`kill -3 thoughtProcess`

CAMS Active Statement

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:34:00 +0000

My blood pressure almost always shoots up a few notches when I receive the monthly CAMS Active Statement. For those of you not familiar with CAMS or its ActiveStatement, CAMS manages mutual fund transactions for various fund houses in India. While I am ignorant about its size I can definitely guess it is one of the leading providers as many fund houses use its services.

A few months (perhaps almost a year) ago CAMS decided to ditch their regular (read irregular) email updates for this all new format called the Active Format. This is what it looks like

I pledge on my soul that everything contained on that page is utter and blatant lie.

Once you click the black push pin a page opens in the browser which looks like this

Lets deconstruct the ActiveStatement one point at a time

Active Statement is a BIG HTML File

The active statement is a secured PDF which contains a single html file. Basically when you click the big black push pin the file opens in a browser and thats how the user gets to the see his transactions. My guess is that CAMS chose PDF because it offers some form of encryption. On top of that they had no clue on how to display the data within a PDF document. Havent we heard about links , table of contents within a PDF document. It escapes me why someone would like to use a PDF and HTML formats together, when PDF itself is a pretty capable format

Password protection

The password used to protect these documents also varies by mutual fund houses. While majority of the ActiveStatements I receive uses the PAN number to decrypt the document there is one instance where I need to supply the actual folio number to open up the attachment. Talk about consolidation. If the ultimate objective is to tie the transactions across fund houses shouldnt the same password be used.

Usability

Usability is perhaps the biggest eye sore of this document. Sample this. While the transaction list for a certain duration can be seen by clicking on the “Transactions in the Period” there is no easy way to figure out the progressive cumulative units in the same screen.

All my life I have been used to seeing the units and the cumulative balance and finally the net worth on the same screen. ActiveStatement decided to ditch this well entrenched convention and instead placed all the information under the “Composition of Portfolio” tab. One could argue that since this statement really aggregates information across various folios this is the right place for such information. However look at what they do

Transaction history is summed up again (this time in red) and the net worth highlighted on the top. Why on earth would you like to repeat the transaction history if it has already been captured (a bit more elegantly) on a different tab

Broken Functionality

So far I havent really been able to consolidate all my folios under a single ActiveStatement. I am not the kind of guy who would rush to physical investment shops to try and make it happen. I prefer to conduct and complete the transaction online. However the CAMS processes forces you to a paper trial sooner rather than later.

The need for security has been taken to Zealot levels. Clicking on links to request consolidation leads you to such pages. The active statement states that the links will be active only till a certain date. Wouldnt you atleast like to have the links till the time the next statement arrives in your inbox.

I have lost my complete faith in the ActiveStatement. I am more than happy in receiving a single monthly statement per fund house.

Can CAMS give me back my sense of sanity

Force India’s Win In Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Force India’s historic win has the nation elated. For all the right reasons. Dont get me wrong. The team has taken a giant leap and the fact that they kept Ferrari on their toes throughout the race proves a point. It took the time, effort, sweat and a lot of sacrifices. Mallya decided to commit resources to the cause and stay for the longer term

However things should be put in perspective.

There is very little Indian about the team except for the name. Based in Silverstone and driven by Fissi and Sutil the team doesnt even boast of a single Indian driver. Mallya himself mused that none of the Indian drivers are F1 material yet. Of course Narain Kartikeyan slammed the underdogs for these comments and said that the car was simply not there and he didnt fancy a driving opportunity again to struggle through the season. All of the teams in contention, Mallya’s team only has a countries name. Does it go to say something.

All said and done, goes to prove that Mallya is a business man and is pursuing a commercial interest. There is very little Indian about the whole setup.

Shashi Tharoor has excellently summed up

“So an Italian driver in a German car wins pole position for team calld Force India & we're all ecstatic. Triumph 4the Agglomerative Indian!?”

