[Series which captures my thoughts/2 cents on the weekly take on the list of events/news/observations with some satire thrown in. Previous week's retrospectives can be found here. Look forward to hearing your feedback.]
Sunday, January 31’st -
Internet Exploder 6.0 – With Germany and France debating about banning Internet Exploder 6.0 – sorry I meant Internet Explorer – Google announcement today about stopping the support for it hopefully will hit the final nail on the coffin of Internet Explorer 6.0.
Monday, February 1’st -
Double Giveaways from US – The popular panda – Tai Shan – from the Washington DC National Zoo (I had the pleasure of seeing him in his early years) was shipped to China by US. Incidentally, US also shipped arms to Taiwan this week too.
Tuesday, February 2′nd -
Coming of age for Mr. R. R. Patil – Sometimes we do have to give credit to the politicians where it is deserved. For example – following the incident in Mumbai where the girl drove under the influence of alcohol and killed two people, the Hon’able Home Minister of Maharashtra – Mr. R. R. Patil needs to be complimented for not saying “these things happen!”. See he has come a long way and matured since his Mumbai 26/11 goof-up. He also announced that there would be a 2000% increase in drunk driving fine. When asked as to how did he come up with the number 2000 and why not less or why not more – a confused Mr. Patil immediately asked his secretary – “why didn’t you tell me that a number more than 2000 existed?“.
US Deficit / Dalai Lama / Vaccine Development vs. Aishwarya/Salman – Lots of important things which are happening and being discussed in the world today. For example – the growing US deficit and its impact on the entire world for decades to come; China getting upset over upcoming Dalai Lama visit to US; Bill and Melinda Gates making $10 billion pledge for vaccine development; and ofcourse last but not the least Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai having smiled at Bollywood actor Salman Khan (video link).
Wednesday, February 3′rd -
Should you be serving hot tea or iced tea to your guests? - Should that be the host’s choice or the guest’s choice? Well if I understood the article published by Natalie Angier in New York Times today titled “Abstract Thoughts – The Body takes them Literally” the answer is – well, it depends! If you as the host are keen in having your guest/s having a warm and favorable opinion about you – then better serve them a hot drink. Else leave the choice to the host.
Animals as Protagonists in Action Movies - This week I owe the old Bollywood movie directors an apology! Now that I have grown up – my grudge against them was that time-and-again they fed me movies based on old folk-lore where animals like snakes, etc. were the main protagonist keen on taking revenge on human beings (assuming that these human beings had done something bad to them). This week – however – researchers from University de Toulouse, France came out with a study proving that bees can recognize faces. So if they can recognize faces, then the guess is that they can interact with human beings, and if they can interact then movies can be made out of them. I do understand that snakes are no bees – but then the USP of Bollywood has also been about stretching an imagination.
Thursday, February 4′th -
Chauvinistic Barking - How often do we pay attention or step out of the house to check when a dog barks on the street? Then why are we paying so much attention to all the chauvinistic barking which is currently going on in Mumbai? My apologies for the insensitive comment. I have the deepest amount of respect for the canine family.
Friday, February 5′th -
Thackeray knows his history quite well - We certainly need to give credit to the old man Bal Thackeray as he is raising the bar in his attacks on the Gandhi family – both literally and figuratively. He started with Rahul Gandhi, then his mother and then went after his grand-mother – Indira Gandhi. Then he attacked his great-grandfather – ex. Prime Minister Nehru. Today he attacked Rahul’s great-great-grandfather – Motilal Nehru. Now does anyone know the name of Motilal Nehru’s father? Bal Thackerey is asking for it for his forth-coming attack.
Who is hiring in Corporate Messaging/Media Relationships area? – Where can one find the best jobs in Corporate Messaging and Media Relationships? My answer is that this week they are all in Toyota.
Thats a wrap for this week. I will be back next week with another one in this series. Until then, have a great week ahead. In the meanwhile – don’t forget to check out the previous editions of the weekly retrospectives.
