MyLearnings

8 or Bust - Gamification of Learning

2017-05-05T11:26:00.002+05:30

8 Or Bust
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.siddbetter.numbercrunchpaid

Gamification of Learning is a new approach towards making learning fun.

Mobile games have advantages:
1) Easily accessible as everyone has a smartphone of their own.
2) Even parents and grandparents who were never into playing are finding it as a good source of passing time with challenges.
3) We have so many options to download from Play Store.
4) Play it at your leisure, while waiting for the bus, in the metro, waiting for the doctor, in long journeys.

Games are fun, lovable and addicting. So if games are so much fun, why do we not use gaming at our advantage of introducing learning into it. And Mobile games are here to stay for good or bad ...

Humans think they know the best way to learning but little they know of how the brain functions.When we are kids we play games and learn the most till we go to school, stop gaming and start the formal education.

Research are now recognizing this and advocating to introduce the concept of fun, games in learning.

In Siddbetter, we do not make games with motive of teaching something. Instead we make games which takes some basic fundamental concepts of learning and allows you to play and have fun with intuitive learning. Just like chess, which does not teach you anything but makes you think about your steps ahead, build concentration, make strategies to overcome your opponent.

Siddbetter's "8 or Bust" teaches you -

Simple rules of using adding/subtracting numbers to reach numbers in line.
Pattern recognition of match-3 with same numbers/color.
It teaches you concept of even/odd numbers because when the odd number starts appearing the game gets more challenging.
It makes the player think of complements of number to identify quickly the add/subtract compatible numbers.
The patterns can be horizontal/vertical.
It makes you think ahead of your steps so that you can achieve the better pattern.
It requires concentration to be able to find patterns.
Foremost, it provides you a goal of catching as many cute animals like cats, dogs, butterflies...
You compete with your friends for a spot in Leaderboard.

This does not mean, everyone who plays will become the master of multiple skills but the game offers a puzzle and challenge which aids in learning.

e-Learning - New Innovative ways of Learning

2015-02-18T16:44:00.002+05:30

A vision for e-Learning describes a future where the effective use of advanced learning technology will reduce the time to learn without compromising the effectiveness and quality of education. It is where the dream of a personal intelligent tutor for every learner is realized.

E-Learning will enable personal customized learning -
- Anywhere
- Anytime
- Any pace

To meet the vision of the future Architecture the trends can be classified in three main areas:
- Innovative Ways of Learning
- Enabling Pervasive Technologies
- Enabling Infrastructures

This blog I try to list Innovative Ways of learning….
Innovative Ways of Learning
This focuses on methodologies in producing e-Learning where the technological solution is transparent to the user. It emphasizes new ways of making the learning more effective and objective.

-Outcome based learning, learning methodology which focusses on aligning a course based on the final outcome based on standard.
Ex- First Grade State standard “Add and subtract within 20”
So the outcome here is learner should be able to add and subtract within 20, if learner is able to do addition and subtraction to that effect then the goal is achieved. Learner can move to next outcome.

This methodology works with setting up a defined goal and then gives concept and exercise to that goal and in end giving test exercise where learner has to answer these questions requiring students to demonstrate that they have learned the required skills and content. It promotes curricula and assessment based on constructivist methods.

-Collaboration & community, As they real fun is doing things together.
This methodology promotes collaborative way of working, giving rise to the way student projects are structured.
The days of isolated learning is disappearing, giving way to models in which students and their teacher collaborate together and understand address issues objectively with real-life examples by collaboration. The geography and location are also becoming immaterial in this paradigm.

- Project based plan, where learning objective is like a project to facilitate learning in measurable milestone programs followed by assessment to measure success of achievement of the milestone objective.

-Lifelong Learning, Learning never stops. One finishing goal shows next milestone to reach.
Learning is not only limited to curriculum and schools but also for personal, civic, social and employment.
There is high requirement for ways of progressing in life to achieve higher salary, better standards of living, and progress in social ladder. This methodology aims improving for current knowledge and expertise and sets up goal for next promotion and train for the job of tomorrow. It makes the practice of professional development a continuous one.

Ex- It takes up the profile of a software developer and quickly draws up a career plan for him like 2 year senior programmer, 4 years managing capabilities…. The plan may list skills required, available options of certifications …

-Adaptive Learning, All learners are unique in their requirement and their skill to learn.
Adaptive-learning is moving away from traditional mass-teaching based one-for-all learning methodologies. There is increasing trend to model the learning programs based on individual learners’ needs, preferences, and learning goals, that is learning has become more and more personalized and adaptive.

Adaptive Learning is based on some intelligent engine which compiles the course based on the learners IQ, his performance in earlier assessments. The engine adapts the content based on the learner’s behavior – like his assessment score, his last questions’ answer, and his behavior in time…

Ex- During assessment, if learner gives wrong answer to an addition question, the next question could be more simple addition question or showing him answer and then putting similar question again.

-Learning Analytics, Analytics is heart of adaptive and optimized learning. Collection of learner behavior, Measurement, Analysis and subsequent reporting or profiling and using that report of profile to adapt the course, next goal or Next assessment question ….

Leaning Analytics models the learner activity, interaction, assessment results and learner profile to predict and in short-term the adaptive learning by course and content customization, learning personalization and in long-term help in finding the learning opportunities based on the objective map and skills.

-E-Portfolio, is kind of management of record for lifelong learning methodology. It is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user. E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user's abilities and platforms for self-expression. It also record of things that the learner has done over a period of time, and may be directly tied to learner outcomes or rubrics.

E-portfolio is like progressive curriculum vitae of a person.

Mastering a new coding language is very easy

2014-11-06T11:10:00.000+05:30

I know many languages starting with C, C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic, VB.Net, Basic, Pascal, FORTRAN…

Last year, when I started on the venture of developing iPhone games I had to start on a new language (Objective C).

Here, I will try to list few things to keep in mind while learning a new language to make life easier and learning faster.

#1–Language is just tool of the trade. Making programs which solves my problem in efficiently is what matters

I have come across many people who are hung on a language. Freshmen out of collage are advised about the importance of a language. They many a times leave good jobs in search of find a job in search for a specific language. Programming for them is learning syntax of a particular language. They would be list on their experience of how to write for loop, defining arrays …

I have found many people who have spent more than 4 years in one language without knowing more than writing for loops and few simple statements.

Unless, you understand the data structure of a language, different constructs, like hash maps, arrays, and sets … you would stick to solving your problem by just using the arrays where set would have been a better choice.

#2 – 80-20 rule Pareto principle. 20% of syntax makes 80% of language

Each language has 20% most common key constituents. If you learn them you would be able to code 80% of your programming needs.

1. A Hello World Program

2. Compute Program

3. Loops

4. Symbolic Constants

5. Conditionals

6. Arrays

7. I/O Capabilities

8. Functions

If you are able to just learn 8 above topics, you would have mastered 80% of the language for your programming needs.

#3 – Common Constructs

All languages common constructs are designed same. Example- for loop is for in all languages, all languages would have while, do-while constructs for loops.

Their defining would mostly in scoping the loop

In C, for (;;) { } à { } curly brackets are scoping any construct.

Same is the case with PHP, java …

In C, printf("\n"); for printing words…

Java, System.out.format("\n");

PHP, printf("%d", "17,999")

Don''t they look just the same :)

#5 – Save your money. The best resources are free

In my life I have never used any book to learn a language.

All my language learning is hands-on with Google, StackOverflow when I am stuck …

All you can ever learn in language exists somewhere in some site. All you need is to find it. However, you will need to be smart enough to change the things as per your needs to make it run ….

#6 – Create SMART goals.

S.M.A.R.T. goals on the other hand are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Start with a hello world program to set up environment.

And then begin your journey to learn the language with a small but very creative program which would include using functions, for loops , reading and writing files.

If the language includes database then after files you could relace file by a database query and updating.

If you start with same program in language you would be able to relate new language construct with newer one giving you fast-track learning.

It is exactly like how we do in our speaking language where we relate a new language like French with our mother tongue.

Ex- What is eating called in French? What is sleeping called in French …

Ex- How will do this thing like calling function in “C#”. How will I pass parameters to new function?

#7 – Time to Master- Explore uniqueness of the language.

Once you have mastered the average constructs and making easy programs. You will be able to understand other peoples coding.

Now is the time to explore new features of the language and also the complex features.

For this you may google for specific "technical terms" as you now know specifically what to search for.

You may get these things from Git-hubs, Open-Source repositories as they have code of people who have written best of utilities.

You can learn from their codes, their best practices and lot more things specific to language.

That is all there is it to learn a new language …

Happy Learning!!!