Finally: Back the team if you like the stuff they strut, just don't blindly support since it has India in its name. This applies to the money spinning high profile gambling called IPL

Different Questions, One Answer : Reduce Pace

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:44:00 +0000

A while ago (around Dec 2008 – Jan 2009) I was stagnating during my daily runs. What started off modestly peaked at around 3.2 km (1 loop of lalbagh). I could attribute a part of the blame to the work pressure which kept me really pinned to my office desk.

However when the work pressure eased it didn't directly translate to an mileage uplift. During a 10 day paternity break I set myself a target to raise the target to double my previous best (approx 6.4 km). While I managed to complete 2 loops it left me in such a bad shape (cramps, muscle pain and general fatigue), it was tough thinking that I will be able to complete the upcoming Bangalore 10K in shape.

I posed this question to two coaches helping commoners train for the “Bangalore 10K”.

The first coach simply passed off as an excuse and declared that I needed more training. Given my novice status, I didn't know any better and decided to stick to a more rigorous training program. However the fatigue and pain were still around as I came around the 6.4 km mark.

A couple of weeks later I chanced upon another coach. He heard the problem first and pronounced the judgment later. He explained the whole concept of aerobic exercise, lactic acid build up and how it impacts performance. More importantly his advice to reduce the pace yielded better results in the very next run. I upped the game to 9.6 kms (3 loops) and was more confident of running the entire stretch of bangalore 10k.

I am following a similar approach for the upcoming Mumbai Half Marathon. To help the training, I recently picked up a Jeff Galloway’s book. Jeff’s advices to follow the Run Walk Run routine. While I tried it a couple of time, breaking a run to a walk proved to be really hard. The calf muscles cramped up and running was simply out of question.

Once again it took me a while to figure out the answer. REDUCE PACE. The answer hit me unexpectedly when I took my daughter for a cycle ride lesson in lalbagh. As she cycled and I ran behind her, I had to constantly switch pace (from running to walking). However at no time was my pace was more than my usual pace. Strangely I had no issues in breaking the jog to walk for some time and then continue the jog.

This sums up the title of the entry. Whatever the question, you may find the answer by reducing pace.

Usability issues with RIA

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:42:00 +0000

While I haven't personally developed rich internet applications, I have been on the other side as a end user. It is slowly dawning on what a big usability nightmare it is . Some of my gripes after looking at a few applications

You captured my keystroke

Key irritant. I use Ctrl T and Ctrl W or Ctrl n liberally. If you have a RIA application loaded on one of the tabs there is no way you can use most of the key board shortcuts. You need to raise your hands from the keyboard touch the mouse, point and finally click. Horrible. Painful. If the application doesnt deal with the key board event shouldnt it pass the event higher up the event handling hierarchy and let the other container (browser in this case) to handle the event. I assumed this was the fundamental premise of any event handling mechanism.

Guess what. It has also changed the semantics of the most common key strokes. Ctrl F no longer stands for search. Tab no longer moves you through the elements of the page. Ctrl + / - (font increase / decrease) no longer work. We have grown up with these shortcuts. Why should a RIA application deprive us of their benefits.

How many times do I need to authenticate

Since RIA applications run within a new container it is a nightmare for authenticated sessions. Unlike a standard authenticated web session which can shared between tabs it is no longer possible to open a new tab and expect the authenticated session to be present. You are presented with a new login screen everytime you open a tab

How do I go around you

A html form / page could have been easily introspected and tweaked for whatever reason. To the extent someone once got a visa interview schedule slotted by tweaking the request submission form to a date which was not shown on the page. While this is an extreme (but useful) example, there is no way easy way to do this any longer with RIA applications

RIP RIA

-anand

Swine Flu and India

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:18:00 +0000

Scary. A country of billion plus people and yet we dont have an articulated direction on how to deal with a potential serious threat to nation. Given our size and inefficiencies of scale which come along with it, we need to be acting much more diligently than some of other countries, yet as usual the casual attitude is striking us down.