It has been some time since I have blogged about any topics associated with Agile Methodology. Quite honestly – over the last 1-2 years, I had started observing that a set of simple and beautiful guiding principles were getting over-stretched and over-strained and over-complicated by few individuals/groups/companies possibly to out-do the others or simply to rake in some money. IMHO, much to the detriment of Agile – a simple concept was getting converted into a complicated science. This is when I started switching myself off. Well, until this week…
This week I refused to attend an organization mandate to undergo training in Agile. For me, the word ‘training’ threw me off. What was there in Agile that required training and could not be learnt by simply reading? It is one thing that one does not know what Agile is (so one just has to read about it), but the premise that one needs to undergo training in it somehow creates an impression that we are dealing with something complex. Quite honestly it is not and the complexity in it is a man-made thing. Let me explain why I felt that by giving a slightly non-related but similar example.
Almost all of you must have seen the three wise monkey picture – popularly also known as Mahatma Gandhi’s Three Monkeys (see picture below). These three monkeys represented the proverbial principle – “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil”.
Three Monkey Methodology - Is it complex to understand?
For the sake of this blog post let me call these principles as “Three Monkey Methodology“. What I like about this methodology is that it clearly describes the three maxims (i.e. see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil) in a simple and crisp way such that it is self-explanatory to almost except possibly five (or less) years old. The additional thing which I like about this representation is that they have not tried to explain it in any more details and have left it to the understanding of the individuals as to how they would like to interpret it based on their surroundings and experiences.
Now imagine if this Methodology evolved today. I have strong feeling that in today’s world driven by hype and monetization (analogous to what is happening to Agile Methodology) – we might have seen the following -
Paper or Book Titles – “Three Monkey Methodology for Product Management”; “Applying Three Monkey Methodology to Configuration Management Practices”; “Learn Three Monkey Methodology in 3 days”; “Three Monkey Methodology for Dummies”, etc.
Training Courses – “Three Monkey Methodology for CEOs”; “Power your Engineering Team with Three Monkey Methodology”; etc.
Certifications – “Certified Three Monkey Methodology Developer”; “Three Monkey Methodology – Level II Certified”; etc.
Marketing Messages – “We provide engineering services using Three Monkey Methodology”; “Best Three Monkey Methodology Expertise Shop in Town”; “We follow Three Monkey Methodology in all our Departments”; etc.
Once the activities or messaging such as above begins to happen, our simple Three Monkey Methodology suddenly now starts to appear or feel complex. However, hopefully you will agree with me now that this complexity is now a man-made thing and not inherent in the methodologies principles. This is exactly the same way I feel with this whole Agile thing.
Similar to Three Monkey Methodology – IMO Agile Methodology also has four maxims (check out the Agile Manifesto) written in simple yet crisp manner and left to the interpretation of the Software Practitioners for its implementation as they see fit. The hope there was that anyone who had experienced Software Development even in a slightest manner would be able to understand where these four guidelines were coming from. There-in lied the beauty and power of these four principles. Simple yet powerful enough to be individually interpreted and applied to real-word circumstantial scenarios!
In my opinion, the challenge started when few started taking the ownership of interpreting Agile and forcing that interpretation on others. This is where the essence of Agile was lost because it opened the doors for over-complications, mis-interpretations, un-required group’isms, consultants, trainers, etc. while closing the door for plain vanilla common sense. Agile was meant to be simple and it needs to remain simple. As simple as the Three Monkey Methodology!
[Series which captures my thoughts/2 cents on the weekly take on the list of events/news/observations with some satire thrown in. Previous week's retrospectives can be found here. Look forward to hearing your feedback.]
Sunday, January 24′th -
Bad roads are safe – What happened in Haiti last week was heartbreaking. One simply cannot quantify or measure the human tragedy. However, without losing the sensitivity behind that – this week US Army Engineers brought the good news – Haiti’s bad roads were not damaged by the quake (src – Washington Post). Two cents worth to cheer about!
Monday, January 25′th -
Why search for aliens in the space? - Scientists from UK yesterday said that they are now more hopeful to find extra-terrestrial life or aliens. I read through the article but could not find any references to what has triggered which made them raise their hopes. So I am now just guessing that the pictures of the worst-dressed from last week’s Golden Globe has something to do with it.
Tuesday, January 26′th -
Corporates or Cartels? - Now that the Hon’able Home Minister of India, P. C. Chidambaram has spoken on the IPL mess last week, I also feel safe to express my opinion about it. With the whole issue around the non-selection of the Pakistani cricket players in IPL beginning to stink, Lalit Modi came forward to clarify few things. He said there was no conspiracy in the non-selection of the Pakistani players. It was the collective IPL cartel decision!