Adventure of Tony Dum Dum - My New Game in App Store

2014-10-27T23:18:00.001+05:30

Finally released my new game Adventure of Tony Dum Dum.

Not many people know about the early life of our Tony…

Story goes when Tony was not as famous as he is now. He went totally dum dum over this girl named Ello Icky. Now, Ello Ikcy was not so great looker but a very plain looking intelligent girl. May be that simplicity catch our Tony’s eye?

But Ello Icky’s father, François, is a rugged sailor having travelled round the World. He was mathematical genius and love solving puzzle. He challenged Tony to prove his smartness by solving these mathematical puzzles as he must travel around the world following Ello Icky with his father and win his heart.

Puzzles François lays down are number chips matrix which is between 1 and 9. Now Tony must align them in basic 3 match pattern to break and earn score. If make complicated alignment pattern in “4”, “L”, “T” or 5 he get a booster power which helps him to solve the puzzle.

In the puzzle that number adds or subtract when he move them up or down. He can also align them by adding or subtracting the numbers. But maths was tony weakest link in those days he could not add beyond 9, so Francois gave him allowance and restricted the number addition only to 9. So now chip adding and subtracting will be valid only if it is between 1 and 9.

So begins the Adventure of Tony Dum Dum….

1) Power Animations

a. Fire Ball – Goblet of fire which travel in a line burn everything in its path

b. Sword Keeper – Swords which travels X direction and cuts everything in its path

c. Diamond Crush – Diamond crush which throws diamond and converts others to itself.

2) Swaps – Horizontal swap. Very limited and needs to be used very rarely.

3) Moves – Vertical down– which adds to chips and vertical down – subtracts lower from upper number. Main moves ….

4) Use moves to make “Match-3” larger number combo – 8-8-8 gives higher score than 1-1-1.

5) Complicated patterns gives the powers – 8-8-8-8 gives fire …. L –T (in any perspective) pattern gives powers. L can be standing or sleeping or inverted does not matter – gives power.

6) Higher levels have fun like

a. Freeing Ello Ikcy from prison

b. Moving Tony to a Broadway Castle

c. Get Francois beer down to his cellar

d. Get flower down to Ello icky

7) Kids will love it because of mathematical puzzles like many ways to reach to same number.

2+3 =5, 1+4 =5, 9-4 =5 ….

Join the game to have Dum-Dum time and getting to Tony unite with Ello Icky

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adventures-of-tony-dum-dum/id897421362?mt=8

What is Project Management?

2014-10-27T23:00:00.001+05:30

Project Management
Project Manager is CEO of the project. He is responsible for everything in a project similar to manner a CEO is for everything in his company. He is all in all responsible for the success and failure of a project. He has to manage the project in whatever manners possible.

Project Manager’s responsibility start as soon as he is assigned the project after the contract is signed.

Scenario
Let me take a scenario. A project estimated to be of 100 man days needs to be developed is assigned to Aditya, the PM. The project is a development project which would have to be follow entire SDLC phase. This project has been estimated to be of 80 FP with productivity taken for java for 10 hrs per FP.

First, Aditya does his own estimation to be convinced that he has taken the project with correct estimated effort.

Re Estimation
In case of major discrepancies in the effort, he needs to bring that out to his reporting manager, Shreya, which may mean some additional functionality or constraint not known at the time of estimation phase. In case, of some issue Shreya and Aditya may take up the issue with regards to change the contract or come to some agreement with the client. In case, of client not agreeing to the situation, Shreya and Aditya needs to take the call off choosing any of the many available options. One solution could be to project agree with his reporting manager to work with his own estimates.

If Aditya found the estimate to be correct and he is convinced of the estimate. Aditya now gets down to project management.

Planning

SPMP
Aditya starts with building the Software Project Management Plan (SPMP). In SPMP, Aditya documents the entire plan how he will be managing the project.

He starts with listing the scope of the project, things out of scope of the project, the contact people of the project, risks of the project (there could be a separate Risk Management Plan for thing) with risk mitigation strategies for each risk.
Aditya also documents what he will meet the various other processes of the project, configuration management; reporting and weekly report and expectation form the client with dates. Aditya documents the SLA for answering of the queries, and escalation mechanism on both sides.
Aditya communicate SPMP to his reporting manager, his counterpart, and other stakeholder like Quality Manager etc. All the people can agree or recommend the change in any of the procedure. Client PM can agree or disagree on the expectation from his side, SLAs and escalation procedure. This communication is healthy and sets the expectation from all sides.

TOC of SPMP
Project Summary
Scope, Purpose and Objectives
Assumptions and Constraints
Project Deliverables
Schedule and Budget Summary
Project Organization
Roles and Responsibilities
Managerial Process Plans
Work Plan
Control Plan
Requirements Control Plan
Schedule Control Plan
Budget Control Plan
Quality Control Plan
Reporting Plan
Metrics Collection Plan
Risk Management Plan
Technical Process
Process Model
Methods, Tools, and Techniques
Infrastructure Plan
Product Acceptance Plan
Support Process Plans
Configuration Management Plan
Validation & Verification Plan
Documentation Plan
Quality Assurance Plan
Review and Audits
Problem Resolution Plan
Process Improvement Plan

Project Plan
Aditya now also starts on the project plan. He could be using any tools for this. Much used tool is Microsoft Project Plan (MPP). For 100 days project, he divides the project first into the phases.

This is tentative plan at high level for phases, it may change based on the company internal metrics phase breakup, project constraints like requirement phase, no architecture phase etc.

Based on this high level plan now Aditya is working out his low level plan in MPP,

Divide the phases into components to be built. Also display column “Work” which will have estimated hours from above table. Now when Aditya, enter estimate for that component in the work column and resource name in resource column, MPP calculates the duration based on the number of effort allowed and number resources working for that component.

Aditya also needs to enter precedence column for sequence. Review of component UC1 will start when UC1 completes. So once precedence is entered for all the start and end date is calculated automatically by MPP.

Function Point Analysis - Estimation

2014-10-09T11:38:00.000+05:30

A very old blog written by me.... when I was doing lot of project estimations. Had been in draft...

FP is most widely used estimation technique when you have information about the functionality to be provided. It is technique which removes some amount of subjectivity from the estimation. It also is language independent.

If the concepts of FP is applied as per the definition then FPA technique used by different people should arrive at similar estimates in terms of FP (unit of function point analysis).

Then,
FP x Productivity (in terms of #Hrs per FP) = Total Effort in Hrs.

Productivity is where effort should different for different company. If delivery person thinks his team is capable of giving the very productivity then he can take higher figure for Productivity.
If somebody has tools which will be able to give higher productivity then account for that in Productivity again.

Productivity has different figure for different language and different company, which should give competitive estimates not FP estimates itself.

Some of common mistakes we do while estimating using FPA.

1) I have existing code so I will be able to copy the code from there hence let me give lower complexity. Or I have tool which will allow me to do these 3 screens in 1 hour.

Do not get biased by implementation technique while estimation. Ex- Do not think that you have done similar thing be able to copy the code from there hence give a lower complexity while estimating. You are the person estimating it and you may not be developing it.

You can account for it by taking high productivity…

2) FP usually gives estimation 20% higher. So let me adjust it by reducing it.

May be it is other way round. You are taking productivity 20% lower, may be you should increase your productivity and you will start getting 20% lower estimates.

3) I can make add, modify and delete and display functionality in one single screen.

Do not think of implementation while estimation. FP is based on functionality rather on number of screens.

4) Customer Details is 3 ILF, Customer Name, Address is different table, Customer relatives is different table

Again, do not think of implementation while estimation. FP does not think of ILF as table. Tables are not normalized here.

The major components of FPA estimation are:
1) EI
2) EO
3) EQ
4) ILF
5) EIF

EI, EO and EQ are through which system interacts with Users.

EI – External Input is a screen field which is used to get information from user. This field when obtained by system from user is stored in a file which ILF. The information which is displayed to user can come from other type of file called EIF.
ILF from EIF in the sense that ILF is the file or information which is maintained (added, modified and deleted in the system). EIF is the file or information which is not maintained or which is static information.

EO and EQ is again screen or report field which are displayed to the user. They are almost same EQ is simply displayed where as EO is derived field which is result of some calculation.

