as the starting guide and run this with the sprint teams to plan out the MVP for your sprints or releases. An MVP technically should be a subset of this scope document or the product backlog. if this is not the case then you need to go back and get your product backlog and /or your scope document in order.
3. Limit the number of interdependent features that you include in your MVP. Focus on the viable, but keep the minimum in mind. Having too many interdependent feature will limit your ability to do so.
4. Prototype your MVP to get stakeholder feedback before your start your actual development, build and execution. In certain cases, having multiple MVP prototypes will help stakeholder choose the most suitable one.
5. Align your MVP with the strategic business goal that the initiated project or product supports. You need to be able to build upon this MVP as you move forward with your sprints and releases. Yes, an MVP may be a moving target, but you should not have to redefine your MVP from the scratch.

We are still a long way to go with respect to perfecting this process, however with a couple successful releases behind us, we feel confident that our approach works and excited as we move forward with it. What we learned in the process was that the concept of MVP assumed greater significance as we roll out projects and initiatives using an Agile framework.

Image courtesy Pictofigo

I have often felt guilty that I do not read books as often as I used to read a few years back. I now have a excuses from being time constrained to being overwhelmed by the information overload. One of the things that I had for 2012 was to pick up at least one book a month and read it. Rework was on my to-be-read list for a while now. What intrigued me most about the book was the reviews, people either just adored the book or rejected it outright. There were very few moderates.

The book is by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the guys who started basecamp and invented the popular programming framework Ruby on Rails. The book is not their story but what they learned in the process.

You might be tricked into assuming the book is for startups or entrepreneurs only. Well, it’s NOT. Of course there are sections in the book that deals with specific situations that entrepreneurs and startups face like funding, hiring and PR.But it is for anyone who is looking to cutting the rework and start working on things that matter,projects that make a difference or setting up business that add value and generate wealth. Its not a guide on how to quit your job.

The book talks about being lean and not to measure the success by size and bulk. The authors advocate lean organizations and teams that are easier to pivot to change. This is also evident from the size of the book which is quite lean – under 250 pages of actual content. At best the book can be described as a series of excellent blog posts that are stitched nicely together, but that’s what makes it an excellent read.

Overall, the book wins with me. However if I were to pick my 5 favorite -

1. Learning from your successes – Learning from your mistakes has been overrated. What you learn from your mistakes is what NOT to do.(which sometimes can be valuable). You actually learn from your successes. Some may find this arrogant, but it’s not that you will never make mistakes. You will make mistakes, but don’t over obsess over them. Move on.
2. Inspiration is perishable – Your inspiration does not last forever, what inspires you today may not ignite passion the same way tomorrow. Don’t shelf your inspiration, act now.
3. Scratch your own itch – Looking for that business or great product idea? Find solutions to problems that impact you. The authors did that exactly and created basecamp to solve their project management problem
4. Edit Ruthlessly – Its not the number of pages or the word count that make the difference, neither does it help to have a large number of service offerings if you can do justice. Be a curator or master chef. The first thing these guys do is edit and they do it ruthlessly devoid of any emotions. They trim the menu to carry only the specialties.
5. The By-Product - The by-product if often left unrealised and ignored. The book rework itself is a by product of running creating and running 37signals.

Above all the thing that I really liked about the book was its quite different from your standard business and marketing books that I despise to the core. It’s one of those books i’d probably keep on book shelf to re-read often.

As Seth Godin puts it very aptly in his single line review – “Ignore the book at your own peril”

PS – I have edited this review ruthlessly to keep it under 600 words

Traditionally disaster recovery (DR) solutions have been both expensive and often time consuming to roll-out.The solution often tends to carry around mass which makes it difficult and costly to both to implement initially and to adapt to rapidly technology or economic environments.

An agile DR solution that is built around the cloud aims to address these very problems by focusing on being lean and flexible

The Agile (Lean) approach

The most important part of any DR solution is to achieve business continuity in case of disaster resulting in a system downtime and reduce any recovery times. This involves securing your business critical data and ensuring its availability as well as restoring critical business and operational processes. As such instead of going in for a big bang approach for a DR solution where you aim for a 100% fail over it might make business sense to approach this in an agile and iterative manner.