Young or Old – And India celebrated its 60′th anniversary of being a Republic country today. And immediately the debate of “60 years young” or “60 years old” was kicked off by many so-called intellectuals in the media! Some of these intellectuals came from Lalkrishna Advani generation and the remaining came from Rakhi Sawant generation!
Wednesday, January 27′th -
This is what happens when you snore through your history classes - After Sachin Tendulkar’s comments about a month back that Bombay or Mumbai belonged to India, today his IPL employer Mukesh Ambani made a comment on the same line. I am guessing that as a similar reaction to Sachin’s comment, another so-called Tiger is going to roar (or purr – whatever!) in the next few days trying to ask Mukesh Ambani to manage his own business. And the debate will continue as whether Mumbai belongs to India, Portuguese, or simply Maharashtra. Here is my 2 cents about this whole thing. IMO, the perpetrators of this debate know that the opposite party do not have any perspective to disagree with them. How many of us have read through the history of Mumbai? How many of us appreciate the interesting journey which the city of Mumbai has taken in the last 3000 years before the newly created state of Maharashtra in 1960 had an independent state of Bombay merge with them? But then again as I said before – we did snore through our history classes.
Thursday, January 28′th -
Valentine’s Day, Hamburgers, and the ’steamy’ celebrations - New York Times carried an article today talking about what various businesses are doing to attract customers on the upcoming Valentine’s Day. While looking through the various offers which businesses were planning to roll out to attract customers for their special day – the offer from White Castle (a fast food burger shop primarily based in US) caught my eye. I have to confess here first that I personally do not have the right insights as to how to best celebrate Valentine’s Day. However, I am not able to imagine going with the Valentine to have a combo meal for two of 10 ‘heart attack‘ hamburgers, two orders of French fries and two 21-ounce sodas and then promising an eternity of love for each other. White Castle is also claiming that this offer is going to make Valentine’s Day steamy! Once again, I am just reconfirming that I really do not understand Valentine’s Day that well!
Friday, January 29′th -
Thank you Mr. Osama Bin Laden – Felt very enlightened today after hearing Mr. Osama Bin Laden’s thoughts on climate change. I am now also looking forward to Mr. Laden enlightening us on cancer research, same sex marriage, extra-terrestrial life, Facebook, etc. etc.
And someone did purr- And as I had predicted above – the ‘old’ tiger did purr!
Saturday, January 30′th -
Modi‘ism – Quote from Pradeep Magazine in Hindustan Times – “Lalit Modi – Amar Singh of Indian Cricket” (link to article). Damn, the man stole my line!
Parsing a Sorry - Next time someone apologizes to you or if you hear someone apologizing – this article by Alina Tugend in New York Times today – “An Attempt to Revive the Lost Art of Apology” – can certainly act as a cheat sheet to analyze whether they really meant it. With the way apologies and sorry which tends to flow out so easily nowadays – knowing the science behind apologies can be a handy thing.
Tony Blair’s resume is ready – I thought I would get an opportunity to use the above theory if Mr. Tony Blair were to apologize for unilaterally invading Iraq in his testimony yesterday. But Blair said that he is not sorry for invading Iraq and added that he would do it again. He also added that his experience in invading Iraq would be very valuable if West decides to invade Iran.
Thats a wrap for this week. I will be back next week with another one in this series. Until then, have a great week ahead. In the meanwhile – don’t forget to check out the previous editions of the weekly retrospectives.
[In my previous blog, I had mentioned that I would be talking about various aspects of Doctor - Patient Relationship over the next few months. This blog is in line with the same.]
What is in the Disease Name?
(img src - please see below)
Over the last weekend, my brother – Dr. Mukesh Rathi (as mentioned in my previous blogs – Mukesh is a practicing Gynecologist) published a blog titled “What is in the Name?“. I will encourage you all to check it out. As I had mentioned in my previous blog, I had been very curious about how patients typically get treated and also about what typically goes on in Doctor’s mind while diagnosing a patient. Mukesh and I have had several conversations on the same in the last few months. He has tried to capture some portions of those conversations in this blog. He had sent me the first copy of his thoughts a week back. My contributions to his blog has been from the proof-reading side.