So process of counting FP is,
Take functionality like, “Add a Customer detail”.
EI –
- Count number of fields which are in screen which are asked from user.
- Count number of FTR or file transactions (number of file referenced ILF + EIF), which could be for saving in file or getting from file for display.
EQ – functionality like “Display Customer details.” This will be simple query from file.
- Count number of fields which are in screen which displayed.
- Count number of FTR or file transactions (number of file referenced ILF + EIF),
EQ – functionality like “Display Customer Addition Report” . This would be a derived query or complex query.
- Count number of fields which are in screen which displayed.
- Count number of FTR or file transactions (number of file referenced ILF + EIF),
- Some of the fields like sum, average and other calculations …

Functionality	Type	# of DET	# of FTR
Add a customer	EI	(no of fields of input)	(nos. of file referenced)
Display a customer	EQ	(no of fields of displayed)	(nos. of file referenced)
Customer Report	EO
..	…	..	..

This reference table is used for knowing the complexity of EI.

FTR	Data Elements (DET)
< 2	Data Elements (DET)

1-4
5-15
>15
<>2
Average
High
High

Low – 3
Average - 4
High – 6

You will FTR has more effect on complexity. DETs may not be very accurate. DETs can be in counted in blocks. They can be in range of 1-4, 5-15 or > 15 ( no need for to be very accurate).

Similar, is case with EO and EQ.

For ILF, You count Data Elements and RET (Record Element Type).
Data Elements - Again fields like Customer Name, Customer Age
RET - Field group (repeatable, counted once) like Customer Address(office add, resd add etc.)
Record Element Types (RET)
Data Elements (DET)

1-19
20-50
> 51
1 RET
Low
Low
Average
2 – 5
Low
Average
High
6 – more
Average
High
High

Low – 7
Average - 10
High – 15

Again, you can see – no need to very accurate in counting fields. It can be block of 1-19, 20-50 or > 51. Give you judgment. RETs are more important.

You will also notice ILF and EIF are more important. As they give higher FP counts.

With counting EI,EQ,EO and ILF and EIF. The reference tables give the FP count.

Total of all FP count is the UnAdjusted Function Point.
Which is then adjusted by a factor which is derived from getting the complexity of the system, like whether it is highly interactive, distributed system….
These factors when applied using adjustment formula.

Value Adjustment Factor

General System Charactertics
Degree
Data Communication
Distributed Processing
Performance
Heavily Configurable
Transaction rates
Online Data Entry
Design End User Efficiency

Game Development Cycle

2014-06-23T19:56:00.000+05:30

This development cycle is how we developed our iOS based game Space Trap I which is now in App Store.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-space-trap-i/id768160652?mt=8

Conceptual Stage

Idea is conceptualized on many dimensions.

Very important is its fun and entertainment
Easiness (Easy or Hard- requiring extreme intelligence)
Target audience (Action warfare, Racing or Puzzle games)
Any constraint you may have based on your skillset (Making high scene oriented movie like games)

It is like thinking on storyline of a movie or theme love-story, action, sci-fi.

You may think out-of-box or make formula movie

Prototyping Stage

Prototyping helps in

Testing out the idea by actual playing or
It also refines the concepts of playing
It is iterative extension of conceptualizing stage

It is adds another dimension to the game of the revenue model.

Prototype can actual be released to smaller sample audience for getting feedback

The idea can still be thrown of window, if it does not appeal. The investment is still to minimum till prototyping.

Development Stage

All the teams start working on the game.

Ideas are still conceptualizing but at more details level,
Development is now more full scale with all miscellaneous screens, in-App purchases etc., animations
Design team churning out design assets
Testing team - testing game on all dimensions of bugs, robustness, user friendliness, game play etc.

It is interactive process with new ideas, implantation, testing and refinement.

After all testing, game is submitted to Appstore which approves after approx. 1 week. Now you are ready for release.

Marketing

Marketing is test of all hard work.

You advertise on available channels, forums medium …

Test out different geographies, channels, demographics, sources…

Analytics/Tracking

- Cohort Analysis (along multiple dimension) for target spending and target audience

- Cross platform tracking

Metrics

- Engagement Metrics

- Retention

- User acquisition

- Monetization

- User acquisition cost (CPC, CPI)

- Conversion rates

- …

Space Trap I- My new game on Appstore

2014-06-16T12:58:00.001+05:30

Space Trap I

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-space-trap-i/id768160652?mt=8

After a long time and hard work, finally launched my new game space trap I. This game is departure from my earlier games which were social games and had to be played between to players turn by turn.

This game is played individually by clearing multi-levels and episodes.

Story begins …

Space Trap starts with aliens with sinister design steals the earth magnetic field. Earth is on brink of disaster with entire world turn upside down. ROCKA the super –hero is called in to save the Earth. Earth is put on life support on the local magnet providing the magnetic need of the Earth. Now ROCKA must travel to fight aliens’ and get back the earth magnetic field.

Aliens have put in the maze of hindrances blocking the highway to their homeland. Now, ROCKA must solve each maze by aligning the planets in vertical line to clear the highway.

The matrix of the planets though shown in 2-dimension is spherical with space-warp; planet moved further down re-appears from top and like-wise for horizontal.

The aliens try to defeat ROCKA with multiple tricks –

Blocks – These are blocks which block high way movement. And restricts the alignment by blocking the movement.
Space Warp- there is special worm-holes created by aliens in middle of highway which warps the planets and further wraps the planet in middle.
Skulls- These are like asteroid bombs by the aliens which ROCKA has to move out of the highway for alignment.
Hidden Planets – These are hidden planets which are revealing only after ROCKA can solve the stage 1 problem.
High Speed Lanes- these are special lanes which moves double the speed than the other lanes.

Further up …. Many more challenges….

ROCKA Powers

ROCKA has some super powers up his sleeves to defeat few of these challenges posed by aliens-

Transformer – a magic power to transform the asteroid bombs into normal planet which can then be aligned.
Shape Shifter- a power to change shape according to its surrounding; align with majority of the planet.
Space Bender- A special launcher which create space warp by bending the highway in middle.

And many more powers….

The challenge of getting the planets to align along highway is a challenge ... The difficulty level is slowly sets in ....

After 25 levels, game gets very difficult to solve. Even for game addicts of puzzle solvers are finding it difficult to solve unless they realize the trick.

After 3rd episode, game is a real challenge even puzzle master solvers.

The Trick

But there is a small trick (a small little secret) where the planets are aligned column by column should be aligned but the last row/column (which are kept for free movement).

On solving the matrix but last row, i.e. last row is solved by bringing the last planets of last row in row order as in first row. This could work by moving the planets up in last column and bringing it down on same order as first row.

Mode of Play

Space Trap is played individually without going online. The game is without any kind of advertising. Facebook login is provided if you want to compare your friend’s progress against your own. Facebook API are also used for allowing you to request for your friends for life, episode unlock and moves for helping you to solve the levels.

Game was introduced to for beta testing to few game addicts during its pre-launch but only hard-core puzzle solvers could reach its level 26. After which it gets really gets tough with new twist and turns introduced on each level.

It needs smartness of problem solving and pattern recognising. The game starts with all aligned planets and randomly shaken to misarrange the planets with series of complex vertical and horizontal moves (in range of 25-35). So ideally, person can solve each level in less than 25 moves.

Technical

Space Trap I is built in Objective C using XCode. It has been built using storyboard. Use the ARC for memory management.

The major component used are:

Facebook iOS SDK : For integration with Facebook
Bug Sense : getting crash reports
Localytics : For analytics
Google Analytics : For analytics
AFNetworking : Server connections (data sync with server behind the scenes)
ObjectAL : Audio

When game is played as a facebook user, the game records are synced with server database behind the scenes. This is in case the game is deleted from the device; the data game is synced back to device on re-login from the same facebook account.

No advertising in the game but we however advertise Space Trap in other games so for that we have incorporate Mobile Advertisement Tracker , Tapjoy, Charboost etc.

For Notifications, we use only local notifications.

Next blog ... On life cycle of developing a Appstore game ...

Starting out on your own business venture

2013-03-01T13:58:00.001+05:30

Starting your business venture is very complex thing in India. There are various hurdles to be crossed before you can get your venture going. I started out in my venture for development of my software firm which will be developing solution for mobiles and web. Our first product was IPhone game WhatZOdd.

We started out with our business plan; choose our product model and financing options.

Technical

Business Plan
Business Model
Financing Options

Business plan highlighted our entrepreneurial vision, describing the strategy and operations of the venture. We thought about of our first product, and decided on our location of business. We also did an exhaustive research on our chosen product and the field to understand how are the product released in the market and revenue generated.

Business Model, we decided on venturing into the path of product making Social Networking products for Mobiles and Web. We decided not to go into service industry.

Financing options, we were self-financed. My partner had experience in Investment Banking and decided to take on the finances, marketing and revenue area. I, with my experience in Software industry took on the Technical Role.

We also decided to keep our company lean with only experts.