Our response so far has been jumbled so far. Media started catching the flu when the WHO announced it as a pandemic. Obviously they were shooting for ratings and TRP’s and not information. The government too sprung into action and deployed many junior doctors at all major international airports to have people coming into the country to fill out a quick form. Apart from this I dont recollect reading any major direction setting coming from the government. Oh yes they did designate a few hospitals to test swab samples.

Lets be clear, directions to hospitals and government servants wont help. They are probably doing lots of other important things to care about suffering people.

While I dont have an easy answer for covering everyone under a health scheme, this issue can be tackled by empowering people. A small list of things to consider

1. Spread open and honest information about swine flu. The general impression I get from the media reports is that people die soon after contracting the disease. The unfortunate death of the 14 year old girl isnt going to help the case and perhaps reinforces the message swine flu ==> death. While there have been unfortunate deaths attribute to the disease the truth is that only a very small percentages of cases have succumbed to the disease. A majority of people actually make full recovery and get back to work

2. Spread the message how people can help themselves. Simple messages like avoiding going out when you dont feel too well, maintaining a healthy hygiene, washing hands. I know this sounds stupid and uber complicated but it is doable.
Havent we done it already a few times in recent past. The first with the polio immunization drive, the population control messages back in the late 80’s and recently for the general elections. Get likes of Big B, SRK and Amir Khan, Priyanka, …, .., … glitterati spread the message as they have been doing so far. Wouldnt the country stop and listen to their hearth throbs.

3. Empower local doctors and health workers to take informed decisions. Pushing everyone to understaffed and under equipped government hospitals isnt an option. It is a big cramp when they are designated as the only organizations capable of providing trusted advice. Dole out simple advice on what the doctors should be looking out for, what should they be asking and what should the advice pattern should be.

In face of heightening concerns the UK government launched a self assessment service which relieved the pressure from the local GP’s. This isnt going to work in India given our illiteracy rates and the panic chord which has been struck. However tackling the issue at a level higher may just help.

4. If past is any indication the number of new flu cases have been on a rise in the recent years. We have been tracking avian bird flu to swine flu. Time we wake up and realize that our size needs awareness machinery of a different kind.

While I have personally not used the government health care system (apart from going there for a colour blindness test before joining an engineering college) we have a few things to be proud about. Lessons and our achievements from the polio eradication drive should be used to roll out more communication programmes.

Getting the message out there and empowering people is definitely a key part of the strategy and perhaps the only way out

Handling Sent Items Inbox Zero Style

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:54:00 +0000

I am email archival junkie. Every important email I send or receive is finally moved to an offline folder for archival.

While I have been pretty good at archiving emails I receive, I have issues in archiving sent emails. BTW we use Outlook 2003 at work.

Archival Life Cycle

I mostly follow inbox zero principles for processing emails. All work emails land in my inbox and stays there until they have been processed. After replying I spend a few split seconds to ponder if it needs archival. If Yes, a quick “Ctrl + Shift + V” reveals the folder list and the email is effortlessly archived. This has been working great for the past couple of years.

I make no pretentions of how good I am at cataloguing. I have done away with multiple nested sub folders (thanks Merlin) etc. Every distinct project I work has one and only one folder. All communication from a project is archived to that specific folder.

However the same cant be said about sent items. It is like a dump yard with emails from all projects lying in one helpless folder. When I get to archiving sent items (once every quarter) I usually have in excess of 2000 items. Obviously I resist every temptation to go through each one of them and end up archiving the entire lot to the most active project folder.

If you are slow on the uptake there are several cons to this approach

Outlook’s conversation view doesn't convey the full picture as messages are missing
End up archiving junk which I didn't want to archive at the first place. Remember I only after work critical emails
Given the size of the folders it takes quite some time for outlook to open such folder
Differed cleaning. You only clean up when the system administrator warns you to clean up.

I believe I now have a solution in sight

Solution

Instead of allowing emails to accumulate in the sent items I have an Outlook client side rule which moves all sent messages to the inbox where they get processed the same way as any incoming email.