Let’s break this down

• Business Critical Data – The core concept behind any DR solution is sustainability in case of a disaster and fall back on the primary site as soon as possible, with that in mind do you really want to include your complete data set as part of the DR solution? Probably not.Have a strategy for your different data sets including your master data, your transactional data and your archived data. Depending on the complexity and the IT landscape this data might be distributed or reside with the same database.The idea here is to identify your business critical data that will enable your business to operate. This needs to part of your DR strategy first.
• A Product Backlog of Your Business & Operational Process – As with data, it is equally important to identify the critical business and operational processes that your enterprise will need to be able to operate. This will need to go hand in hand while you identify your critical data sets and system. The systems and data sets that will eventually be part of your DR solution scope will be the ones that are needed to support these critical processes. Think of these process or capabilities as your product backlog. What is critical gets higher priority than others, for instance while your order processing system will be need to part of your DR solution do you really need the systems to support internal procurement process? well, you may or may not depending on your business.
• Break it Down – Technically, smaller wins will increase your probability of success as compared to the big bang approach. For instance if you are aiming for a full fledged DR capability at a remote site in a different geography, you may want to start first by just implementing a remote backup solution and then build upon that to go in for a complete standby. Be cautious here, you do not want to overdo this and decompose your goals too much or too often. I am not a big fan of thumb rules, but I will do an exception here. Break it down to a delivery item that adds value.
• Test Often but Test Agile – Test and validate your DR procedures regularly. You do want to wait till an actual disaster happens to test the effectiveness of your DR solution. At the same time it important that you have a iterative plan that has a DR validation built in periodically. Dont disrupt your existing business process or system to validate or test DR.

Leveraging The Cloud

Building your DR solution over the cloud can help cut the mass and add agility for around the DR solution. It also gives you the flexibility around the actual solution itself, for instance you may opt for a active(warm), always-on DR solution or may go in just for an on-demand passive solution.

Critical factors that influence a lean DR solution built around the cloud could include

• The Time Factor – The essence of having an agile approach to DR is the ability to roll-out the DR solution quickly. You don’t need to invest time and money to setup the upfront massive infrastructure to get going. Starting off using a PaaS or a SaaS model which would host and manage your DR site and solution might work just as well.
• The Cost Factor – One immediate advantage of implementing a DR solution over the cloud is the cost. A DR solution over the cloud which leverages an on-demand model would be more cost effective to roll-out as opposed  to a traditional in house or a even a hosted solution. It is not just the reduction in costs that is a factor here, but also value add that a cloud based business resilience solution brings in by leveraging technologies like server virtualization and rapid data replication to reduce recovery times.
• The Change Factor – DR solutions build on and leveraging the cloud have the ability to pivot quickly.These solutions can be scaled up or down rapidly in response to changing business dimensions. Also since there is seldom any upfront investment on technology, the dependency on the same is also significantly reduced.This allows the solution to be both lean and flexible.
• Solution Robustness – You can quickly and cost effectively build a DR solution that involves Multiple DR Sites via the cloud. With on-demand instance provisioning you can add robustness to your DR solution by having your instances spread across geographic regions. Under a traditional DR solution this was part of the trade-off that organizations had to make due to the cost and time involved.
• A Managed Service Model – Sometimes it might make sense to have a managed model for your DR solution.Under a could based managed model, you let the provider manage the complete disaster recover solution for you, including the initial setup and the ongoing validation of your DR process.

As always we are all ears on listening to your experiences on implementing DR solutions over the cloud. Jump in.

Like debt in general, where it is incurred to meet valid business objectives. There may also be valid cases where this technical debt is incurred for perfectly valid business reasons.Regardless of the reason, debt eventually needs to be paid off and a technical debt is not an exception as well.

However, unlike the financial debt, the technical debt is almost impossible to measure accurately.You do not have specific interest rates or payment schedules but nevertheless it is like any other debt and needs to be paid off (except in a few rare cases which we will touch upon later)

So How Does a Project Incur Technical Debt?

There may be a variety of causes but a few prominent ones could include

As the year 2011 wraps-up, I wanted to take this opportunity to share the top 10 (and interesting) technology and management trends and areas that dominated the scene in 2011. I also touched upon briefly what you can expect to watch within these spaces  the next year, 2012. The most significant technology space to watch out for me personally in 2012 would be the Green Technology space, However I did not specifically include it in the below list. Why? I believe each of the trends listed below will be influced on how Green technology evolves in 2012. Just a mention on this list would not do justice and pehpahs I would rather save this for a different post.

While this list is mainly based on my personal experiences and interests in 2011,  it is also inspired by social network interactions.