Recruitment, is a very tedious process in itself.
But with professional web sites like Naukri, Monster the process of advertisement is now made easy. You can either do the one-time with Rs. 2000/- each ad or subscribe. We went in for one-time Ad paying Rs. 2000/ each time.

Response of the Ad is usually very good with more than 1000 resumes but the quality is generally very bad.

That was easy part….

Now comes the difficult part of running a company … The regulation compliance.

Regulations
But along with technical aspects, we also need to draw up the comprehensive list of all the compulsory regulations which our business entity needs to follow. Ex- Registration of the Company, Taxation, Licensing requirements etc.

Registering the Company,
Aquiring DIN
Shops and Establishments Act
Board resolutions
Opening Company Account
Round and Director Stamps
Tax Compliance, PAN, PTE, PTR

Registering the Company, first hurdle was incorporating our company, Siddbetter Pvt Limited registered. In India companies are governed by the Companies Act 1956. The Registrar of Companies (ROC) controls the task of incorporation of new companies and the administration of running companies. This process requires interacting with Ministry of Corporate Affairs (http://www.mca.gov.in/).

The laws are so complex that it is better to hire a CS (Company Secretary) for this purpose, as we did.

For purpose of record let me list of the procedure – of Registration

Our company was to be registered as Private Company, thus the Siddbetter Technology Pvt. Limited. It needs to have minimum of 2 members.

The following documents are required to be filed with the Registrar of Companies:

Memorandum of Association (duly stamped) and a duplicate thereof.
Articles of Association (duly stamped) and a duplicate thereof.
The agreement, if any, which the company proposes to, enter into with any individual for appointment as its managing or whole time director or manager.
A copy of the letter of the Registrar of Companies intimating the availability of the proper name.
e-Form No. 1 (with prescribed stamps) for incorporation of a Company.
e-Form No. 18, if desired for change of situation of registered office.
e-Form No. 32 and e-Form 32 Addendum

Acquire Director Identification Number (DIN) for all the directors of the Company.

Shops and Establishments Act, business entity is compulsorily required to register itself under this Act within 30 days of commencement of work.

For getting the shop act, document needed,
1. PMC bill/ MSEB Bill of Rental place
2. Registered Leave and license agreement (not only Notarized agreement) between rented place Owner and Company having clause that Company will use place for office use.
3. OR No objection certificate from Owner of Rental place owner that he has no objection to use office for Company. This NOC should be notarized on Rs.100 stamp paper.

This was our single biggest hurdle in our case due to not owning the place in our location of Business.
We took a rental with Regus which provides offices for rent.

We entered into agreement with comment section which they said while agreement are just formalities like –
Kitchen amenities charges per employee – Rs. 2500/ per month. While there is no kitchen and they also do not allow the use the pantry for lunch. Because they are selling that space for business. Calling "Business café" , which we later came to know. Hopefully, they do not have “Business washroom” which is used only by their business for doing business.

After, our agreement was ending we were again sent the new bill,
Charges – Business Continuity @ Rs.5000 per month for 3 months, which they said you had agreed on during signing agreement. Again this was in comment section (giving no understanding). Why do you force business continuity when the client does not want it. Cheats!!

Next Charge- Exit Clean @ Rs. 1000 psm. Rs. 9000 for us. There is no end to their charges under every possible ridiculous heads.

My advice to any Entrepreneur, read through the agreement 100 times along with your legal advisory there is every possibilities of fancy looking words which goes without notice end up legal complications for you.

Every decision in a company like opening a Bank A/C , deciding on the office, loaning of assets etc. all require Board Resolutions with proper notice, proper attendance, and then formal resolution on the letter head of the company.
Get ready for board resolutions for each and every decision making.

Opening an Company A/C, opening a current Bank Account is mandatory. As soon as your company is registered. Entire world knows about it. You will start getting calls from Banks for opening the A/C.
Select a bank with proper care. Fill in the form yourself properly because if you do not they fill it Bank fill it themselves with any name, with any role which may later look very ridiculous. Like your name in Bank as developer etc.

Making of Round and Director Stamp, round stamp of company is mandatory requirement and goes in for all legal works. Director stamp which is rectangular is broken at side.

Regulation Compliance kicks in for any change in company
Plan and think about your company expense based on you company model. If you are going to make changes in your company like adding new Director, increasing share capital.
Everything costs money.

TAX Compliance,

Income Tax
Ex- increasing share capital from 1 lac to 4 lacs can cost you more than Rs. 10000 as fees.
Taxations, companies have to file their income tax returns. Companies apply for PAN and provided the PAN# just like us.

This PAN is used for filing income tax.

Payroll
Other than its own tax, company also has to deduct taxation of its employees Tax Deduction at Source (TDS). Submit the taxes in government treasury and provide the employees their Form-16 the end of fiscal year. Paying salary, deducting taxes making pay slip is all part of Payroll process.

Professional Tax
There is one more tax, call professional tax which is pay to the government.

Company also needs Professional Tax Enrollment (PTE) under which the Professional tax of its employees needs to be submitted. The Professional tax is deducted for each employee each month and deposited every month, but return needs to be filed each quarter.
For non-employees, Directors who are not being paid salary give one time Professional Tax of Rs. 2500/- each year before June. And there needs to be Professional Tax Registration (PTR) for each Director. For delay in payment, there is penalty of Rs. 2 per day.

This has been my learning till now... I will keep posting as I learn and experience more....

WhatZ'Odd - Client Technology

2012-12-18T18:26:00.005+05:30

WhatZ'Odd iOS Client is built in Objective C using XCode. It has been based on storyboard, viewcontrollers etc. Use the Automatic Reference Count (ARC) for memory management.
The major component used are:
- Facebook ios SDK : For integration with facebook
- Twitter ios SDK : For posting tweets.
- XMPP : Chat and buddies
- BugSense : getting crash reports
- Flurry : For app analytics
- AdWhirl : For advertising in game

Next releases:
- Apple PushNotification : for notification to mobile devices

Experience:
Objective C is quiet similar to C++ in programming style. The toughest part of coding in Objective C was thread management. The code extensively uses the background thread for heavy perocessing leaving the main thread to respond to the users.
- And with use of Core data and background thread there is lot of synch and management of htreads upding the core data
- Also difficult part was the animation while navigating to different views.

Still improving ...

WhatZOdd - Securing purchases

2012-12-13T16:31:00.000+05:30

Today, We got our first dose of hacked App Store purchase in WhatZOdd.

In App purchases are built in iOS device by sending the request of purchase to App Store along with purchase details. Appstore verifies the payment transaction and authorizes it. App Store sends back the purchase details among which is the reciept and transaction identifier.

Now, these is this iAP cracker built by "urus" which is run on (jail broken) iOS device which intercepts the AppStore request and sends back fake receipts back to the game. The game on receiving these receipts assumes that payment transaction went through and authorizes the payment.

Game on client device can verify this receipt for its validity by checking with AppStore but again this appCraker intercepts the request and send the valid receipt message.

This is quiet a challenge for games running on client only model.

But, since WhatZOdd is a server model, receipts are received by the server and validated at server-side. This circumvents the crackers' interception of AppStore requests.

We also caught the culprits making these purchases and disabled their account. The dubious purchases are easy to catch by looking at their identifier and making offline validity of receipt at AppStore.

Also created a twitter account for small tweets experiences -
https://twitter.com/kapilsiddharth1

Making of my iOS based game WhatZ'Odd

2012-12-12T13:02:00.001+05:30

For past few months I have been very busy setting up my company Siddbetter Ltd(http://www.siddbetter.com). We are a gaming company and would be making mobile games.

I released first version of my game WhatZ'Odd in App Store on 29th Nov. This is a social game and has architecture of client-server.

Short preview of WhatZodd:

Client is iOS device off course.

- Game is built in Objective C , language for Mac development.

- Game interacts with Server using JSON.

Servers are hosted on Amazon Web Services.

- EC2 servers

- RDS MySql Database instance

- Ejabberd Server for jabbered based chatting.

In coming few days I would be blogging about my experiences and learnings in making this game. So keep watching ...

In simple terms if I had explain what can this game do-

Hider can change the image like 2 I did for fun -

Using a simple editor which is touch based, I added a car, cloud and man walking.

The objects to be added are chosen for vast library we provide in the game and can be cloned, swiped to vertical/horizontal flip.

The changed image is sent to the friend and friend has to tap on image object he thinks was not in original picture. He has 5 chances to identify the 3 right objects.

If taps on correct object the object disappears in puff of smoke or else the is lightning for incorrect identification.

Visit http://whatzodd.com/ to learn about the game.