Follow this URL to setup a rule while I demonstrate how this works for me http://outlook-tips.net/cs/blogs/outlooktips/archive/2006/02/08/332.aspx

You may like to add spice email processing by adding a colouring rules to spot & process messages easily by

Clicking tools > Organize and then

Coming together In Real Life

When an email lands in my inbox it shows up like this. Because of the colour coding rules we setup earlier emails sent only to me appear in Blue and sent from me appear in Red

Once I respond to the email, because of the client side rule it automatically moves to the inbox and nests neatly under the parent message. Since you can now see your sent email in the same view & if your response was along the lines “i heard you and I will get back to you when I can” you can safely delete it and keep the original message for action.

As more responses stream in the pattern continues. Here you see Mr N* replying to my reply

Time moves on however this process builds a consistent view of the entire conversation right in your inbox. You are in a better position to judge which messages need to be archived and more importantly which folder.

And finally how does the sent item folder looks like

Obviously if you were on gmail you wouldnt have to deal with this nonsense.

Still very new to this and so far this has been working well for me. If you have any thoughts send them my way.

anand

MNIC could be around the corner

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Finally with the new government in place, we see some additional traction on the question of a single national identity card.

Deccan Herald is running this story

MNICs to be issued to all citizens by 2011: Chidambaram. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/4584/mnics-issued-all-citizens-2011.html

Chidambaram has promised that it will be issued to everyone by 2011. Gave or take a few years given the complexity of the project and you still are looking at a dream come true.

Now if only they destroy that foolish Biometrics pan card idea I blogged about here

BMTC & Urban Middle Class

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:10:00 +0000

The Online version of Deccan Herald has a story on

“BMTC is planning to put up route information in all its bus shelters soon.” http://www.deccanherald.com/content/4557/route-information-all-bus-shelters.html

I have been using the BMTC bus services on and off and a few things I can tell you is that they have a good service and a good coverage, however with absolutely no information / help or support at the bus shelters it is simply not possible to make your way from around the city on your own.

To some partial credit BMTC has take some steps in the right direction. For instance

Most of the new buses have electronic display boards
The bus shelters along the central district have route maps similar to a London underground map
a few bus shelters elsewhere have started indicating the direction to the next big hop point like Shivajinagar, MG Road etc.

Unfortunately none of these options has helped the urban middle class city as a whole. You really need to be comfortable with the routes, local language to be successful in meandering a course.

Let me start by listing a few of my pet peeves.

The digital sign boards arent standardized. All the bus boards display information in there own sweet ways. Some of them constantly blink (making it very hard to read), while others use short names for stops and finally buses on the same route dont even show the same information. I saw this when I was taking a bus from brigade road towards bannergata national park.
The route maps wherever posted are of such poor visual quality that you really need to be standing close to make anything from it. It lacks information around the frequency of the services. The new bus shelters which have come up, dont really offer a great deal of protection to these maps and they have already started peeling off from the edges
BMTC’s central district services lacks credibility. While swanky Volvos ply with very distinctive colors (blue, orange) ply on these routes you really need to be lucky to get hold of them. The trouble is that I spotted them as far away as Agara lake in Koramangala plying on different routes all together. I would assume that BMTC decided to increase the load factor or replace a broken down vehicle. While it may be good in the short term, the fact is that if you want the services to be popular you just cant sacrifice frequency and punctuality. They go hand in hand.
The website. Dysfunctional at its best. It offers very little insight on the coverage let alone tools to plan a trip. What you are potentially looking for is a simple JourneyPlanner (ala http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/). We also an indian versions to talk about http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/navigator/

I think BMTC has done a OK job so far. From being a public transport for the poor, the so called educated middle class has started openly embracing there services. You need to look at the popularity of route 335E to understand this for yourself.

