Technology and Management:

Agile Transformation

2018-01-14T13:06:00.000+05:30

With major shift in technology and tools there is definitely change in the way we work.

What we thought, few decades is hampering the organization growth. What worked earlier does not work and it's in efficient.

In this article we will answer following questions to reach conclusion on "Transformation".

1. What do you mean by Agile Transformation?.

2. What is the approach someone takes when are assigned to a project as part of transformation... Is there standard process/steps in Agile Transformation?

What is transformation?

Transformation is to change be the way we think and write software as a team.
In simple words transformation is nothing but the changing the way organisation is working.
Moving towards business value centric delivery by engaging the people and business users around that..
Agile transformation is a journey there is no fixed template or approach that can be followed across organisations.
But basically you need to understand the way company is operating (cultural aspects) and act towards that to bring a cultural change .

Where to start?

Understand the need of the customer/organization and the team. We would need leadership and organization commitments to kick start.

We need to understand, why management/organization is thinking to do? What is motivation behind it?
What are their end goals ??
Start with Why?

How to start and implement?

Value map the processes of both sides
Work with team on the gaps that we are currently having
Work with the team for the targets (small wins to larger wins) to achieve (not the timeline)
Slowly induce set of practices one by one and remove the existing g one that are withholding the team one after another
Measure the outcome.Share with team
Get their input
Continue again from step 1.

Organization culture and mindset shift

You change the mindset of the people, in couple of years you will see a new company culture.

When I say changing the way of working it is tied with cultural change which brings the change in mindset.

Organisation works with willing to serve as initiator for service for Organisation and people must have willingness to serve organisation to make that happen as they are directly proportional

Sometimes it also happens that lets do the piloting work for one particular line of business and then based on results decide on next steps...

It's both top down and bottom up approach. Of-course without leadership commitment, it's no use or ineffective.

It is that infectious

Real transformation runs for years ..but in some place it's done quickly 😁

Every initiative or Organisations initiative or Program has a budget allocated, even CAPEX and OPEX applies for this too !

Agile Roles and Agile transformation

Agile transformation is a journey there is no fixed template or approach that can be followed across organisations.

Agile coach is a change agent who assists the organisation leaders and teams across various levels..
Scrum Master helps organisation in helping the organisation to understand them the importance of change..he acts a team coach. When people only teach or coach to Scrum Team, they are scrum coach,

Organisation who wants to get to next level, but it’s their willingness to get it happen with success scenarios and failure to learn and improve

What happens after the transformation?

And the consultant who was part of that quick transformation will close the partnership with successful transformation report

It’s not only people, but this certificate and as well as end users (orgs, participants) who declare them as change agents

Is transformation easy?

Until and unless oneself will not pull up socks and tighten buckle, as transformation journey is not so easy.

Final word

Organisation who wants to get to next level, but it’s their willingness to get it happen with success scenarios and failure to learn and improve

Credits

AgileTM whats-app group members: The original contents were based on team discussions.

Original Article posted in Linkedin

The Unconventional Guide to Choosing Right Agile Methodologies

2017-11-24T19:49:00.001+05:30

For every organization transformation or implementation of Agile journey is really daunting task . It's every organization dilemma, which Agile methodology to pick from list.

Every organization is looking for right set of methods to deliver.

In this article we cover few agile methodologies (SCRUM, Kanban, XP, FDD, DSDM, Crystal ). These methodologies work best at "development" or "implementation" area only . Refer " Portfolio, Program, Delivery" figure .  

The article assumes you have already working on Agile and have good exposure in this area.

In any agile project, you would need commitment from every one (developers, business leaders, management and customers)

To have close collaboration and face2face communication
Making sure team is aligned to latest trends and technologies (to achieve bigger picture)
Have mind-set to have frequent/incremental delivery and tight leash on the process.

The "Agile Umbrella" items as shown above fits into delivery layer of the the below "Portfolio, Program, Delivery" frame-work.

Walk through on various Agile is as follows

SCRUM:

Short Intro:

Scrum is most used development part of the Agile (self explanatory) . It is framework of managing and controlling iterative work at the project level.
SCRUM starts at "product backlog" ends with delivery (ie production).

Program and Portfolio level:

It would need different framework (existing firm framework or some others) to manage at program, portfolio levels.

Use this when, you have following situation.:

For IT product shops for on-going development.

When, you are OK with little documentation

Where you have commitment from organization for this kind of approach

XP (Extreme Programming):

Short Intro:

XP is most used where high level involvement between customer and development team
Fast , aggressive deliver model, where team is close knit and dedicated team to who has very good knowledge in XP.

Program and Portfolio level:

It would need different framework (existing firm framework or some others) to manage at program, portfolio levels.
Less suited for this area, compared to SCRUM

Use this when, you have following situation.:

For small dev teams with very senior developer with excellent communication skills.

You are OK with little documentation.

Pair programming and code reviews, development practice

Needs more discipline than SCRUM , useful for small projects

FDD (Feature Driven development):

Short Intro:

FDD used for very development-centric modelling feature
Tight control on the process, lot of documentation
High quality code design and used for very complex projects unlike scrum and XP

Use this when, you have following situation.:

For corporate, public sector, R and D, regulatory environments .

Needs more discipline than SCRUM and XP . Its development centric products with long-term vision.

Kanban:

Short Intro:

Kanban comes from "Lean" methodology .it's useful "workflow" straemlining
It helps in creating product without burdening development team. Can be used for "ticketing system" kind of usage
Very light-weight,
Kanban can identify bottlenecks, waste , reduce wait time and increased efficiency

Program and Portfolio level:

It would need different framework (existing firm framework or some others) to manage at program, portfolio levels.

Use this when, you have following situation.:

Organization the need small, regular and incremental changes

Complex work systems that has long lead times

Less complex and lightweight the scrum.

DSDM(Dynamic Systems Development Method):

Short Intro:

DSDM uses Rapid Application Development (RAD) method
Useful for IT and Non IT projects, strong emphasis on project management.
Plan evolves based on increments

Use this when, you have following situation.:

Highly dependable

Provide defined guidelines for business system

Highly structured

Crystal:

Short Intro:

Crystal is most light weighted and adaptable approaches to software development.
It has various flavors to support small with low critical to large with high critical
Scaled according to team size, different colors denote the weight (clear, Yellow, Orange, Orange web, ...., Sapphire)

Program and Portfolio level:

It would need different framework (existing firm framework or some others) to manage at program, portfolio levels.