Mukesh’s blog talks about an interesting aspect – which IMHO – many a times sub-consciously is considered as non-important by many of us – “why is it so important to know or derive the disease name?” The reason I say it is interesting is because – how many times ‘we‘ patients have walked out of the doctor’s room without asking him/her – what is the name of the disease/illness which I am suffering from?
Based on lots of reading and research, I have come to the realization that almost all human ailments typically tend to have a name i. e. a disease name. These names either are a derived name from a primary classification of diseases or could be combination of multiple of disease names. The second realization (and I thought an important one too) for me was that any prescribed treatment in medical books/literature are always associated with a disease name. A very simple example – there is a prescribed treatment plan set for H1N1 (Swine Flu). So a patient possibly suffering from H1N1 would undergo the treatment associated with it only after it has been validated that he/she is suffering from H1N1. In other words – the treatment is linked to the disease name. So the key (from doctor’s perspective) here is to identify the disease name (note that there are millions of diseases out there) from the set of symptoms which the patient is exhibiting. Once the disease name is correctly identified – prescribing the treatment is easy as most of the treatments are very well documented in the medical literature. This is the gist of Mukesh’s blog.
So why is disease name identification so important – you may ask? Well, if the disease name is not correctly identified – logically the treatment which a patient might be undergoing may also be incorrect. Simple as that. Incorrect identification of the disease name to start with is the major cause of medical errors/misdiagnosis.
To get an essence of Mukesh’s thoughts from a doctor-patient relationship perspective – it might be worthwhile to consider what Federation of State Medical Boards of United States has mentioned in their model guidelines on when do they think a typical relationship between a doctor and a patient starts evolving -
“A typical physician-patient relationship tends to begin when an individual seeks assistance from a physician with a health-related matter for which the physician may provide assistance. However, the relationship is clearly established when the physician agrees to undertake diagnosis and treatment of the patient and the patient agrees, whether or not there has been a personal encounter between the physician (or other supervised health care practitioner) and patient.”
As the above guideline states – the function of diagnosis and treatment are at the core of a good Doctor-Patient relationship. And as I had mentioned in my previous blog (link above) – if we all were to understand the behavioral drivers behind these functions – it can only ultimately result in better doctor-patient relationship and communication. Hence I felt that Mukesh’s blog was highly relevant.
Deriving the name of the disease correctly as part of the diagnosis process can be tough many a times and can be prone to trial and error. Contrary to common perception that it is doctor’s responsibility to derive the name – patients also have to play a big role in this investigative process. I will be talking more about this in my future blogs.
I would welcome your thoughts and comments.
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[As promised in my new year blog, I was keen in starting up a series which captures my thoughts/2 cents on the weekly take on the list of events/news/observations with some satire thrown in. Here is the first in that series. Look forward to hearing your feedback.]
Sunday, January 17′th -
Birthday – Mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Aai!
Jyoti Basu – End of an era for the Left-Communist purist! Not many left in the world (other than Fidel Castro, I think) and they don’t make any more of these (phew!). So long, Jyoti Basu! You were one of the kind!
Monday, January 18′th -
The Next Recession? – I thought we were still to recover from the global recession which was at its peak last year; there is already a talk about the next one. New York Times editorial today talks about more to come after the Dubai fiasco. Greece, Ireland, Mexico also seem to be suffering from a similar flu. I wonder if it has got to do something with Amar Singh. Well, he has invested in housing property in Dubai. Has he invested in the above countries too?
Talking while Walking – Idea Cellular’s recent “Walk When You Talk” campaign may no longer be slotted in the “What an idea, Sirji” category. Ohio State University’s recent study has found that in 2008 more than 1000 pedestrians visited emergency room because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using the cell phone to talk or text. This was double the number in 2007 which itself had doubled from the numbers in 2006. While this study came out – Adam Gazzaley – a neurologist at University of California, San Fransisco has also found in a study that animals never walk into a pole!
e-Cigarettes – Looks like I had missed out on this one. e-Cigarettes! Electronic Cigarettes. Yup, this is what the electronic gizmo freaks were missing out in their storage shelves. These e-Cigarettes are some kind of plastic tubes, shaped like cigarettes, have a heating element to vaporize a refillable liquid nicotine mixture. How cool! Wait, this gets better! They have electronics to monitor air flow so that when a user inhales, the device delivers a vapor with a taste and feel that the manufacturers say simulates cigarette smoke. Pretty cool! And it comes with free shipping too! Can someone please update me on what is the latest progress on Cancer Research?