Future Technology Trends

2012-04-24T14:06:00.002+05:30

· Collaborative Enterprises

· Social Networking

· Mobility Computing

· Cloud Computing

· Openness – Data, API, Services …

· Smarter businesses

- 2.0 Conceptualizing for all businesses

- Advance Actionable Analytics

- Smarter communication infrastructure (Connected, Monitored, Healed, Predictive Analytics)

- Merge Access Channels

- Standard Business Ontologies

· 3.0 Intelligence on Web

- Semantic Lined Data across Web

- Automation using linked data

- Bigdata

Setting up Centre of Excellence

2012-04-17T17:15:00.004+05:30

Why?
The IT landscape is vast and disruptive. The change is so fast and disruptive that technologies of today get obsolete and new innovative technologies emerge. Keeping up with change with the pace of technology change is a full-time job.

Recently several IT companies have started with the trend of setting up CoE for various IT Practices. These CoEs are organized as supporting group to IT Project Deliveries. These CoEs are usually maintained as shared corporate group to service the Delivery Groups which service the customers. They are also organized as horizontals which provide the cross-cutting expertise to the Delivery groups.

The main concept of CoEs is to build skills and competency on the shared line, which could be organized based on the requirement of exploring or change in the space, to sustain the execution of their initiatives in projects. The CoE brings to the table their competency to provide guidelines, principles, methodology, best practices and architecture decision support.

Types?
CoEs can be of many types.

· Technology specific
- Area specific: Application Server, Web Servers, Databases, Data warehouse, Cloud … are organized keeping in mind the products of similar types are usually similar although from different vendors. The best practices of a product in one space usually apply to all products.
- Vendor specific: Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, … these CoE try to leverage the accumulated experience of resources working on specific vendor products due to mapping with customer product specific requirements.

· Service specific
- Project Lifecycle
o Developers, (Java,.Net or LAMP) which brings the development best practices to the project. These CoEs explore the new frameworks in respective languages, train and keep the resources up-to-date, and maintain the best practices in development methodology these platforms. They promote the optimum and right way of using the technology, its tools and associated product in the development life cycle. These CoE may be only academic providing the training and guidelines or may support staff augmentation.
o Testers, from Testing CoE community, brings the experience of testing. It could bring in the expertise of testing space- automation, manual, tools for functional, performance testing etc.
o Architecture, from architecture CoE community, brings the experience of Architecture creation. This CoE
- Datacenter, Infrastructure and Networking Services
- Solution & Strategy Services

Setting up
· Charter
o Strategy & Vision, Setting up a Mission statement, charter, and goals clarify the purpose and scope of the COE. Ensures the vision of COE aligns with business strategy and maintains a set of key technology themes for their line. It defines various business problem will the CoE solve.
o Establish broad scope of activities
o Establish and monitor standards setting process, and a means of communicating those standards, a way of monitoring adherence to the standards, and a process by which standards can be challenged and evolved
o Mode of working, define establish procedure for relationship with other CoE, SME and Project groups
o Governance and Monitoring - Establish and effective governance process to ensure CoE provided guidelines and standards are being applied
o Evaluate tools, products, and architecture making recommendations and incorporating approved items into the IT standards and guidelines and fostering its usage promoting development of a Centre of Excellence in IT standards and governance

· Secure Sponsorship and funding from Senior Management
An initial investment invisible support, time and funds are necessary for any cultural change in an organization. Setting up of CoE is no different and needs continual support from senior management to push CoE agenda through; this could be in form of initial mandate or incentive to use the CoE services.
Aligning the other departments favorably towards new CoE helps in the evolution of CoE and building its credibility.
Many of CoE have failed due to-
- Lack of visible sponsorship from senior management
- Lack trust with various departments
- Political issues like existing department refusing to let go

· Selecting Leadership and Organize the COE
Some other top reasons for failing of a CoE initiatives:
- Weak leadership leading to ineffective decision-making process
- Not anticipating and proactively solving people issues
- Not right skilled people are involved

Hence, selecting a right leader and supporting him to set up a CoE is the top most reason for failing of CoE initiative. Leadership selection must be based on skill rather than based on political affiliations.

· Making CoE Operational
(specific to CoE)

· Governance
Any process without monitor can provide last minute surprises. With CoE operational and a defined time frame provided before CoE can start providing its returns, a governance team may be set up to monitor the CoE working as per its charter. This may be a forum to thrash out start-up issues like inter-departmental issues, people issues, infrastructure to support (with the appropriate tools and training), and transfer of activities to new CoE etc.

· Marketing the COE
CoE is like an organization or separate entity and may require some marketing by its team to spread awareness about its strength, a rich repository of frameworks, case studies, which promotes is usefulness to the other departments.
After initial, setting up support from senior management, CoE competency and credibility will carry it forward. CoE may also use its marketing material to sell its service directly to an external customer based on its maturity for advisory support and consultancy in addition to supporting project teams.

· Measuring CoE performance
Any planned organization initiative needs to prove its ROI to be continued. This cannot be successful without baselining/metric/system to measure progress. Hence, before the start of CoE based on decided realizable benefits metric needs to be agreed upon to measure the success of the CoE initiatives.
This metrics system should be in place for any CoE initiative to measure it own initiative success measure.

· Optimizing CoE
This step completes the CoE cycle of PDCA plan–do–check–adjust. CoE with measuring its performance and its various initiatives should analyze the outcome and optimize services based on its working.

BIGDATA

2012-04-11T17:40:00.000+05:30

I started working in Semantic technologies in 2008 and was very intrigued with potential of Semantic technologies to create a meaning out of unstructured data. I did POCs and developed libraries using GATE and lingpipe the NLP parser to parse the free English text and breaks down the sentences in to RDF tags. I could run SPARQL queries over the entire text similar SQL queries over RDBMS Database.

Suddenly, in 2012 the concept has come back again with new name BigData.

Major software Vendors are making their products Bigdata compliant. Trend I see is more for Content Management Product companies because they hosted the unstructured text in their CMS

What is BIGData?

Layman uptake-

1) Does when data gets very big it becomes BIGDATA? Keep adding disk does it not solve problem.

2) Is it is about Hadoop? Hadoop has HDFS similar to Google File Cluster and Map-Reduce which google used for processing large files. So does Hadoop does solves my problem

Let me list few things which characterizes BiGDATA as industry is speaking about-

1) Big data is massive scale of data which is being generated in the organization in order of petabytes and zetabytes.

a. Humans generated data like journal, reports , text, documents (text or otherwise), pictures, videos, slideware, chat, blogs etc.

b. Machine generated data like logs , GPS output, Sensors outputs, Output from interfaces of medical, devices, cameras etc.

c. One file (video/audio/corpus) itself can be so big as to be of size terabytes. Hence, need the provision of splitting the file and storing.

2) Data is not very valuable or even interesting because

a. Data is not so critical that if we lose some of the data the system will crash or revenue loss will happen.

b. Data starts to provide some value only by aggregation or summary of the entire data.

We would not spending million dollars to house this in traditional data tools like expensive databases.

So BigData is not transactional data.

Transactional is very critical and required ACID for marinating the integrity of the data. Any loss or corruption of such data can be huge revenue loss to the company.

Enter HADOOP

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS)- Hence, enters Hadoop, which is Cloud of commodity low value workstation. Distributed architecture challenges of synchronization, network failure tolerance, redundancy of data are in-built in hadoop. It solves the problem of storing this inexpensive large data on the grid of low commodity machines.

Map-Reduce - Next, the data is so large that processing it in real-time is a very large problem. Again, Hadoop solves this problem by utilizing the famous Map-Reduce paradigm to break large data into smaller sets of data and processing to aggregate into a meaningful data.

Hadoop may be able to solve the problem of infrastructure for BigData.

Vendors are now implementing their product using Hadoop stack for developing grid using low commodity servers.

However, real problem lies in how we actually extract meaning out of unstructured free text. Is Hadoop’s Regular expression enough to extract the meaning out of this free unstructured text.

Log files are fine; because they have well defined structure and can be extracted meaningfully by regular extraction patterns.

But free text like journals, chat, blogs, reports, books, audio files etc. are different ballgame.

Enter Semantic technology

Analysis of aggregation–

First step towards analyzing these texts have been of using cluster analysis using corpus by way of machine learning.

Training or Machine Learning - Corpus is created by feeding the Analyzer with large text which creates a dictionary of a sort associated with a concept. This phase is called training.

The next phase is actual analysis. Analyzer is fed the free text and based on its dictionary of words with concepts predicts what is the concept of the input text. It provides the concept matching with some accuracy percentage.

Example -

If the text contains words like football, stadium, match, score … Most probably the analyzer will predict that the text is of Category:Sports, Sub-Category:Football-Match.