Use this when, you have following situation.:

For business critical and priority systems

For close knit teams with "co-located team)

You need light weighted methodologies, no rigid process

Conclusion:

We have discussed on few Agile methods . Stay tuned for next article on other Agile methods.

Why Fraudulent Entrepreneurs should be booked under the Law!

2017-11-24T12:58:00.004+05:30

Being an entrepreneur is crazy in itself.

Every day is a grind as they relentlessly strive to improve your products or services. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs or BDMs dump the burden of their ideas on others.

One of the unproductive things you find in some product companies – is a researcher on the Product Development team. The product never leaves the door, as the researcher or the company is never satisfied with the product.

Then you find companies who are working on multiple ideas or products. What they fail to appreciate is that focus on one product at a time is the key to success. You cannot build an Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft or Google by creating road-maps for multiple products.
If multiple products are one company’s Achilles heel, changing specifications to a product is another company’s hell. What such Product Gurus don’t understand is that every time you change the design or an idea, it kills the enthusiasm of the development team as well as the investors. This way, you will literally burn money in no time, with no result in the end.
Towards the end of 2015, I was associated with an entrepreneur who changed the model/idea every day. The product idea was revamped all the time. The frustration on the faces of people working on the product was quite apparent to outsiders too.

Between the end of 2015 and the middle of 2016, I worked as a Freelancer (without pay!!) where I had the opportunity to come in contact with the following types of frauds. What is described below is still an understatement of the way they operated.

Fraudster Type 1: The ‘Visionary’:

The self-described visionary came from Silicon Valley to change (or screw-up) the healthcare industry. He aimed at garnering unbelievable market-share by beating all the healthcare bigwigs. During day, his focus was attracting funding while at night, it was his crazy product ideas. He wanted to build a cloud-based system to run clinical trials for pharma companies, with utmost data security. A 25-member team and a decent office space with the burn rate of 25 lakhs INR per month (~44K USD) was setup. Few years had gone by, yet there was no clear revenue generation model. It turns out the product was meant to be a beta version only. One fine day, after having borrowed a few crores from every investor, he vanished into thin air.

2. Fraudster Type 2: The ‘Contract’ Guy

Folks wisdom warns us of people who will take your own stick to beat you or borrow your own watch to tell you the time. I had a chance to see this happen in business. Here was a guy had no funding, just some savings, but a vague idea of what he wanted to build. He used a detailed contract to attract his victims. He would seek your ideas, have the product built and validated by you, and while it’s still in the beta stage, he would vanish into thin air, without paying a penny.

3. Fraudster Type 3: The ‘Quick Payout’ Fraud

The BPO and IT Sector is replete with stories of people who have a vague idea or a fake one for a product or service They demand money for introducing you to prospective clients, create a lot of fake documentation and send email confirmations on the project signing to their next set of victims. In some cases, they push you to bid for projects that have expired. And at every stage, they elicit clear advances, payments, and commissions, without providing much clarity or value-add to the product. Once their kitty is full, they either abandon the product or vanish into thin air.

4.Fraudster Type 4: The ‘Well-connected Tycoon’

This type of fraud is a high-flyer. His/her designation on LinkedIn usually reads as "serial entrepreneur" (reminds you of ‘serial killer’) whose spouse/sibling/parent/in-laws/best buddy is a best buddy of Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Larry Ellison/Elon Musk…..etc. The guy has ‘offices’ all over the world. The design is done out of Germany, development out of Maldives (integration in his garage?). Not sure what is the kind of product he is building! The way it is projected, he appears to be working on the next "Google”? Oh, forgot to mention, he once dated the daughter of a mayor of New York! With his Ivy League business school degree and his slick Yankee accent, he had managed to become the CEO & MD of the company after ousting the original founders. One fine day, he goes missing. Hey, check with the NY mayor’s daughter!

5.Fraudster Type 5: The ‘Hot air balloon’

Business Development Managers have a reputation for getting things done. However, this precise skill of their tribe is exploited by fraudulent ones to promise a meeting with "Finland’s Prime Minister", Robert de Niro or the Saudi king, in a matter of days! Only precondition is you must sponsor his son's iPad.

Trust you get an idea of what I am saying! The screw-up economy, oops sorry, the startup economy may be driving innovation to a certain extent. But more often than not, it has become a highway for cheats and fraudsters to work boldly in the open, swindling business houses, banks and investors of gazillion amounts of money. As more and more investors and governments around the world wake up to this real menace, it becomes imperative to create checks and measures through legislation. This will rein in such fraudsters and boost the confidence of genuine innovators, and their investors, who are required to drive the future.

Reference : My linkedin article

Why "Product Discoveries" are the Secret Ingredient?

2017-11-22T16:04:00.000+05:30

The beginning

The journey of product development became fast faced with "Agile transformation" in the firms.

Historically the development cycles reduced from yearly --> Quarterly --> Monthly --> By weekly --> many deployments per day.

Product discovery is most neglected area?

In the same space of delivery, other side of coin is "product discovery". Product Discovery our goal is to learn fast, see if we can deliver "right product" . Our vision is to see "we have right product being envisioned".

Product discovery should be given precedence or same kind of the significance as "product delivery" to have better balance and good delivery.

Product Discovery "decides what to build"

Product Discovery "eliminates wrong product"

In olden days, the customer requirements are problem statements were treated as bible, and implementation was kick started, as soon as we receive the requirements

That was one of the shortsighted decision. This vision-less approach gave the products which were worth less. There are any firms produced worthless products.

Couple of tools and techniques to do successful "product discovery" This talks about more how to come up best design , go/no-go decisions before we hit to delivery.

1. User Experience Design( UX)

UX is the process of creating products, which will meaningful personal experience.

This involves careful product usability
Pleasure of using the product and functionality

2. Design Thinking

Design thinking is human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer tool kit to integrate the needs of people , the possibilities of technology, and the requirement for the business success - Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO)

3. Design Sprints

Design sprint is based on IDEOs "Design Thinking" framework.

In scrum, we have regular Sprint delivery cycles. Design sprint cycles comes before and in parallel to "Delivery sprints"

The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.

4. Dual-track Agile

In scrum we have regular Sprint delivery cycles. Design sprint cycles comes before and in parallel . This track will help to have better hand-in-hand Discovery and Delivery tracks in synchronization.

