Prashant Poladia, PMP, CUA

Telangana vs Seemandhra ..OR.. Telangana and Seemandhra

2014-02-21T10:23:00.002+05:30

As soon as it was announced that Andhra Pradesh would be divided into 2 states, Telangana and Seemandhra.

Let's see who all were happy by this announcements:

Congress Government would be happy because now lot of people would give them votes by being emotional
Few corrupted politicians were happy because now they will get a chance to get seats in parliament
Few people from Telangana were happy because they feel that people from Telangana will get a chance to work in government post or private companies where 1st preference would be given to people from Telangana. Not on the basis of Merit.
Businessman (specially from other communities like Gujarati and Punjabi etc) would be happy because now there will be no more strikes and waste bandhs which stops their daily earnings
Few policemen would be happy because now they will got another chance of harassing small business men's or daily wagers or vendors.
Few Daily Wagers from Telangana would be happy because now they can earn their daily bread happily
Few corporate people from Seemandhra working in Telangana are happy because their friends are happy (no option right)

I am working in Hyderabad since August 2009 and I have seen following action during before it was announced:

I have seen people's mix reaction pre-announcements.
I have listened to people's thinking and their views.
I have heard of the news that lot of businessmen have shifted their business from Hyderabad to Vizag.
Lot of Foreign investments have stopped
I have seen people asking each other from which region you are in friendly manner but who knows what they feel about it.

To me, this announcement is all bull-shit, if it will be Telangana vs Seemandhra (competition), instead of Telangana and Seemandhra (partnership).

Unless people will not feel brotherly-hood and work together, the future of Telangana and Seemandhra would be at backstage for sure.

5 Level of Leadership by John Maxwell

2014-02-13T23:29:00.000+05:30

After reading entire book of John Maxwell on "Develop Leadership within you", one day I saw his video on video where he talked about 5 levels of Leadership. I was already impressed by his book so while watching his video I noted down following points from his video.

Position
Designation. It doesn't make you leader.
People will follow you because they have to.
Permission Level
Relationship. People will follow you because they want to. These leader are people like. Leadership is influential.

Leader listens well. They observe well. They learn.
Production level > Results
Leaders help producing. How to be productive and effective. Leadership should not be travel agent, they should be like guide. Leaders attracts people. People follow you. Momentum is leaders best friend. Momentum is self exagerator. Managers solves problem. Momentum solves 80% of the problem in an organisation. eg. Train with momentum will hit huge block.
People Development LevelThis is what it excites me. Grow company by growing people.

recruitment
positioning > place it correctly
equip well. develop them

i do it. you can't teach someone if you can't do it.
i do it and you be with me
you do it and i am with you
you do it.
You do it and take someone else with you.

Pinnacle. Respect

People follow you for who you are, for what you have done.

Leadership is a Journey. It is a learning process.

Main Role of Product Manager in 5Ws and 1H

2014-02-13T00:23:00.000+05:30

There is always 5Ws and 1H methodology used in Product Development or into any other field to discover concrete idea or gather correct information or knock down proper requirements from stakeholder. Why, What, When, Who, Where and How.

Main role of Product Manager is to understand Why and What from Stakeholders. eg.

Why we are doing this?
What we are going to do and What are the USPs?

Following list of questions can be addressed later on:
Who will be benefit from this?
When we need to launch this?
Where we will be launching this product?
How we will implement/develop this?

Crowd Funding

2014-02-10T17:10:00.001+05:30

Crowd Funding is getting popular in US and I hope the same will be popular in India shortly.
In this lot of small individual investors get together to invest into small/big companies specially via internet.

I have hit the RESTART button on my JOURNEY of BLOGGER

2014-02-09T21:31:00.003+05:30

Hi friends, I have hit the RESTART button on my BLOGGER's JOURNEY.
I have realised that I was procrastinating unnecessary to blog by giving priorities to other action items. Now, I have decided that daily i will post at least one post and share my thoughts on anything which i read or on anything what I feel.

I WILL CHANGE and I WILL DO IT!!!

My Wishlist...

2013-01-18T12:44:00.001+05:30

› to modify my mobile's UI the way i want...
› to work at office which is just at 10 mins walkable distance...
›

Laxmi Golden Temple Timings: 8am to 8pm

2013-01-18T12:18:00.001+05:30

We visited Sripuram over the last weekend and reached there at 8.10pm and found that temple was closed at 8pm, due to this we changed our trip plan and stayed back overnight to do abhishek darshan in the morning. I hope following information would be useful.