There are still quite a few challenges before the middle class embraces this mode. Better communication, predictability and quality will the three stepping stones for success. I am guessing they never had a technology vendor who could educate and help them scale to the challenges. A decent partnership with a technology provider and commitment to improve, may mean this city doesnt even need a metro.

There is a scope for tremendous growth (volume, traffic, people carried) and improvement. It is only for them to loose.

Biometric PAN cards or national identification card

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Biometric PAN cards could soon be a reality http://trak.in/tags/business/2009/04/29/biometric-pan-cards-could-soon-be-a-reality/

While I agree we need a more robust pan card mechanism I would argue that it shouldnt only be used for issuing pan card. The mechanism you have just described should be used for all purposes. It should be the ration card of a person, a voters identity card or just about any other card which our efficient administration can dream about.

A few question jump outright
1) The touts business is finished (assuming that they wont be able to imitate your retin). You will be forced to queue up to get your card. Now how will the highly educated and upper middle class react who have no interest in what the administration does (evident from the turnout)
2) While it is one thing to issue cards how will the cards be validated. If the cards do get used as an all purpose national identity card then you probably also need to start thinking about smart devices which can be carried by law enforcement agencies to book people
3) And finally I wish that our home minister decides to repeat on one his past favours to the nation by announcing one standard identification card. Chidambram had shown great foresight when he thrawted the effort of the mutual fund industry and perhaps his own ministries attempt to issue a Mutual fund identification number (MIN). http://www.financialexpress.com/old/latest_full_story.php?content_id=156419

Cheers
anand

Relative Security Perception

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Over lunch our conversation slowly drifted to the Australian team refusal to be a part of the Davis cup tournament in Chennai. While I "kind of" / "sort of" agreed with the Australian decision, my colleagues weren’t so lenient and accommodating.

A short while after the causal conversation (still on the lunch table) grew more vociferous. One of them argued that India cant really be compared with Pakistan and what the Australians have done is completely wrong. My second colleague contented that, we aren’t a country where men roam around with AK-47's and blatantly open fire. Additionally he argued how many times sportspersons have been targeted in our country.

My views on this topic are straightforward and probably comprehensible.

It is a question of relative security perception. As an ordinary Indian citizen would you like to go on an all expenses paid trip to Iraq, Israel, and Palestine, Afghanistan? The answer mostly would be no. Ask yourself why that is the case. Don’t people leave a life there? They go around their daily routines as normally as they possibly can, albeit the numbers of disruptions (incidents) are way too high (again relatively speaking).

As Indians we have also seen a fair amount of turmoil in the recent year. Jaipur, Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, North east all have been targets to such distractions. One could argue the extent of disruption hasn’t been on the scale noticed in other regions, but that’s just our perceptions.

Leaving within a system we don’t really understand the external perceptions and life continues as normal for us. Talking about disruptions how many of us continued to work during the 26/11 period.

The Australians and have applied their perception and decided to not to be a part of it. Why do we say, they are not correct

Apt message for this day and age

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Spotted this on the way back home from work today. (On a side note this is o of the benefits of leaving when the sun is still around.)

What caught my eyes was the message "Each one teach one, Each one watch one, Each one catch one terrorist". Adapted from the popular slogan, "each one teach one", I am not sure the entire sentence makes any sense.

The fun doesnt stop here. A few more low fidelity snaps

The whole cab was plastered with messages in the local dialect. I dont know how to read Kanada and the one person who did know couldnt make much out of the low fidelity images

and finally when you wanted to find out who owns the vehicle, guess what even the number plate space has been occupied by more messages.

Polio rumours create panic..

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:03:00 +0000

Mangalorean.Com- Serving Mangaloreans Around The World!: "Polio rumors create panic in Karnataka"

I can confidently say that the Polio immunization drive is the best run medical initiative free India has seen in a long long time. The number of volunteers, the efficiency and the spread of the drive is for everyone to see. I remember a few years ago, many top celebrities were roped in get the initiative up and running. It took sustained campaigning, persuasion and vigilance to raise the awareness levels. Even if you didnt take your kid to the clinic, you can bet that a volunteer will come to your doorstep to administer the polio drops.