5.What customer wants?

This is famous pictorial representation which was known in "what customer wanted" and what was build?

What customer wanted and how to do successful delivery is defined by MVP and other latest movements .

6. "Lean Startup and MVP movement" ?

MVP is "Minimal Viable Product". Thanks to Eric Ries, and way of approach.

Build what we need today in incremental model.

The "Agile" speaks on every release will create a part of "end product", which allows us for "validated learning".

MVP is especially useful for startups, where the cash and resources are the problem .

7. Four Steps to the Epiphany

There are other great books in same manner as "lean Startup" .
" The four steps to the epiphany"

The "Four steps" helps uncover flaws in product and business plans and correct them before the flaw has happened
Rapid iteration, customer feedback and testing your assumptions

8. Jobs to be done framework

Highlight the human need you're trying to fulfill.

A job to be done (JTBD) is a revolutionary concept that guides you toward innovation and helps you move beyond the norm of only improving current solutions.

Example: How are we solving customer problem?

It also means, what product you are replacing (Kodak VS Iphone camera)

8.Opportunity Solution tree

References

1. Product Talk by Teresa Torres

Why fradaulent enterprenuers should be 1 of the 7 deadly sins?

2017-04-07T07:53:00.001+05:30

Being entrepreneur is the crazy idea.

Every day you have to think how do you build the product or features.

Somehow, these entrepreneurs or BDM are often the burdens of their ideas on others.

1. Keeping a researcher on the product development is the crazy idea. The product never leaves the door, as they never get satisfied with the product.

2. Focus on one product at a time is key. You can not build Amazon, Flipkart, Microsoft, Google on one product line/ road-map.

Each time you change the design and idea will kill the enthusiasm of your team, investment people. You literally burn money with this approach.

Incidentally at the end of 2015, was associated with an entrepreneur who changed model/idea by the day. He revamps product ideas. You can notice the frustration on people, who are working on it.

3. The following is my experience in working as a freelancer ( without pay??) [end of 2015 to the middle of 2016]. These are actually the understatement of their approach.

Fraudster 1:

a. He came from silicon valley to change ( or screw up) the health care industry. He used to think he can get market share, and can beat all health care bigwigs.

b. His focus in the day on funding. Night on crazy product ideas. He came to build cloud-based "clinical trails" with utmost data security. With 25 people team and a decent office space with the burn rate of 25 lakhs INR per month (44K USD). Few years were spend without any revenue generation model

c. It turns out, product was demo piece (after few years). And he took few crores from each investor and vanished.

Fraudulent 2:

There are so many people with little or very less money, would come with a (software) contract. They would get ideas and validation of the product from you.

End of the day, after you have done with some development, they vanish into thin air (without paying any money)

Fraudulent 3:

Been associated with few people. They always come up with fake or no products. And they demand money for introducing.

They create a lot of fault documents, and email confirmation on the project signing.

This happened mostly on Bpo sector (99 percentage time)

In IT projects, people get outdated bids and they are always interested in percentage commission ( upfront), with no clarity what is the value addition. Every person in the value chain,(we spoke to) is after their advance and payments.

Fraudulent 4:

This kind of people are high flyers.

His or her designation on LinkedIn will be "serial entrepreneur" ( like the serial killer)/Husband or wife/father or mother/innovation expert/ partner of bill gates/ partner of Steve Jobs.

This person told me, he has the office all over the world. The design will be done in Germany, development in Maldives, integration on mountain Everest. Not sure what kind of project he is building?

Wait for a second, he is work on next "Google" ??. He said once he dated a mayor's daughter.

With all wisdom and his American accent, he became CEO and managing director of company demoting the founders.

He is gone missing. Any clues?? ( to be with mayor's daughter?? )

Fraudulent 5:

It is very usual to find "business development managers". They get the business of building " mountain Everest'. He can arrange the meeting with "Finland prime minister" in the fraction of seconds.

One day I called them, he told he is working on the deal with " Robert DeNiro or "Helen Keller" or " king of Arabia".

Finally, hope you got the picture. If you would like to meet any of these individuals, I will arrange a meeting. (Precondition is you have to sponsor my son's iPad)

See you soon

The simplest ways to make the best of exit strategies

2017-02-26T20:03:00.002+05:30

Simplest way of exit strategy:

Simplest way ........

There is no way ....................

Unless you plan one.

Test Driven Development

In "Test Driven Development" you make/write one program, before that you write a test case to fail/Pass.

If a student fails the exam, he/she failed during the entire year. It is not that day alone. Planning for failure is the "fist step in " entrepreneur ship.

Unless you plan for an exit strategy, you will exit without a trace. Same is applicable for job/revenues. Planning one would always help.

Where are we travelling?

The pitch deck is a presentation (an elaborated resume of the firm) which is used in firm and investor connect. The last and final slide is "exit strategy".
In other words, what if fails?

In general project management

Risk mitigation is defined as taking steps to reduce adverse effects. There are four types of risk mitigation strategies that hold unique to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. It's important to develop a strategy that closely relates to and matches your company's profile

Plan to risk from the beginning

General thought on exit:

1. It is always good to aim high.

2. Having planning at high is good.

why don't think an exit strategy???

Thinking "what if fails?" is actually good entrepreneurs strategy.

I am not PESSIMIST, if you are planning "Everything" well does not help anyway

1. You can not have 15 years (housing/Office) lease, thinking that your firm will become next FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT.

2. Keeping it low is always good.

Startups to focus on products (which are hotter than Jennifer Lawrence)

2016-02-16T08:14:00.000+05:30

“You need a very product-oriented culture… Lots of companies have great engineers and smart people. …..there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together.” - Steve Jobs

Keeping aside "Jennifer Lawrence" , focus on a product is key than wondering here and there .

Product is the key

1. Focus on the product, MVP, the flow of the process and project.

a. Do you have clear guidelines?

b. Do You have MVP?

A strategy used to rapidly test the core assumptions of a product or feature. The goal of a MVP is to establish as much validated learning as possible while doing with so the minimal amount of effort.

The term was coined and defined by Frank Robinson, and popularized by Steve Blank, and Eric Ries (for web applications).

A MVP is an integral part of the Build-Measure-Learn methodology of The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. ( from Quora.com)

c. Are you solving some problem?

What problem's you solving?. How unique is the idea?

d. Hope this is not copy of some xyz product?