Timings:
General Darshan: 8am to 8pm
Abhisek Darshan (Rs. 108/-): Starts at 4:30am (buy tickets from PRO at 10pm) - Unlimited Tickets
Full Darshan (Rs. 3000/-): Starts at 4:30am (buy tickets from PRO at 9pm)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sripuram

ITsAP Technology Day 2013

2013-01-04T23:09:00.001+05:30

Expecting a wonderful start for a year 2013 by attending ITsAP seminar on 5th January 2013.

They will cover a vast gamut of topics of interest to the Industry and Academia, including, Current Technology trends and directions, Emerging platforms and frameworks and Market opportunities.

Speakers from the Industry, the academia and the Analyst community will add flavors to it. Hands on Tutorial on Mobile Application Development on Windows Phone 8 and Android Platform would be the best toppings.

SOURCE:

http://www.itsap.org

Dabangg 2 Movie Review (2 out of 5)

2012-12-26T13:04:00.000+05:30

Dabangg 2... Sirf Naam hi Kaafi nahi hota ;)
I had some expectations and not too many expectations from Salman Khan Starer "Dabaang 2" Movie but I was disappointed after watching 2nd half of the movie. Chulbul Pandey character is classy by itself and only Salman Khan can give a total justice to that character. Still he needs to learn "how to cry". Most of the dialogues were repeated from earlier movie. Plus, movie is just of 2 hours and after interval movie ends without any thriller scenes & funny dialogues. Overall they should have properly used Prakash Raj as a Villian.

Still i think media will say its super hit and broken all previous records which will be nothing but marketing gimmik.

To me it was not so Dabangg this time. I would rate it as a nice to see it one time movie.
Movie Rating: 2 out of 5.

Upgraded my LinkedIn Account to Premium User

2012-12-23T01:21:00.002+05:30

I just wanted to see how LinkedIn's Premium Account will benefit in real world to me.
So far it looks good to me.

Google kills off seven more products including Wave

2011-11-24T14:56:00.001+05:30

Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services.

The out-of-season "spring clean" brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears.
It is the third time that the US firm has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.

Experts said the strategy might put off users from signing up to new services.
Google announced the move in its official blog.

"We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," said Urs Holzle, Google's vice president of operations.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," he added.

[Source]

Cleared PMP on 23rd May 2011

2011-11-05T19:49:00.000+05:30

I was happy to clear PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification from PMI (Project Management Institute) on 23rd May 2011.

It was overall a fascinating journey while Preparing for PMP exam. It took almost 8-9 months. I will be writing more on what study process I followed under the guidance of Pradeep Dhanaraj. He is more of Mentor and close friend to me than a office colleague.

PMP Study process or the approach which we took will be published very soon.

Minimum Viable Product

2011-11-05T19:20:00.003+05:30

Just saw one of the youTube videos of Marty Cagan on Product Management. This time his topic was on Minimum Viable Product. Based on his opinion it is smallest possible product that really meets 3 criteria:

VALUABLE - Users will choose to buy/use it...
USABLE - Assuming they want to use it, they should figure out HOW to use it...
FEASIBLE - If it meets above 2 criteria we/company should build and use it when it is needed...

Generally the evidence of Minimum Viable Product is collected using prototypes (user prototypes & live data prototypes) and user testing (face to face or split testing).

Water Usage Calculator

2011-09-09T16:52:00.002+05:30

http://thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/536.htm

While surfing came across this useful website on how to save water and to check water usage.

-Prash

5 ways to Listen Better

2011-09-01T17:01:00.000+05:30

Agile Roles

2011-08-19T00:49:00.001+05:30

Product Owner is responsible for "What" part of it.
Team is responsible for "How" part of it.
Scrum Master or Project Manager is responsible for "Process".

Usability Presentation

2011-08-12T17:19:00.004+05:30

It was pleasant experience to take a session on Usability in my office. Almost after 2 years I connected my roots to UX world and it refreshed me a lot. In the session I touched upon various principles of Usability by giving real life examples so that my colleagues understands them correctly. I also discussed about bad usability examples by showing few images of Local Trains Restroom, burner etc.

To clear the understanding of Conceptual Model and how it can be applied to interface designing, I gave an exercise to the audience for adding a contact to others mobile phone of different mobile company.

After sharing couple of examples on how Usability can be applied to real life objects around us, asked everyone to note down 1 or 2 items that they think in our quadrant should be more usable or not usable at all. Everyone came up with various items that impacted their day to day activities in office due to bad usability product.

Overall, it was a nice experience to brush upon Usability Principles. I am hoping to take such very often.