1. Agile Management makes further inroads- Agile management continued to make inroads and gain acceptance in 2011. Organizations recognized and realized its benefits. They even adopted various hybrid versions of agile even if they did not go completely agile. They tweaked agile to make it work for their custom needs like reporting, tracking and planning. We also saw PMI finally starting their Agile Project management certification program.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While PMI will continue to be one of the most accepted organization certifying and training agile management. There will be other leaders as well. Scrum Alliance for one, which is currently the leader in Scrum training and certification. Agile adoption might also see wider adoption extending beyond the traditional software development space, though i feel it will be still very much be within the IT industry (mostly).

2. Disaster, Risk and Security Management – While these have always been key areas of management, they become more valuable when managing in uncertain times and 2011 was no exception.Industry specific surveys have highlighted the importance of organization managed both risk and security.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – With computing over the cloud being the frst choice with organization, security, risk and disaster management will possibly be one of the keystones that holds the enterprise’s cloud architecture together.

3. Cloudy with AWS – If  you have to name one company that has propelled cloud adoption it has to to Amazon’s Web Services. The company continued to mature its cloud offerings both directly by extending its platform services across availability regions as well as adding innovative features like supporting multiple network interfaces with Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – There is little doubt that amazon will continue to be a leader within the enterprise cloud providers, it will be an interesting space to watch out how challengers like Rackspace for instance will play. Of course Google has been eying this space and will look for consolidation with its cloud offerings for the enterprise.

4. SME Focused Management – This has been the subject of a never-ending debate, project managers or managers in general required to be a subject matter expert. A significant majority of ‘successful’ initiatives I came across in 2011 were led by managers with significant subject matter expertise. Needless to say the demand for these managers was also significantly higher.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While there isn’t much to watch out in this space in 2012 or in the near future except for the fact that the debate will continue to rage on. I for one believe that with uncertain times and agile management the talk of the day , the demand managers with the subject matter expertise will outpace supply.

5. Social Media & Google Plus – 2011 was also the year when you could not possibly ignore Social media. Time magazine has the person of the year as “The Protester” , aided with social media. Social media moved beyond sharing updates and pictures to  shaping both geographies as well as brands. Google stormed back into the social media scene with Google+ and they did their homework this time around. With around 70 million active users in 6 months, it looks like they have finally managed to get social media right this time.

Watch this space in 2012 (for)  -  I hate to put my foot in my mouth but 2012  might be just as well the year of Google+. There is also the much anticipated IPO from Facebook. An interesting trend here would also be the segmentation within the social media space with niche palyers like Instagram, Path & Pintrest all fighting it out for spotlight.

6. Managing Big Data – The systems and technology to manage Big Data finally seemed to have arrived in 2011. Thanks to cloud computing, both platform based like Amazon – AWS and service based like cloudera, the technology to exploit these huge datasets are now available beyond large organizations that could afford to deploy multiple clusters of hardware.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – With the systems and technology evolved, what would be interesting to watch is how organizations ultimately use this data. A small number of organizations have already started doing this, but 2012 will definitely be the year when organizations finally start to exploit these datasets to provide better products and services.

7. Email’s waning its majority – One of my personal favourites,  in 2011 though email continued to be the primary channel for communication for the enterprise, its dominance seemed to be threatened if not completely shaken. Collaboration tools, instant messaging and social media services all played their part in taming the email beast. 2011 is also the year when a large listed technology company went cold turkey and completely banned internal email.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While I am pretty certain that 2012 will be no different than 2011 for email with respect to its waning majority, what will be interesting to watch is the organizations that will adopt alternatives and those alternatives themselves.

8. The Statups and IPOs – 2011 was the year for startups and IPOs. There were some really innovative startups like Instagram ,Quora, Launchrock and Stocktwits to name a few. Unfortunately 2011 was also the year for ridiculous IPO offerings, with Groupon leading the pack. While most have them have been subject to market correction since then, there are still some overvalued items out there.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – Facebook of course will come up with possibly the biggest tech IPO. There are also list of startups that will try to ride on the IPO wave along with Facebook. With a little inspiration, luck and caution you actually might profit from this trend. Despite uncertain times, watch out for the innovate startups that will continue to get the much needed funding and possibly change the way we work and play.

9. Enterprise Project Program Portfolio Management Systems – The EP3M space seemed less crowded this year, however there are still no clear leaders. While Microsoft and Oracle dominate this space with MS Project Suite and Primavera respectively, they are yet to be established are clear leaders within the quadrant . There were some clear challengers this year specially the companies with on-demand, SAAS and cloud based offerings which both the front runners seemed to lack, at least in 2011.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) - This will probably be an interesting space to watch in 2012 as well. Will the dominant players go in for a on-demand agile model or will one of the challengers finally scale-up at an Enterprise level to threaten the front runners.