Rather than creating X for Y and Y for X create some thing very unique . Build a house or apartment, as if you are going to live?

Vision and Mission

Every founder or meeting attend to boasts about their vision and mission. They are so fascinated about the product.

Vision and mission are like fruits, where it is difficult to reach

Start-up salaries and perks

Only few start-ups take care of the employee benefits and salaries as they promised

andani draksha pallu pullana..అందని ద్రాక్ష పళ్లు పుల్లన..

Literally, this proverb means unreachable grapes are sour. It is similar to the proverb "The grapes are sour, said the fox, when he could not get at them". This can be used in context when a person fails to achieve something and he says it was not worth it.

( The following is in south Indian "telugu" language )

It is well known, start-ups founder, Vision and Mission does not fill the needs of the people associated with them .

Unless you pay the rewards, it is does not help you to reach their goals.

Investing in non-Unicorns?

There is joke, start-up get more revenues from investors than their sales

Why our world would end, if start-ups disappeared?

2015-12-28T06:27:00.003+05:30

This is one crazy year, my direction in career changed due to various reasons. During crazy year have been seen various paths (Investment arrangement, start-up consulting). Some of the learning's are documented here.

Usually, people think, start-up is the very straight forward journey. But after successive failures, you see the final success (if firm is still alive).

IDEAS - dime a dozen

There are many start-ups's are just following earlier start-ups or creating same models of facebook, Amazon, micro-soft, Apple, eCommerce and mobile applications.

Innovation is missing everywhere. Unless you innovate, you are bound to fail.

A start-up should decide what is way forward?

What are we achieving by doing this?

No one wants another "eCommrce" or "Quickr"?

If you can not innovate, it is better you ignore you startup idea.

It is learned, people chase wrong products, ideas, people, co-founders. You would need have all departments covered.

Business model first?

Usually, people plan a journey and see pros and cons, before they start their journey. You need a road-map.

First and foremost thing is working on "business model canvas"

MVP

Enterpenuer connect

CEO's or founders to be connected with all departments. Rather than micro-managing plan all departments, plan for each department owned by each individual

De-centralization of the activities. Each every team should have daily check-points, rather than CEO or founders taking all responsibilties.

In start-up's it is essential to focus on each departments.

1. Product dev

2. Marketing

3. Pre-sales

4. Funding

5. Loans and investments

Simplest way of exit strategy:

Simplest way ........

There is no way ....................

Unless you plan one.

"Test Driven Development" VS start-up planning

In "Test Driven Development" you make/write one program, before that you write a test case to fail/Pass.

If a student fails the exam, he/she failed during the entire year. It is not that day alone. Planning for failure is the "fist step in " entrepreneur ship.

Unless you plan for an exit strategy, you will exit without a trace. Same is applicable for job/revenues. Planning one would always help.

Where are we travelling?

The pitch deck is a presentation (an elaborated resume of the firm) which is used in firm and investor connect. The last and final slide is "exit strategy".
In other words, what if fails?

In general project management

Risk mitigation is defined as taking steps to reduce adverse effects. There are four types of risk mitigation strategies that hold unique to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. It's important to develop a strategy that closely relates to and matches your company's profile

Plan to risk from the beginning

General thought on exit:

1. It is always good to aim high.

2. Having planning at high is good.

why don't think an exit strategy???

Thinking "what if fails?" is actually good entrepreneurs strategy.

I am not PESSIMIST, if you are planning "Everything" well does not help anyway

1. You can not have 15 years (housing/Office) lease, thinking that your firm will become next FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT.

2. Keeping it low is always good.

Hope this helps

Why life planning will make you question everything

2015-11-11T06:34:00.000+05:30

What is work?

Mukund Mohan (@mukund) is a serial entrepreneur. He has written many inspiring articles and well known for his leadership in start-up world:)

“Work” is really a man-made concept. As a friend put it yesterday, it is exchange / creation of value for goods and services desired. If we can abstract why we need to work from why we want to work, then it becomes a question of bringing value to another human’s life.

Flipkart App

What is life planning?

Life planning is an infinite amount of events and adjustments to have a better life for you and your family.

No one life is perfect, and it goes through different ups and downs. Keeping a balanced life in ups and downs is the key.

Balanced scorecard

The Personal Balanced Scorecard (Pbsc) is a journey into the inner self, where values, hopes, dreams and aspirations lie quietly waiting to be discovered. Taking the journey as an individual allows you to view your life objectively and authentically as a whole person and provides a roadmap of your dreams and aspirations translated into manageable and measurable milestones.

They say, every three months you evaluate and take stock of balance score card

Why analyze Income and expenses?

In order take care of needs, which will have arisen due to unforeseen events. You would need to forecast from the beginning and plan for the same. This planning is mostly on income and expenditure.

Income

For employee - Salary components ( which is variable amount, since you can work)
For employer - Profits or fixed income (if any)
Returns for other investment
Returns from property, infrastructure or other means
Available money in shares, Mutual funds or other instruments
Fixed deposits
Loans are given to others (if they return)
Existing bonds, gold and other ornamenents
Fixed and/Or Variable Bonus, if applicable (Yearly, Monthly, Quarterly)
Any other goods, which are not listed above

Expenses

Current expenses
Education, Loans
Self and dependent expenses
Monthly/Yearly/Quarterly installments loan/Car/Home and any others
Salaries to the employees (Driver, Maid, assistants)
Health, Car, Medical, Personal insurance
For Employer - employee salaries

Hope this helps

If You Read One Article About Venture Capitals Read this One

2015-11-11T00:00:00.000+05:30

Few learnings in VC and Angel Investor's interactions

The following picture is from American Tv Drama ( X-files Mulder and Scully - fictional characters ). They are FBI agents in TV drama.

Getting VC/Angle investors is like "X-files mission". You need dedicated agents like Mulder and Scully.

The convincing prospective investor is Mission Impossible (task) . This is like startup's need to think, why are we at this stage?.

Venture Capital /Angel Investors

Keeping aside the differences between both, both are for arranging to fund as well as well being of the startups

Pitch Desk, Pich Deck, Pitch deck

This is key document are slide pack, which is starter point to connect prospective investor to potential firm

You can have multiple versions depending on the investor and their segment.
1. Elevator pitch
2. One minute pitch
3. 5 /15/30 minutes pitch

Not every pitch deck satisfies all the investors.