Few more words are like, Obama, speech, audience, ties… Analyzer may indicate some like 15% probability of concept being politics.

Advance Phase –

The Free text is processed and analyzed and concepts (entities- place, person, thing etc.) are extracted linked with the ton of informative data on web by linking (similar to dumb linking we have of pages in html today; but it will be intelligent linking this time).

The entire text can be broken in RDF statement of facts:- subject, predicate and objects. Well depicted by RDF statements (n-tuple of RDF/XML).

This will allow SQL like queries over RDFs and worlds’s entire information (Bigdata) will be a big meaningful database accessible to Web agents.

IT industry vendors have a unique way of converting every business concept into mundane technology problem to sell their technology products

2012-04-11T12:28:00.000+05:30

IT industry has it own way of converting every beautiful business concept into mundane technology problem to sell their technology stack. They reduce every business problem entering market and killing it by labeling as technology problem.

WEB 2.0

Web 2.0 is not so much of technology but new way of doing business using crowd-sourcing, social networking, collaboration across value chain.

Strength of - JavaScript , Making rich UI, Open source LAMP, Open source products gave way for blogging sites, Rapid Development frameworks, AJAX ... --- thus technology was starting to overshadow Web 2.0 concept. People started claiming Web 2.0 === AJAX.

Vendors started a war of coming up with framework of AJAX. Each came up with his own version of AJAX library selling them to customers with make-believe of Web 2.0. In this war actual meaning of Web 2.0 was lost somewhere.

Web 2.0 is very highly innovative concept. It needs a radical shift in culture and Way of Working. It may disrupt the entire traditional revenue model.

Ex- In news industries, where there were defined reporters who could publish the news. Now in Web 2.0, every man can be a reporter and contribute to news making.

In publishing industry, there were renowned authors who could author a book or article. Now in Web 2.0, every man can be a author, publisher. Any person can become a reviewer and do proof-editing.

In music industry, only contracted bands came out with music. Now any man can try his hand at singing and upload it on Youtube.

In Retail, companies will contract person to develop the software and sell. Now any man can develop software and host it on AppStore and sell it to mass.

Telecom companies are new music sellers.

Coffee houses are new retailers.

Retail companies are new IT Hardware Sellers.

These concepts are business ideas requiring a deep thinking and change in which make the difference between a successful and failures.

But innovative business concepts cannot be commoditized hence cannot be sold and hence ignore by Vendors.

SOA

SOA is not so much of technology but aligning technology to business. It is paradigm of thinking in terms of Enterprise functions in terms of business process. And technology then is aligned to meets those processes.

IT Vendors knew what will sell is not this concept but their technology products. So they came out with tons of materials equating SOA with ESB, BPM .... and SOA === ESB+BPM.

Vendors started a war of coming up with their ESBand BPM. Each came up with his own version of ESB product selling them to customers with make-believe of SOA. SOA was killed every project started with the customer asking which ESB, which BPM.

Aligning technology to Business went missing. result thousands of dollars down the drain because of failure of SOA projects.

SOA is foremost a business concept. Demanding companies start thinking in terms of their business services they offer to the world. These services are then broken down in business processes which are broken down into granular services. Real challenge is in service identification and aligned with attributes which make them reusable in different client scenarios.

The services identifications, making service reusable, service design principles are complex concepts require deep analysis not commoditizable. Hence are ignored by vendors. These are ideas which make a SOA project successful or failure.

BIGDATA

Bigdata is a business problem of utilizing millions of unstructured information assets (text, audio, video, chats etc.) to the benefit of business.

IT Vendors knows and have converted this into a mundane technology problem. Enter problem “Of Storing of large data and processing large data”. Enters Hadoop.

Vendor has now started the race of coming up with their own version of Hadoop infrastructure.

But real problem lies in how we actually extract meaning out of unstructured free text. Is Hadoop’s Regular expression enough to extract the meaning out of this free structure text? Log may be fine; because they have structure and can be extracted meaningfully by regular extraction patterns.

BIGDATA is more a concept of semantic text meaningful web than infrastructure. It is more about converting the text of non-meaningful words, phrases into more meaningful text by extracting the concepts and entity from them and linking into existing Web of information. LinkedData, DBPedia , WikiPedia, Semantic technology, Ontology , Corpus, are more important than infrastructure.

The extracting meaning, pattern recognition, Natural language parsing, ontology, corpus creation are complex concept not comoditizable hence ignored by most. These are ideas which will make BigData problem successful or failure.

Few good links on Resume & Career

2011-10-05T15:06:00.000+05:30

IT Professional's Resume Makeover Guide

Ref : http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=3499799 is excellent pdf which gives useful tips on writing effective resume.

Good ReaDs:

Careers are like nature: Only the fittest survive Ref: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/careers-are-like-nature-only-the-fittest-survive/6722?tag=rbxccnbtr1
Three ways to turbo-charge your tech career Ref: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/three-ways-to-turbo-charge-your-tech-career/344
Nine tips for getting hired Ref : http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/nine-tips-for-getting-hired/3135
Know when it's time to change jobs Ref http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/know-when-its-time-to-change-jobs/3062

If you have more links which you think are useful , do post them here for others to benefit...

Is SOA about Technology?

2011-10-03T13:20:00.000+05:30

A week back I was discussing SOA with somebody who is expert in SOA and had been implementing SOA for more 5 years. He explained SOA mostly in terms of tools and technology. He had worked in best of stacks in the industry. Service Identification an the important concept of SOA paradigm was nowhere in mention in his entire talk.

This seems to be a common notion of SOA around the industry. Most people and interviewer start focusing on the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Life Cycle which are the tools for SOA deployment.

It is similar to start discussing about Object Oriented Design from Language syntaxes, Application Servers, Compilers and Transactions etc. instead of discussion about the Design Principles for finding reusable components, classes, relationship between classes to achieve reusability, extension, flexibility etc.

No one discusses about Principles for identification for services which makes sense and achieves reusability, designing services and interfaces which are immutable, configurations which will allow services in multiple scenarios.

SOA is about Business aligned IT. So any discussion about SOA should start from Business so that we can then accordingly define IT strategy in alignment with the Business. But, when SOA word is mentioned people start talking about web services, BPM, ESB leading to its early death.

Microsoft in their “Business-Oriented foundation for Service Orientation” talks about new architecture principles which needs addressing:-

How do we prevent service-orientation from following similar promising initiatives into the same architectural mistakes of the past?
How do we ensure that the chosen implementation architecture relates to the business requirements?
How do we maximize the life expectancy of the implementation in an ever-changing environment?

It further talks of SOA tenants Principles for identification for services which makes sense and achieves reusability, designing services and interfaces which are immutable, configurations which will allow services in multiple scenarios.

2011-10-03T13:09:00.000+05:30

Project Management is about managing the Money, Minutes, Man, Material and Method to meet the Customer’s requirement. Managing these requires PM to manage expectations of several stakeholders.

Customer: Money, Minutes, Method and Requirements; Customer wants more requirements in less time and less money with high quality which comes with Method. Customer is not bothered with Man and Material used up to build the system.

Higher Management: Money, Man and Material; Company wants to meet the customer’s requirements by spending least money, least man and less material. They are not bothered about the time used, quality and method if customer is satisfied.

Team: Man, Minutes and Method; Team wants to work lesser time, with minimum people and less cumbersome methods to meet the requirements. If team is required to work more time(overtime at nights) results in unhappy team and resulting in problems in method and poor quality.

Manager has to manage these 3 stakeholders, keeping them happy by satisfying their expectation.

Reference: http://www.objectmentor.com/ "Often managers will resort to pressure and motivation as their sole management techniques. They warn the developers of all the horrible things that will happen if they miss the date; and then they hang pictures of seagulls and people climbing rocks on the wall to motivate the developers to get the project done. They'll wander through the development area asking the developers how things are going. The developers will respond: "Pretty good!" And then, the managers go back to their offices to pray." <>

This is a perfect scenario, as described by Robert Martin, faced by project managers in their every project life.
Key to this; is planning the project by breaking it into measurable tasks. and then tracking the project by measuring the completion of these tasks.
This could be using the Agile methodology which breaks the projects into stories and story points (Use Case).
OR It could be using simple planning using Work Break Down Struture which breaks the projects into small technical or non-technical tasks which are small in duration (1-2 days) and then tracking their completion.

--Key is the project is broken down in measurable small tasks which are measurable as discrete 0 or 1 (0% finished or 100 % finished). And track their completion. Definition of completion should be passing of their decided acceptance tests. --

Modernizing Retail

2011-10-03T12:38:00.000+05:30

Retailers strive to maximize its business through revenue growth and increasing profit margin.