10. Apple & Steve Jobs – I had to include this one, no matter how much you love to hate apple, they do come up with the most innovative and stable products. This was obviously a mixed year for the tech giant. While the world will continue to miss Steve for his innovation and vision, Apple did prove (once again) that the iPhone continues to be the most popular smart-phone till date.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – The television revolution. As apple plans to revolutionize televisions like they way it revolutionized the cellphones and music, this space and Apple in particular will be an interesting space to watch in 2012.

So did I get it close for 2011? What do you think will be the most interesting space to watch out for in 2012. Something that I missed?

I have been using Facebook (actively) since 2007 and Twitter since 2009. I also remember completing my profile on LinkedIn early 2007. All of them got me excited but nothing as much as Google + when it launched early this year. I am not saying that Google+ is going to replace all or any of them going forward but what I can say for sure it is going to eat up a significant portion of the social media content out there. Though I was an early adopter, over the last couple of months I have been using Google+ extensively and have been liking it a lot. I think its a simple,uncluttered and does a good job to cut out the social media chaos for me. Here’s why -

Finding Information – Finding information on a specific topic or people who share a common interest is much more fun and effective on Google+. Yes, you do have groups,lists and pages on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin but both the results and the interface are quite better on Google+. This is where the noise factor comes in, personally when I have tried following or joining groups on the other networks and it has always come with its share noise and the painstaking task of eliminating the noise from information. Sure Google+ is not completely noise free, but it does a much better job comparatively. Quite a few special interest communities have also sprung up all across Google+.

Unique Features – Google+ debuted with some really cool and unique features like sparks, hangouts and circles. Circles allow you to almost completely control how you share information with people in your circles as well as publicly. While twitter almost completely lacks this feature, Facebook’s implementation of lists has been sketchy so far.

Sparks (Saved Searches) on the other hand is a more sophisticated implementation of Google alerts where you can save searches of you favourite topics on Google+ as well as across the web. This adds a more social element to your searches which  is more effective than the tradtional search.

Hangouts is a completely feature brought in to Google+ where you setup a spontaneous video chat session with people from your circles. It is both fun and easy to use. You can setup a hangout with a few clicks. If there is one thing that I don’t like about hangouts is the restriction of having 10 people. Again the restriction of 10 participants per hangout may help in cutting out the chaos. What helps though is that you can use third party tools to record and share Google+ hangouts. I am quite hopeful that Google will have this as an inbuilt feature in the near future.

There is also lack of those annoying apps that you keep pooping up on Facebook adding on to the noise factor. While this may also be due to the fact that Google+ is quite young and Google has not made public all of its APIs.

Seamless Integration – There is a strong possibility that Google is already part of your overall web usage experience and it is all about adding to that user experience. Soon after its launch Google has been integrating Google+ with all its services like search, reader and YouTube. It takes the complexity out of finding, reading and sharing information.It is also very well integrated with the Chrome browser by providing official Google+ plug-ins. In the coming days these integrations will only increase and if you are a google power user you will enjoy the experience even more

A nice short Google+ educational clip

If you are already on Google+ feel free to add me to your circle @ +Sam Palani where I share ideas and posts on a topics ranging from project/program management to photography, from technology to ‘foolish’ investing. If you are not already out there, it’s never late to join in

So while I am most certainly not going to stop using Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, I have only so much time that I allocate to social media and Google + will be having a share of that time. I am sure that would be the case with most active users. How about you?

Here is an excerpt… ( and the original post)

I personally have not been a big fan of Eureka moments and have always believed that ideas don’t happen in Eurekas, but are actually nurtured over over time (Steven Johnson talks about this in his TED talk – Where good ideas come from) But then again there those moments that which can be game changers or path changers that make you take a different perspective.

My Ah Ha moment relates back to a video Steve Jobs where he is addressing a bunch of awestruck, lucky Stanford Grads.Though I am not a big fan of the iOS(yet), the guy inspires me for his innovation, entrepreneurial skills and resilience. In that classic video Mr Jobs talks about  two things – Staying Hungry and Staying Foolish. The later part kind of resonated with me. After all being foolish we can shed our preconceived notions and ask questions which a “wise” person might hold back. Of course this is not, easy but once you are able to ask questions like a fool you quickly see the benefits. In my own experience I have been able to eliminate, evaluate and  and research just by asking questions like a “fool”. Remember again a fool can ask questions without worrying about the consequences.

So there it was my Ah Ha moment – Being Foolish when it mattered,thanks to Mr Jobs and of course Louis making me discover it once again

RIP Champ!