Charted accountants want to see numbers, projections, balance sheets.
Technical people are comfortable with technology
VC and HNI want to see ROI
Some people want disruptive innovations
Some people, how do you ensure amount invested?
Is it in single person's control?
Do we have distributed team?
What if this fails, do have an exit strategy?

Pitch deck contents

Courtesy : Rodinhoods "Alok :)"

Business/ Service/Product/ Platform name
Benefit line

As amazon, we are e-commerce platform

Current Problem
How are we addressing the same?.
Visual demo

To showcase the product to prove the prototype is done

Business proposition

Mention in crisp
What will you offer to whom, why, for what and the benefits of doing?

How does your business work?

Explain the process of executing your business
Some flowcharts or live demo or Video

Proof of traction

Early customers
And roadmap

Market size and potential

TAM (Total Available market ): Total market for product or service
SAM (Serviceable Available Market) : It is segment of the TAM targetted by your products and services
SOM( Serviceable Obtainable Market): It is the portion of SAM, you can capture

Competition market

How do we differ?
Is there any threat?
How near, How far, which areas they can have our cake?
Product differentiator

Go To Market strategy

How are you taking this market live?
Sales, Marketing
30/60/90/120 days plan

Core strategy

simple plan, which we can explain

Financial Model

Is it Value driven or Volume?
"One-time payment model" or "subscription model"
How big can this grow?

Why are you looking

Why do you need funds?
When do you need funds?
Current investors?
Total invested?
Total pool
Equity
What stage?

Seed, Round A, Round B

Cash flows
Revenue streams
Threats, Death, weakness
Outcome of the business
Founder and team

What happens after pitch deck?

Most of the people have discussion on valuations, how to invest
The process continues :)
Several questions
Several pitch decks

What is the typical time frame close on funding?

Million dollar question

Hope this helps!

How Nostradamus Predicted Presto Engine for Querying 250 PB Data

2015-10-26T09:11:00.000+05:30

Who is Nostradamus?

Nostradamus is the french seer, who has done predictions of the future?

As per bible, god created a man ( Mark Zuckerberg).

Man ( Mark Zuckerberg) created a Facebook

The database, information was so small, when he started.

Summary of all the cloud-related stuff after this quote

MapReduce

MapReduce is used in distributed computing environment. It maps various data points. After computation and logical operations reduces, and results are produced.

You have to understand "Google Search Architecture", "Google Search architecture part2"

HBase (database)

Apache HBase™ is the Hadoop database, a distributed, scalable, big data store.

Hadoop and HDFS

Hadoop was created by Doug Cutting and Michael J. Cafarella.Doug, who was working at Yahoo at the time, named it after his son's toy elephant. It was originally developed to support distribution for the Nutch search engine project.

Hadoop Architecture

1 Hadoop and its "Hadoop Distributed File System" (HDFS), an open source Java product

Problems with Hive and others

Historically, our data scientists and analysts have relied on Hive for data analysis,” Traverso said. “The problem with Hive is it’s designed for batch processing. We have other tools that are faster than Hive, but they’re either too limited in functionality or too simple to operate against our huge data warehouse. Over the past few months, we’ve been working on Presto to basically fill this gap.”

Why PRESTO?

Presto solve the hive and other problems, as mentioned above/

Presto is open source project from Facebook

According to netflix team

We had been in search of an interactive querying engine that could work well for us. Ideally, we wanted an open source project that could handle our scale of data & processing needs, had great momentum, was well integrated with the Hive metastore, and was easy for us to integrate with our DW on S3. We were delighted when Facebook open sourced Presto.

In terms of scale, we have a 10 petabyte data warehouse on S3. Our users from different organizations query diverse data sets across expansive date ranges. For this use case, caching a specific dataset in memory would not work because cache hit rate would be extremely low unless we have an unreasonably large cache. The streaming DAG execution architecture of Presto is well-suited for this sporadic data exploration usage pattern.

In terms of integrating with our big data platform, Presto has a connector architecture that is Hadoop friendly. It allows us to easily plug in an S3 file system. We were up and running in test mode after only a month of work on the S3 file system connector in collaboration with Facebook.

Hope this helps

Great Articles About IT Architecture

2015-10-18T12:33:00.000+05:30

Over the years, have written articles on the process, program, and Agile aspects.

Before we go through the amazing process, we would need to understand how do we get the (great) architecture.

There is also a strategy article written in terms of the "how do we reach and streamline the process of the firm?"

Why do you need architecture?

In the case of civil engineering, it is easy to depict the buildings and this will be a reference architecture for construction work.

Architecture framework?

An architecture framework is a tool which can be used for developing the broad range of different architecture.
It will describe a method for designing the information systems
In terms of building blocks, and for showing how the building blocks fit together
It should contain a set of tools to provide common vocabulary
Include a list of recommended standards ad compliance products that can be used to implement the building blocks

Architecture and understanding

For better architecture, you would need to understand the inter-relation between COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL, Prince2

Prince2, ITIL

ITIL, Prince -2, Agile , Scrum

Lean, Agile - snapshot

COBIT:

IT governance, Risk, and Compliance (Direct)

It enables IT goals to business goals
Better alignment based on business focus
It provides view of what IT does that is understandable to management

TOGAF:

It provides a common sense, a practical, prudent and effective method of developing an IT architecture.
It helps to move from AS-IS to TO-BE state (keeps agility and profits intact)
If you don't update, you will be spending money on wrong architecture

Hope this helps

Top 13 reasons, your start-up/products will fail

2015-10-14T04:19:00.003+05:30

Being observing startup and product development for many years either work or during the job search.By the way, they are not in particular order.

#1 Strategy is missing

Lacking in the what the product/startup should be?. Just because someone is hit (read Amazon, Flipkart, Google, Food Apps, Delivery apps, Oyo, AniBnb), you are starting the same stuff.

Just because zebra, is able to cross the roads, people think they have to be like zebra to cross the road. They will keep firms and product at cross-roads.

#2: Market doesn't need product anymore

As mentioned above, overcrowded product lines, will make margin's thin. Employees fly from one firm to other making salaries skyrocket.
At "no point of time", team does not understand, what user's need?.
Take the example of many "recruitment firms" or "websites". It is really waste time to have so many firms working on this. No revenue margins.
Take the example of apps, web development firms, they are firms who can do the web site for a dollar. Keeping other firms out of business.

#3 Team you hire is not competent.