They are constantly facing challenges towards this:

More demanding & technology-aware customers
Globalizing competition from cheaper products from geographies with cheaper labor and resources advantage
Disruptive effects of technological advancements
New channels of Sales, Customer interaction and advertisements
Old models of disconnected enterprise

I will try to use “Motion Lite methodology” (Ref http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736727.aspx ) of Microsoft for building

Product Development

Customer driven Products

Customer Preference, Web Analytics, and Feedback – Involve the customers in the development of the products. Use their inputs for improving the product by adding customer demanded new features (packaging, flavors, small sizes etc) and remove bad features.
Pre-Launch ideas, Campaigns - Survey the new products among the customers by pre-launches to get the customer response, use the same for any improvements.
User generated Ideas – Launch contests and campaign for user generated ideas which involves customer participation and provide effective advertisements.

Agile Enterprise with Product Design Changes - React easily to events which requires changes in product design like customer’s negative feedback, government policy etc. The product change management should be agile to allow last minute changes to the product development based on the unplanned events.

Extended Enterprise with real-time supply chain

Just in time or Optimize inventory to with real-time collaboration with suppliers: Extended Enterprise with real-time collaboration with suppliers and vendor applications and systems using their exposed Services. This collaboration is 2-way with effective automated alerts on the “Placing new Orders” as the order level goes down below optimum inventory or “Cancel Orders” as any order from customer is cancelled.
Better management of returns and rejects: Extended enterprise also automates the management of the returns and reject by intimating the Supplier and “Placing the Orders” for replacements.
Vendor Management with Vendor grading and other statistics: The frequent rejects of the vendors and customer can be an alert to grade the quality of the vendor for planning process and taking actions.

Generate Demand

Contact Center/Customer Support

Unified Communication over multiple channels: Gap between various retailing channels is reducing; customers want seamless experience over his choice of channels. He wants seamless experience of Ordering over phone, Reserving over Web and Picking up in person.
Proactive Customer Interaction: 'Improving customer loyalty' has been the traditional mantra of the call center. “Require innovative thinking and models that leverage proactive customer outreach programs that are cost-effective and efficient at mitigating customer service issues before they arise.” Ref: http://www.tmcnet.com/call-center/0204/0204crm1.htm

Getting Proactive ' Know Your Audience
Getting Proactive ' Tailoring Information Delivery
Getting Proactive ' Information You Can Use
A Side Benefit ' Reducing Labor Costs And Increasing Service Levels

Single Customer View:

A rich customer database - with demographic, geographic and psychographic information
Data integration and recognition technology - provides the ability to link individual customer data from disparate databases, third-party sources and various proprietary databases containing customer information (e.g. CRM, ERP, sales, marketing, etc.), to provide a holistic, well- connected picture of customers.
Using sophisticated data correlation tools, it is possible to compare customer information using data such as house numbers, phone numbers, last names, products and accounts, and then link records together into households.
Multiple Channels Interaction

Increase Sales

Advertisement
Branding
Targeting

Plan & Manage

Clear and comprehensive Customer View: turns the information from “hindsight” into “insight” and “foresight” which will enable the business to employ smarter and more effective marketing strategies. Hindsight represents views provided by traditional analytics that examine what customers did in the past or, at best, what they just did.
Business Intelligence based Planning

Action Oriented Analytics
Business Analytics based Plan
Monitoring & Tracking of Plans
Web/Traffic or Customer Behavior based Alert based Plan changes

Seamless connected enterprise with Localized stores synchronizing with Centralized policies and pricing changes

Deliver Product

Point-of-sale (POS) transformation

Move from a traditional point-of-sale to a point-of-service system, which is more flexible and supports modern store technologies.

Customer Experience

Aided Customer Purchases
Home Delivery

Self Service Channels

Self Service Kiosk
Self Service Web site
Catalogues

Customer Preferences

Capture Customer Behavior

Web Analytics
Traffic Analytics

Customer Feedback

Customer Loyalty

Customer Free Gifts
Premium Customer Clubs, Offers
Loyalty Bonus/Discounts

.Net 4.1 Entity Framework 3 approach

2011-04-07T19:55:00.000+05:30

Entity Framework allows the developers to write code against the domain classes for storing, retrieving and creating domain entities. .Net Entity Framework handles everything for you by generating all the data access code.

Entity Framework in .Net 4.0 provides multiple options of creating the data access code for a MVC Application.

1. Code-first, provides code-centric development workflow for creating the data access. The developer creates the domain class (and configures the database settings using CTP). The database and tables are created from the class and its public attributes.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg685467

Any change in the class or adding of an attribute, triggers the altering of the database entities automatically. (However, data may get deleted because of the database drop and recreation). There is option to stop the auto recreation of the database.

2. Model-First, model first workflow allows creating the domain model (Entity relationship diagram) in a designer.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg685494

Any change in the model by designer triggers the change in the data access code automatically for adding new attributes, and classes.

Any customization is done on the class extended from base data access code class. These custom classes are not recreated and our changes/customization are retained.

3. Database-First, allows starts with legacy database which creates the model thus generating the data access code of the models/domain.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg685489

Any change in the database triggers the changes in the model and hence in the data access code.

Learning ASP.Net MVC 3

2011-03-13T21:22:00.000+05:30

An excellent step-by-step tutorial by Scott Hanselman Reference:
"http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/getting-started-with-mvc3-part1-cs"

It is very good resource for the people who wants to move from ASP classic to ASP.Net …

Using New Project “ASP.Net MVC 3 Web Application “ creates the MVC code:

Controller folder containing the Controllers
View folder containing the view Templates
Model folder would contain the Models

Controllers are the link between Views and the Models.

In the HomeController, which is created by default by convention invoked when we request,

<>/home

HomeController has multiple actions,

<>/home/index is the default action

<>/home/about would invoke About() action in the Controller class.

A typical action would return a View() which is mapped with View Template (About.cshtml) in the Views folder default named after the Action name.

About.cshtml will have all the HTML tags and embedded scripts like; @ViewBag, @HTML, @URL, @RenderBody etc. for displaying the dynamic content.

Controller can pass data to the view using,
ViewBag.Message = "Hello " + name;
ViewBag.NumTimes = numTimes;

Which is accessible in View as,
@for (int i=0; i < ViewBag.NumTimes; i++) {

@ViewBag.Message

}

Model is added, using EFCodeFirst,
   << EntityFramework Code First >> for developing model and database.

Add a class in Model,

The Classname maps to the Database table and all the public attributes of the class, maps to the database column name.

Defining the Connection String, for Database connection

   <add name="MovieDBContext"
   connectionString="Server=.\SQLEXPRESS;
   Database=Movies;Trusted_Connection=true"
   providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />;
and running the code, generates the database and table according the definition the class.

Now this, model is accessible from Controller.

Now using Linq, in the Action method

Query a model,
Fill the View
Return the view as ActionResult
Now, in the View template ; Model is accessible for displaying.

Updating the Model code, like adding a new publics attribute will allow for dropping and re-creating the database again.

Then using,
@using (Html.BeginForm()) {
@Html.ValidationSummary(true)

We can create the form…

For validation….

[Required(ErrorMessage = "Title is required")]
public string Title { get; set; }

So just by few clicks, I have a fully running code auto-generated.

JQuery and CSS3 : Way to create Powerful Web Pages

2011-02-25T17:02:00.000+05:30

JQuery is doing magic.
Recently in a small project I had a chance to use JQuery. I was very surprised at seeing the amazing powe rof the JQuery. What I used to do in a day using Javascript is now possible in minutes.
I took me few minutes to make the divisions draggable, resizable and selectable.

It haandles everything from event handing, animating, and Ajax without actually specifying the javascript functions at each element level but by just binding using a selctor using id, class, or at any other attribute.

JQuery is way too powerful and helps to creating rich web interfaces very rapidally.

For what i used to write a cumbersome code like,

document.getElementById("x").xxxxx

in JQuery,
--> $("#x").xxxx

To make element draggable,
   $("#x").draggable();

To make element resizable,
   $("#x").resizeable();

$(".icon")
.bind('click',function(event) { ... }

And all elements with class="icon" will be bind with onclick = function

$(".icon").hover(function() { ...}

similarly, for hover ....

Ajax is as simiple as this,
$.ajax({
   url: "member/chat",
   cache: false,
   type:"POST",
   data:myparam,
   success: function(data) {
   $(msgWin).html(data);
   },
   error: function(xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError) {
   alert("An error has occurred");
   alert(xhr.responseText);
   alert(ajaxOptions);
   return false;
   }
});

and much more.... http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page

If I remember, Google Web kit, many Java frameworks tried to solve this problem by creating a cumbersome framework which will allow java programmer to create interfaces which will create javascript transparently. I always found them problematic. I had always preffered to code my client interactions in Javascript.