However the well oiled machine fell victim of a prank, especially in Karnataka. Hopefully things get back to normalcy as soon as possible. Perhaps time to rope in the celberities once again and start the propoganda machine (in a good way) all over again.

May the Indian Government run more of such programs.

anand

Janaagraha | Be the Change You Want to See

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:05:00 +0000

Janaagraha | Be the Change You Want to See

Ramesh you are right..

Getting the urban middle class engaged is like gathering sand through sieve (BTW nicely said). I am also a part of it. IMHO the urban middle class is a scared lot. They are the group of people who have dual perspectives. They know what it means to be poor and irrelevant. They also know the power wielded by the rich and wealthy. They desperately try to fight the poverty and ensure prosperity for their siblings. They would much rather prefer to slog their butts off on official assignments rather than working on a not for profit cause.

The whole scene and the question of involvement can be solved once and for ever if some politicial organization ensures that a profession and a sustainable living can be made out by contributing to social causes. In our society / cultural upbringing money has unfortunately been a bad word. Money has especially been a bad word when made through contributions to the public domain. This outlook needs to change first.

BTW I am sceptical and think that the candles and placards will fade away

anand

Complete waste of time

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:56:00 +0000

Does google need managers

Seriously WTF. This has been an absolute waste of time. The humor failed to excite and I am surprised people did scribble a few things on the scratch pad. Above all these guys call themselves strategy consultants. Wishing the very best for your clients.

anand

Highly recommended "Churumuri"

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Offlate there are too many blog posts which sounds run off the mill. However there is one blog post which stands out like "the hindu" of the print media. That happens to be Churmuri.

I really dont know when I started reading Churmuri. Perhaps it all began when I was searching for some bangalore specific posts and Churmuri definitely has soft corner for mysore stories. However after closely following all its posts for the several months I can say with confidence that it is a pan european blog and covers everything from pot shots on the clan to expressing solidarity and lending perspective to the madness Bombay just witnessed.

The reading isnt always easy. A lot of times I have had to struggle through to piece together the meaning of a post. What are you waiting for. Hit the link on the top and subscribe it

Cheers
anand

Switzerland leads the way again

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:36:00 +0000

One thing which hits you when you arrive at Switzerland apart from the scenic beauty is the ingenuity of the folks out there. I have only been there once, but the trip was enough to leave an impression of sorts. Practically everythng I could see had the swiss approach. Sample these way the tunnels have been dug to connect cities, the excellent train connectivity, the honour system for travelling on trains and the list goes on.

This news article Swiss approve prescription heroin struck me again as a clear sign of a country which isnt shy from saying we will try. The whole idea of dispensing heroin through government aided institutions will be laughed upon at the very best. However after a 10 year long trial run, swiss have finally voted to allow the trial to continue.

Cheers
anand

Durex Ad Punch Line

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:35:00 +0000

Great punch line (heard over the radio)

A Pack Serves Two - Durex

Overheard..

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:04:00 +0000

If you do everything right you get to earn 2% as a retailer.

Overheard

anand

Meaningless Road Sign - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Spotted near the Marathalli under pass in Bangalore. Would be interested in knowing if anyone gave way after seeing this sign or did they give way since they were forced off the road.

anand

Rising Food Prices and Coins

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:10:00 +0000

The news about rising food prices shouldnt come as a surprise to most of us. We have been hearing about it all this while and even felt in our monthly grocery bill.

However there are subtle nuances which we may have missed out. Sample this. All the street side food vendors would price in multiples of Rs 5 (5, 10, 15 etc). Given that Rs 5 or Rs 10 are the most common currency notes it helped them to serve their customers quickly. Pricing it at these levels also helped them deal with the contentious issue of change (or coins). Change is always a difficult issue in India. As a customer most of the shopkeepers would like you to believe that it is your responsibility to carry change for a service or good you are interested in buying. They didnt have to stock lots of coins.