1.You hired your college mates, hostel-mates ( Read IIT and IIMs), girlfriend and boyfriends. They have "no clue" how the product work?.

2.Or you hired your local religion, same language speaking person, and your "YES man and woman"

3. You hired all developers or marketers or VC's. There is no "combination diet". You have not created departments or anything.

#4 Your founders, do not take the penny (as salary).

Now you imitate, steve jobs. Like him, your founder went to some ashram (devotional place) and realised, as he took the penny. You will also take the same amount. And you promised yourself, once you grow big you will take the salary.

Then you realise, even employees should not take salaries. What an idea?

#5 No funds

You have spent a lot of money in doing wrong product. And hired secretaries, fancy cars and conducted seminars and parties in heavenly place to get "facebook", "twitter" likes.

You hire all kindergartners, who can do work at low cost. None of them experienced.

All above will blow-up your cash and funds.

# 6 User acquisition

Inability to acquire customers, as you are in the very crowded area (Product market). As your father, brother, the neighbour is working on same kind apps. You make an app to figure out what apps to use?.

There are fewer chances of getting users, because of above reasons

There are thousands of IMTITAION firms like Facebook-part2, Linkedin-Part2 and so on, which keeps you out of business

#7 Idea, Idea, Idea

You need the great idea to succeed. Big books stores collapsed due to amazon and all. Unless you innovate, you are bound to fail.

You need a firm or idea, which can be implemented and saleable

# 8 Timing

Start-up timing is bad, either too early or too late.

#9 Business model

Inability to change the model, and also no diversification. No revenue generation in whatever means?

#10 lack of trust

Trust between partners, VCs, Employees, Employers is not there. Lack of the common goal. Or too many leaders are there.

#11 Funding, funding, funding

People spend too much time and efforts on getting funding and celebrate and blow-up entire money in this process. No concentration on the product you are building

Funding is not the success.

#12: Building a product without "quality control"

#13: Plan for an exit at some point of time.

It means, keep things in control. You do not need to take offices with 10 years rental agreement. You can use cabs or rental cars, rather buying expensive cars.

You don't need to invest money in building a fancy resort for employees. You can use as time-shared means.

No need to invest on servers/infrastructure, instead hire "cloud space" or take servers on the lease.

Hope this helps

Lean, Agile - snapshot

2015-10-06T00:29:00.001+05:30

Thanks for nice response on articles on Lean and Agile **

In this article, initial small intro on Lean and Agile. After that, have provided links. Some of the links might be broken, and would have re-write older articles

Before we go through, we would need highlight process should be part of the product journey. But system thinking, greater architecture, collaborated team efforts and balanced work and best work ethics as well as respect to individuals

People often confuse between Lean and Agile

Lean is how to maximize customer value while minimizing the waste. Lean means creating more value.

Lean comes from "Lean Manufacturing", This is where Toyota, Ford have manufactured the automobiles (rather innovation happened).

Ther practice of developing the right skills to deliver more value with less.

Lean is about creating the long term vision to an organization. Even, though this will create a short term problem.

Principle #5 of theToyota Way management system says:

“Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get *quality* right the first time.”

Lean process aim is to find the problem and eliminating the problem.

This does not mean developing.
Rearranging the cubicles or re-allocating the whole team working on particular activity
Rearranging a traffic flow to eliminate bottlenecks (Theory of constraints)

In above problem adding few people at counter1, counter2, counter3 or eliminating them or streamlining them will create efficient output.

Agile ( Iterative development)

Agile methodology is alternative to traditional project management in software development. It helps teams to respond to unpredictable work.

This done by an incremental, iterative work (known as sprints) process
Rather than long waits to see the light, we would rather identify the mechanism to develop a product.
Small incremental and time-boxed delivery (like car productio
Customer on the floor or always available or involved in timely basis
Every release to produce a testable and closer to final product

My earlier articles on Agile **

1. Agile process

2. My journey towards agility
3. Flickr deployments
4. Nuts and bolts of agile delivery
5. Agile embedded systems links
6. Prince2, Agile, Scrum, ITIL
7. Why agile is too fragile
8. Agile Manifesto

My earlier articles on Lean **

1. Eric Ries Lean startup: Tivo, Simon Langley, Lean Startup
2. Agile, Scrum, Lean Start-up.....................

Further reading:
1.The one thing Lean Six Sigma got wrong about Lean

Thanks, hope you enjoyed. Your feedback would help.

Find How Cloud Computing Could Benefit Education Sector

2015-10-05T20:10:00.004+05:30

Cloud is allowing Businesses to allocate more resources to their Core Function, as it runs on a Opex Model. Because of this flexibility Businesses can now focus on Service Excellence.

Likewise with Cloud Education institutions too will be able to Focus and Achieve Service/Education Excellence, and this is so much better for the future of the world. We will have a lot more people who will be far better educated from the current standards.

Cloud enables Educators to achieve speed in most of their activities. Cloud specifically a PaaS Service like Bluemix comes with lot of services which could be quickly assembled to automate a certain task which is currently being executed manually. Building Programs on PaaS is such a breeze that anyone with a moderate knowledge of programming can come up with Prototypes (to achieve automation) pretty quick, validate its effectiveness and release it to be used by other colleagues and students. Once in-house staff starts automating their own and their colleague’s tasks, everything in the college will speed up, teachers will be left with so much more time to spend on students, and contribute to the learning of the students. I believe all those schools and colleges which are already embracing Cloud Computing will soon start realizing this benefit in full, and start displaying this achievement to others who are late to move to Cloud.

Now let me tell you a little about why it is easy to Automate on a PaaS like IBM Bluemix.

1. IBM is providing a free 8 hour online learning and one month free access to Bluemix, so educators; Neither you nor your staff has to spend any money to learn how to build applications on Bluemix. Isn’t that cool and easy!!

2. There is enough education material, examples with codes and videos on IBM Websites/Github/Stackoverflow to learn how to build a variety of applications ranging from space apps to apps that will help you find an ATM around you. Your staff could just redo what is done, build apps and retire them to get a hang of how apps are built.

3. Since it’s all based on open source, there is enough reusable code which anyone can use without any limitation, tweak it as per your requirement and build the apps of your choice.

4. All the services are available on demand, you don’t have to wait a minute to install new hardware or software, it’s all readily available on pay as you use basis.

5. Everything is on Cloud which means, you can collaborate with others, share the project with others you know and get their expert help in a few minutes.