PMBOK and Agile

2011-08-09T15:33:00.013+05:30

After getting PMP certified in May 2011, recently, I conducted a session in my company on an Overview of Agile and Scrum. This allowed me to explore Agile further and further, which took me to the point where I started getting a feeling and hearing that PMBOK is Waterfall Methodology based process and Agile is not part of it.

I started googling and also viewed YouTube videos to my doubts. Finally, I found different supportive videos and pages which proved that it was my misconception, my myth. PMBOK is guide, it is standards for Project Management. PMBOK teaches of WHAT do in Project management and Agile's different methodology teaches you HOW to implement that in Software Development by using suitable methodology like Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature-Driven Development (FDD), Lean Software Development. PMBOK is a guide and Agile's methodology tells you how to do. PMBOK does not echo waterfall.

Agile is a philosophy. Agile is a way of Thinking and not just doing.

Chillar Party - Movie Review - 4/5

2011-08-09T00:47:00.003+05:30

Movie Chillar Party... Rocks!!! 4/5
I like the way kids have acted. Specially "Jaangya" boy.

It reminded me the way we used to give nick names to our friends. Few of the special nick names were "Helen", "Champaa", "Papad", "Chadda", "Lolla", "Hanger", "Pandu", "Chamdi", "Hawa", "Mummy", "Mulla"... :)... we still call each other by those names :)

Other highlight of the movie was Kid Rhymes in Tapori Style...
Jack and Jill... gaye Sumdi mein Hill..
To fetch a pail of Water....
Jack tha Akela... and Jill thi Akeli...
Life mein Lochaa.. thereafter...

Do watch this movie!!!

Emotional Intelligence and Projects

2011-08-02T14:24:00.001+05:30

Reading Emotional Intelligence and Projects by Nicholas Clarke. This book attracted my attention and I am curious to know what is it about. It's review will be coming soon from me.

Books and me: Book Review: The Palace of Illusions

2011-08-01T12:02:00.000+05:30

Following article was written by one of my colleague Sudheer Penubarthy. I am impressed with his skills of narrating his experience after reading a book.

Books and me: Book Review: The Palace of Illusions: "Here we go another book of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, though I saw the author of the book after picking the book up because, to be truthful..."

Scrum Terminology

2011-07-25T14:44:00.003+05:30

Following article on Scrum is very well defined. I think this would be useful for few out there...

Scrum Terminology

is made up of three roles, four ceremonies, and three artifacts.

Three roles

Product owner: responsible for the business value of the project
ScrumMaster: ensures that the team is functional and productive
Team: self-organizes to get the work done

Four ceremonies

Sprint planning: the team meets with the product owner to choose a set of work to deliver during a sprint
Daily scrum: the team meets each day to share struggles and progress
Sprint reviews: the team demonstrates to the product owner what it has completed during the sprint
Sprint retrospectives: the team looks for ways to improve the product and the process.

Three artifacts

Product backlog: prioritized list of desired project outcomes/features
Sprint backlog: set of work from the product backlog that the team agrees to complete in a sprint, broken into tasks
Burndown chart: at-a-glance look at the work remaining (can have two charts: one for the sprint and one for the overall project)

[Source]

What is Velocity in Agile Environment?

2011-07-21T14:28:00.002+05:30

Velocity is the rate at which Sprint teams delivers business value at consistent rate. Velocity is calculated by adding story points of the user stories which are successfully accepted by business in a sprint.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

2011-07-15T16:07:00.002+05:30

Recently I took a session in my company on SaaS and Cloud Computing.
Here I am sharing few information about it.

Definition of SaaS
It is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally (typically in the (Internet) cloud) and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.

Advantages for Customers

No Capital Expenditure
No Software Installation Cost
No Maintenance Cost
No Upgrades Headache

All above is done by SaaS Providers

Disadvantages of SaaS

Security and confidentiality
Choose ISO 27001-certified, or equivalently trustworthy partnering data center
Risk of data loss
Dependence on high speed internet
Low predictability of cost
Not all applications have SaaS versions yet
In many cases SaaS versions may not be as powerful as non-SaaS ones

When to use Saas

intercompany projects are initiated
Partners and customers need to be connected within a project
new software is being tested in pilot projects
you expect to use new software, unencumbered, straight out of the box
Your organization lacks an internal IT department

When Not to use Saas

In-house professional IT support
highly confidential data
large number of ongoing projects with many participants
Continuous customization required

It holds little potential for a project-oriented company with its own IT.

Subscribe Work Breakdown Structure: Purpose, Process and Pitfalls

2011-05-31T12:38:00.002+05:30

Just read following article and I found it useful to understand WBS clearly.

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/work-breakdown-structure-purpose-process-pitfalls.html