Things are fast changing. Owing to the upward trend of food prices these street vendors have been forced to revise their prices. However the price revision hasn't been in multiples of 5 for a variety of reasons. Shopkeepers believe that a steep rise will turn away customers and some of them admit it doesn't warrant such steep rises.

Sample this photo from LalBagh Bangalore. I am guessing that this guy used to sell this stuff for around Rs 5 but has been forced to revise it to Rs 6. This almost certainly means that he needs to carry Rs 4 as change for every transaction he makes at this stall.

Since the revised prices suddenly calls for more coins in circulation, I have found that the shop keepers have become a bit more flexible. They usually ask the customer if they have the change and are willing to let go of the small amount.

Cheers
anand raman

Asking for help

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:37:00 +0000

Classic example of how not to ask for help.

http://groups.google.com/group/atg_tech/browse_thread/thread/f46946c8138c771d

This is not the first time I have seen this happening. In my opinion this probably happens to everyone when they join their first community. Most importantly people forget that other are using their own time to respond to such questions. The last thing you want to do is tick them off the very next second.

There are many ways you can ensure your chances for a response. How about starting here http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html.

anand raman

Reunited with My E51

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:18:00 +0000

Just got my Nokia E51 back from the service center. To cut a long story short, my trust in Nokia's lengedary reliability has taken a big hit. It took Nokia more than a month to repair a simple microphone issue with the phone. Add to it the unhelpful customer service agents who either drop the call when you ask tough questions or simply dont trasfer you to the feedback application to record dissent.

Anyways now that the phone is back, I just installed Opera Mini and enjoying it. It is refreshing enhancement to the browsing experience. I just wish the Mail For Exchange gets a similar shot in the arm some time soon.

anand

Three Buddies: Scope, Cost and Time.

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:32:00 +0000

Martin Fowler has written a great piece on his views on requirements and how the word "requirements" in itself reminds him of the strong alignment to waterfall development models. He further asserts that the requirements need to be gathered iteratively and perhaps by observing end user interaction. You can read the entire piece here "Observed Requirements"

While I have no issue in accepting his point of view I do face fundamental issues while putting it into practice. Here are some common challenges we face

A client or customer comes with a strong view of what he wants off the new system. While you can always talk to them how the importance should be on the customer, it doesnt always fly. In most of the situations "usability tests" are the extent to which customers are involved in the requirements process before development begins
Clients do have date drivers in mind for the entire project. Under such situations the implementation partners would like to finish the implementation and get it out there, mostly by agreeing on the scope. From my personal experiences it is incredibly hard to agree on a date without agreeing on a scope. There are ways in which some of these concerns can be addressed. For one if it is a longer term project and you have already have portions of the application live you could agree on a fixed scope for a few months covering a couple of iterations. However this approach will not work if this is the first phase of the application build
Everyone (customer+service provider) would like to hit the sweat spot on "Scope", "Cost" and "Timeline". A change in requirement or scope should also be considered in light of the cost and time impact. These 3 factors are intrinsically linked to each other. When you have a fixed budget driver also associated, changes in requirements are harder to incorporate.

Finally Martin spoke only on requirements. I completely agree to his views on how requirements should emerge. From my own experiences, the customers who think they know they customers end up over specifying most of the times while believing that they are doing their customers a favour.

However I believe that there are challenges in incorporating scope changes at run time without considering its implications on "Cost" and "Time"

Kingmakers are back

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:01:00 +0000

The kingmakers are back at what they do best. I am surprised that a few people can swing one way or the other for as petty a task as renaming an airport. Long live indian politics.

Impending Floor Test
Regional Leaders and their clout

Cheers

The official Dilbert website with Scott Adams' color comic strips, animation, mashups and more!

noreply@blogger.com (anand) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:58:00 +0000

Didnt know where this commic strip was going. Brilliant execution.

http://www.dilbert.com/2008-07-16/

Thanks
anand