Education sector has many stakeholders, ranging from Government, Administrators, Teachers, and Students to many others. Student is the biggest stakeholder and he deserves the highest benefit. Automation and Cloud is definitely going to bring in a lot of cost and time saving. Educators will be left with a lot on table to pass this benefit to Students and hence provide highest benefit to the biggest stakeholder.

A PaaS like Bluemix allows students to explore 100’s of different software services, competing with each other in the same segment. This gives massive and wide exposure which was not available to students within the college campus all this while. Such exhaustive list of resources were available only within the corporate firewall. With Cloud and Bluemix, technology is now democratized, everyone has equal access to the best of the breed technology, right on their laptop.

Imagine the competence and capabilities of the staff and students who work on ultra-modern technologies, standardized across all nations and continents. Education sector in all countries never had such a level playing field for its students.

Teachers and Educators it’s now on you to help your students get the best tools via IBM Bluemix.

Disclaimer: Content written above is purely my individual opinion and not my employer’s statement or commitment.

I would love to Connect with you on twitter, here is the link to my Twitter Profile!!

Seven Cloud Computing Myths

2015-10-04T14:00:00.003+05:30

Here are Seven Most Common Myths Around Cloud Computing

1. Data is not safe: Data is actually more safe on Cloud as there are more resources dedicated to secure the data and the machines.

2. Cloud is expensive: Cloud is Not expensive as you pay only for what you use, you never pay for extra capacity that goes unused.

3. Cloud is New so not for me: Yes new technology is called new because it has got some features that are disruptive. If you rightly identify those disruptive features and ride them before your competition does, you will be the new dominating force in your industry.

4. Cloud is only for storing Data: Wrong Cloud is not just for storing data, you can host applications on cloud, and let them run, scale up and down as per your visitors demand and traffic.

5. Cloud is not fast: Cloud's primary objective is to serve scale and not speed. In house Data Centers will take months to scale up, while you could scale up in a minute via cloud, now do you think that is not fast, it is indeed !

6. Cloud is for the startups: Cloud is for anyone who wants to have the flexibility of cost and features. If you want to have the flexibility to stop spending on a certain IT application. On cloud it just takes a minute.

7. There are too many APIs: Yes Cloud is meant to automate the automation, it is meant to provide flexibility, portability, cost savings, collaboration and several new features, and all of these are achieved VIA APIs, hence there are too many of them. But you wouldnt have to use all of them, u just have to use those few which are absolutely essential.

Made in India - Indian startups

2015-09-23T08:28:00.001+05:30

The title's origin can be traced to the present ( Indian Prime Minister Mr . Narendra Modi's the USA mesmerized visit).

The following is phrase is used by Apollo -13 moon crew. They have reported a major technical problem. This is the same story of startups.

Startup's

Last few weeks being crazy, as I have ben looking for new job/career. Every stage of life gives major learning.

During this phase, I am exploring options with various startups and MNC's. It is amazing after ten years (of my job search) have seen things have changed.

Young Guns in line :)

There is a major shift in the change of the firms /thinking. During my job search process, have spoken to various people

Have seen and spoken to IIM/IIT other top cream college/School graduates.
The experiences range from "Zero years" to "ten years"
They are in CXO roles and key roles.
One such example is Oye rooms co-founder ( Ritesh Agarwal)
Another example is "Rahul Yadav" (Ex-CEO of Housing.com). He is most controversial CEO of the times.

No Vision and Mission

People are mixing various roles (CXO, Developer, Investor). No man/woman can have multiple roles.
Every firm wants CXO, who can code, test, fund, market, and many things. People don't realize development guys can't be in co-founder team.
Foundation of the development team is a must. Unless you have the right mix of all ingredients you can not have a right taste of food or pizza.
There is no roadmap. People are concentrating on either "marketing side" or "getting product out"
Just because there is an idea, you could not plunge into water
People want all in one guy or girl's (may be kindergarten ) to do everything.
People and firms to get maturity in dealing market and financial condition.

Copycat.com

Everyone is trying to become Amazon, Flipkart, Google. Every firm wants to imitate what others are doing.
Plethora of e-commerce firms produced in the market. Unless there is a strategy, you can not succeed.

Process and planning

The following is typical strategy suggestion, I have made to the startups

Near-term

Gap analysis
Setting up a team or re-arranging the portfolio
Hand-over /KT from consultants or contract firms (if any)
Steady state

Long -term

Migration to "new technology stack or framework Gap analysis
Distributed development teams

Typical development team

Team lead/Architect
Document writer
Solution Designer/ Component designer
Developer and Tester
QA teams
Deployment team

Typical Documentation /Guidelines

Project Plans
Requirements /User stories creation
Coding guidelines
Architecture document
High-level ./Low level design
Test plans and test cases
Deployment setup

Credits:

1. Image-holder and some of the quotes
2. Grammarly.com: is writing enhancement platform
‏@Shivanand_25 suggestion on modification of the title and contents

9 Reasons Finding Co-founders are Sweeter than Christmas Morning

2015-09-08T05:44:00.000+05:30

Finding Nemo (2003 )

American animated movie produced by Pixar Animation and produced by Walt Disney.

This article is long due, at least it is easy to find Nemo in a sea. This is the most amazing movie which was produced by Walt Disney.

It takes enough guts to create something like this

There needs to be a lot of courage to create films like this. For this, you would need some people who are having the vision, having an idea to work on.

Paul Allen and Bill gates are needed?

So for having a greater products and future for the company like Microsoft, we would need a strong and committed people.

Solo founder is not the way, rarely you see one-man army's ( Steve Jobs). All other case it is more than two people.

Who is the co-founder?

A co-founder is one who joins at ideation stage or before or after. And these persons are responsible and to be compatible to have an end result.

According to co-founder - Wiktionary

"A person who is involved with helping in the creation of a business, organization, union, or entity, but is not the original founding person.

How do we find the perfect fit?

This a million dollar question.

Technical Co-founder

Non-technical co-founder

The key skills and building blocks are as follows:
1. Customer Development and Marketing
2. Product and prototyping
3. Branding and Design
4. Personality and committment

Final word

Credits: Quora and respective image and content sites :)

Hope you got the picture, your feedback will matter.

Big Fish Eat Little Fish

2015-08-26T18:48:00.000+05:30

Big Fish Eat Little Fish or Small Fish Eats Big Fish?