With JQuery coming in, I think those frameworks are redundant.

CSS3
Other thing, I used in my project was CSS3. I am really amazed at what is being made possible by CSS3. I could provide shadow, round rectangles, skew rectangles, transform, translate, animate etc.
I do not think I would need to use images to so any effect, I can as well do it using CSS3.

I was surprised at the power of CSS3 of making so many things possible which I never thought is possible in Web pages.

JQuery and CSS3 are 2 technologies which I will recommend for anyone to learn as they will definately shape how the web pages will be created in future. I definitely am a fan of both of them.

CRM Initiatives : Modern Contact Center

2011-01-25T11:09:00.000+05:30

CRM Initiatives

Customer Relationship Management initiatives can be broadly categorized into 2 categories; 1) Front-office 2) Back-Office:

Front Office

The specific technical goals for the user facing layers are: a) Support for Multi-Channel interaction from customer b) Use of innovative technology in contact centers c) Support for larger customer base, b) More self service, d) Better user experience and user stickiness.

The key elements of the architecture that can achieve these goals are:

1. Unified Communication (supported by IM and Rich Presence)

• Seamless Collaboration supported by Unified communication

• Work From Anywhere , Virtualization of contact center

• Get the SME or Manager/Supervisor immediately into conference with customer

2. Intelligent IVR

• Innovative technology which routes the call to best agent based on the call statistics; customer name, type, type of call

• Speech Analytics to sense the customer frustration/delight for appropriate action like escalation.

3. Analytics Driven Contact Center

• Analysis of the calls, agents, measurement of improvement in call resolution to detect the ideas which are working and which needs improvements.

4. Self Service

• Provide self service portals to drive routine and most common queries of the customer with intuitive help and self-service.

• Capture the customer habits and behavior on the self service portal to analyze their behavior and trends.

5. Social CRM

• Social interaction and face book communities are driving the customer liking and dislike and setting expectations.

• Provide customer agents with Social Networking tools to interact with customers and form a relationship.

Benefits

 Improved First Call Resolution

 Customer Retention, Extension, Advocacy

 Response time assurance for a business transaction

 Reduced cost of operations

BackOffice

In the back office landscape, the key elements are:

1. Information Analysis & Access

Analysis and driving decision based on information analysis is the key to smart and successful interaction with customers

2. Information Aggregation (MDM and KM)

• Information in an enterprise is spread across departments, staff and their systems.

• Information in an also maintained in documents, PDF, emails, databases, content management systems, Issue systems etc.

• Information is also available in form of different format representing same entities; Customer (CRM) , Lead(Sales), Prospect(Sales), Consumer(CRM) may all be representing multiple facets of same person.

Unified access to integrated and aggregated information is must for a seamless interaction across departments.

3. Application and Process Integration

Computer systems must emulate the human workflow with seamless collaboration without hindrance of departmental system boundaries. The application must be integrated without any duplication and inconsistency of data.

Market Research --> Planning --> Purchase --> Production --> Sales --> Sales Support

The entire end-2-end value chain must be integrated with no constraints.

Benefits

 Improved Information Access

 Improved Information Quality

 Integrated Information

Trends in eLearning Curriculum

2010-11-29T20:39:00.000+05:30

The trends in eLearning Curriculum can be summarized by generational changes and disruptive technology advance to suit the new generation:

This the age of ”Nintendo children” -- raised on video and computer games, Walkmans, the Internet, etc. Ref. http://www.games2train.com/site/html/article.html

--They work at jet speed.

--They multi-task – doing homework while watching TV,

--Always talking to their friends with headphones on,

--On-demand access instead of sequential.

--Graphics as main theme and text for elucidating it.

--"Connected" experience” --Interactive learning, by playing and fun

Trends

“A picture is worth a thousand words”!!!

Hence, the learning content i.e. curriculum is going more graphical, interactive with more images, audio, and video files along with text.

“Adaptive Learning”

Hence, the need of the tailor-made content instead of standardized content. Student does not want to pick and choose from mass of content based on their requirement. Students want learning more suited to their own learning needs and adapted intelligence to gradually become complex as student start understanding the complex concepts.

Objective Learning or Outcome based learning

Ref . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-based_education “Outcome-based education is a student-centered learning philosophy that focuses on empirically measuring student performance, which are called outcomes. OBE contrasts with traditional education, which primarily focuses on the resources that are available to the student, which are called inputs.” Example:-Objective of session could be “Student will be able to add 2-digit addition after this section”. After the course, student can be assessed with 2-digit addition questions for measuring the student performance. If student scores above 80%, he can proceed for next section else sequence of learning can be adapted for explaining the concept again.

Connectivism

Learning is not limited to individuals working their heads out in the deep concepts but emulates the classrooms with students and friends connecting together using internet tools (chat, whiteboards, desktop sharing, video etc) irrespective of geography and time. This connection is in tune with the trends of growing connectivism and social networking evident with increasing mass base of face book and twitter.

Participative Active Consumer

Today’s learning is not one-way communication where teachers impart lectures in monotonous mode but is 2-way communication in form of questions, assignment, problem solving, lengthy discussion over shared learning content.

The learning content starts with basic concepts and material which evolves with active contributions from students their comments, notes, annotations, tagging into a more useful content with semantic and meaningful tags (something like our old notes for fast track exam refreshers).

However, this has additional advantages of sharing and thought of multiple minds. It also is digital content with all advantages like find, search, retrieve etc.

Open Society

There is a trend towards open society where there are no proclaimed experts and no predefined institutions or university authorized for providing learning. But, anybody who can provide knowledge and contribute can be part of this learning phenomenon.

Teacher or Expert can become publisher and write learning in form of blogs and provide knowledge and solve the students’ problems.

Technology Trends

Technology has to keep pace with e-learning trends to be able to meet the demand requirements.

The Content development is maturing the way other industries are working. Content is developed as modular granular components (text, images and video) separately and then assembled and aggregated to create the actual e-Learning product.

This promotes re-use by allowing the content being utilized in multiple place and product (composition pattern).
This promotes parallel development by allowing people expert in their areas to develop. e.g Graphics expert developing images, author developing text content, Animation artist developing the animations.
This also allows for better management over content development by breaking single content into multiple constituents and tracks their progress instead of older method where one author would be working on a single book for years.
This also allows for “Objective Content” where content units can be linked to their objectives. Allowing for intelligence for adapting content based on the change in objective or changes in better ways of achieving the Objective.

New Specification like SCROM, QTI, and DITA all are based on the same concept of content unit’s aggregations into e-Learning content.

With content going more digital (mix of images, video, animation), new editors are coming in which allows creating content by assembling this type of content text, images and video.

The content writers are aiming for more colorful, intuitive and animation learning keeping up with the trends of technology change. This innovative content makes the learning fun and play and keeps up the interest of the students.

The editors not only allows the content development but adding tags, annotations, comments, notes to add further value to the content. This allows for adding the relationship between objectives to a content unit.

This also allows the Content development based on the Objectives. Thus, “Outcome based content development”.

Learning Management system (LMS) or eLearning content Delivery systems are getting very intuitive allowing for getting feedback from the learner on the go and adapting the learning sequence and content based on the learner’s needs and skill level.

It mixes the content with periodic assessment to assess skill (measure outcomes) and then change the further sequence of learning based on the outcome/score.

Specification like SCORM has student interaction and feedback collection mechanism which can dynamically drive the learning sequence (Sequence Navigation).

ELearning Delivery system are getting more connectivist(Web 2.0) in nature. It allows the multiple students and teachers to connect to with sharing the learning in “Virtual classroom”.

Students can interact over Instant messages (IM), white board (similar to blackboard) , Q&A and forums. The tele-conference, video-conference, desktop sharing, file sharing al;l features are possible for virtual connectivity and presence.

They can further mark, tag, circle, write notes, underline (almost do anything which can be done on a paper books) to add meaning and write personal contents.

All these transcripts can be saved or recorded for references later. The content with additional notes can be saved and searched like other digital content.

ELearning content creation is also getting more open. It is no longer limited to “expert area”. The content today is no longer monologue or standard flow of text but collection of meaningful transcripts and conversation developed over chat, discussion and arguments.

Past students, hobbyist, Subject Matter Experts and Student all can freely interact without any agents in between to share their thoughts and get feedbacks for improving the content.

Students can freely post their doubts and questions over forums and get the multiple answers which explain the content.

Internet technology, Social Networking, Social Networking Tool and Standard Specification are leading the changes in eLearning Curriculum.