This heading might have been different, why do I think?

Big Fish Eat Little Fish : IBM or Microsoft eating Little fish

Little Fish Eat Big Fish : New entrants eating away Big Fish ( Read Facebook, Amazon, Google)

Without going on fishing for long, let us get into to another story (movie 1998 )

YOU'VE GOT MAIL (1998) - American Movie

Director: Nora Ephron ; Starring: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan and Greg Kinnear.)

This is very beautiful movie, where girl meets boy on chatting. They fell in love. Incidentally girl is owner of small book store. Boy comes with bigger store, now keeping girl's business out.

The gist of it, big book store like "Barns and Nobel /Borders" keeps smaller book store "out-of-business" . The competitor bulldozing the existing market players is the key here

Beautiful love saga and romance between two great actors is the fresh blood in love stories with a technology mix. I also loved Titanic, Perfect Storm and Message in the bottle movies in the same time zone.

Big/New/Innovative fish bulldozes exiting market players

Amazon.com has supplied books via internet
E-Books, Kindle came
Because of this traditional book store's market got collapsed
This affected, other small players ; Player who are not migrated got declined or collapsed (into thin air.

So why organization(s) fail?

Organizations compete in same market space and fight for the same cake like kids (fighting for the same toys ). It is "Red ocean strategy"

Over bidding and underbidding, getting into malpractices
They fight for existing market piece than moving into un-explored territories

Taking over, bulldozing the existing market place.

Any tools to use to see and prevent?

Oh my god, do we have strategy to do and analyse?

Few tools, for

1. PEST Analysis :

This is a useful tool for understanding the market growth or decline, and as such the positions and direction for business
PEST is Political, Economical, Social and Technological factors

In the above example book store business , all above factors can be considered

2. Michel Porters : Five Forces Model

It is a frame work to analyze the level of competition within the industry and business strategy development.

3. Value Chain :

It is set of activities that a firm operating from specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product or service.

Cost Advantage: Better understanding the costs and squeezing them out of value-adding activities
Differentiation : By focusing on those activities associated with core competencies to perform them better than competitors

Primary activities are related to manufacturing industry.

4. SWOT analysis

(Self explanatory)

Hope this helps

Click to bid, sms to win

2015-08-21T08:06:00.001+05:30

It was really strange how, people think. You will send SMS to win million dollars. Click to get a job

Scam - Part1

Scam Part2 ( Net work or NOT working)

Few years back, we got in touch great Bill Gates - Part2 over coffee. For everything he was saying, it can be done.
1. Oracle Partnership in minutes
2. Product development contract < 2 billion> with referrals. He knows a agent who can the contract
3. He also said will get investors and funding from all millionaires in the world

Solutions or thinking way forward

1.Gone are the times of full life cycle deliveries . Need to see, what u deliver in week.

2. Avoid fancy office setups, receptionist, lavish bungalows. All should be just-in time.

3. No traction, no business

4. No free lunches

5. Social media and cloud days are in progress. Unless innovate, things are not going to happen

6. Unless you can explain, in few simple words : You actually do not know anything?

7. If you can not deliver a thing, no need to have fancy websites, company registration. Savings is the key.

Comments welcome

Happy to discuss on, how to bring product and cost savings in your journey.

Driving carefully

2015-07-18T12:26:00.000+05:30

While traveling in RTC ( Road transport corporation), " డ్ర్ వ ర్ గా రు
జా గ్ర త గా డ్రైవ్ చెయ్యండి , మీ వల్ల చాల ప్రాణాలు ఆధార పడతయి "
( Means there are lot of lives depending on you, hence drive carefully)
the board is displayed next to the driver.

This is not only required "not only" during driving, but in all walks of the life.

Your own career
1. Taking control of your own career.
2. If you have not learned anything or not grown for some time. Need to evaluate and need to find root cause.
3. Taking care of yours and others : If you manager or group head or corporate head, taking care of your reporters and asset's is your responsibility.

As a owner of the firm/organizations
1. Acquisitions , revenue generation and re-organization would not impact work force.
2. Lot of people are depending on you

Please share your thoughts

Leadership re-defined

2015-06-13T17:59:00.000+05:30

Leaders are not born but manufactured. Manufacturing process is in-built of the individuals.

Ford, India's Narayana Murthy. Ex-president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalamazoo and so on set the style and created the atmosphere to grow technology and country.

It takes a great attitude in uplifting and tune the lives of the people.

Leadership is taking people, guiding, nurturing people. They say, wherever leader stands, line starts from there.

What got you here,does not get there

2015-05-15T04:13:00.000+05:30

This is not about the book, it is about life. Strategy which worked yesterday on something doesn't work today.

It is like tortoise and hare story. Every time,you revisit and where you're heading.

We travel,study,work lot. Once we reach somewhere you get stuck. You blame some one for failures.

Believing in evolutionary than revolution would work.

Constant change in the plan to meet goals would help.

Learning from everyone's mistake and taking right step would help.

White elephent strategy

2015-05-02T22:33:00.000+05:30

White elephant Strategy: It neither benefit or take a company/person nowhere. It is revenue leakage, a reverse of a cash cow. You could neither get out of that. It will take you down.

It so happens some strategies and people promise heaven, where there is no or imaginary path.

White elephant is rear animal.In Hindu mythology God Indra's vehicle is "Airavatha"

For British empire Uganda was like white elephant.

In Telugu language (southern india) there is stanza/literature "akkaraku raniti chuttam,mokkina varameyyani velpu" (Sumathi Satakam || Akkaraku Raani Chuttamu || Telugu Padyalu) pedia - Akkaraku Raani Chuttamu (అక్కరకు రాని ...

Meaning : The relationship who is not useful,G od who wouldn't help in fulfilling wishes,a horse which is not useful in war is useless.

Are you a recruiter?

2015-05-02T09:00:00.000+05:30

Recruitment is not a science but it is a art by itself.

1. Just by searching in jobsites for the x y z key words,you can not do justice.

2.Understand the problems statement,and visualize the person required there. What is competency required.

3. You need analyse and eliminate many resumes,before you actually do and hit a send button.

4.Do check with candidates for reference and hiring from their friend circle would help to reach and create a right team.

5. Crosschecking and analyze why they moved and what are they looking for?. Sometimes if you don't understand the candidate "reject" them.

6. Hire someone,who can add value.They should think differently.