Relationships and Global Warming – For those who are continuously thinking and concerned about external factors which could potentially affect their marriage and/or relationships – here is one more thing to worry about. Clean Tech! New York Times today carries an article on how Therapists have started reporting increase in Green Disputes.
And Sachin Tendulkar continues to keep getting younger! He scored his number 44′th in Test Cricket today.
Tuesday, January 19′th -
NBC, Leno, O’Brien, et. all – I am sorry but I am not able to get a grasp on the squabble at NBC between the NBC Executives, Leno, and O’Brien. Here is the way I see it – first the NBC Executives moved Leno from his ratings peak at the Late Night Tonight Show to a different time which directly was in competition with the local news hour time with regional channels. These Executives said that this was a long term view of Tonight show. Leno represented the past and O’Brien was the future. Their future view suddenly got limited to 6 months before O’Brien could realistically get a chance to prove himself. Ratings dipped and regional TV channels complained. Now suddenly Leno is back as their future, O’Brien is being shown the door, and NBC is getting poorer by few measly billion dollars. What am I missing here? Just one thing, I think – is NBC (or their new buyer Comcast) dolling out bonuses this year?
Up – Pleased to hear that “Up” – a stirring and heartfelt animation movie from Pixar with an old man as the main protagonist along with a 8 year old kid going on a long-held adventure trip – was awarded the Golden Globe yesterday. I had watched the movie 10000 feet above the land in a bumpy plane ride and hence got the practical experience behind it too. Not too sure if the in-flight entertainment on that particular flight was sponsored by Pixar.
Wednesday, January 20′th -
Political Inclinations and Professions – “Why are Professors Liberal?” – An interesting working paper report published out on 15′th by Professor Neil Gross and Ph. D. candidate Ethan Fosse at Department of Sociology at University of British Columbia. Talks about why Professors in general tend to be more Liberal in their thinking as compared to being Conservative in their beliefs. While it has taken Professors as the case point – IMO, the same hypothesis probably also stands for many other professions out there. Ever wondered why Jerry Springer is a Democrat?
Senate Loss at Massachusetts – Ouuch! this should have hurt the Democrats and President Barack Obama. Senate loss in the bluest possible state of Massachusetts! Come on! Even the life-long but life-less Massachustetts Senator John Kerry won the state of Massachusetts when he ran for President.
Life can be sarcastic and charming at the same time – This is very, very interesting! There were atleast about 165 people who survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima only to land up in Nagasaki when another bomb fell three days later (src – New York Times article). And they still survived! Sorry, I do not think I can have any sarcasm on this particular one! The real sarcasm and/or charm is from life itself.
Thursday, January 21′th -
‘Sachin’ and ‘Warne’ as verbs – Yesterday only I thinking about touching base with the mechanic to see if his estimates would be in the ballpark of my budget. And no, I am not a baseball fan! Confused? Read the interesting article which appeared at Cricinfo today – “Sachin, Warne and other such verbs” written by Sue de Groot. While sports terminology being used in regular talks have been a norm for a long time – use of names seems to be the modern thing. I think next time when I have say – “Let us not screw up the project”, I might just say – “Let us not Lalit Modi the project”.
Environment and those pesky marketeers – You know as a person who strongly believes that our Environment/Earth is under tremendous strain, I am personally not that upset with the recent exaggeration of Al Gore at the Copehagen Environment summit (about artic being ice-free in summers in 5 – 7 years) and now his Nobel Prize colleague Rajendra Pachauri’s recent botch-up about all Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. IMO they got carried away while marketing a concept or an agenda. An important element of a marketeer’s job is to exaggerate. Come on! You don’t believe this? Ever heard of Cloud Computing?
Friday, January 22′th -
Joy’ism- Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems) had once said “that there are always smart people outside the organization than within” and I would like to add to that “till the time you get those smart people into your organization“.
Thats a wrap for this week. I will be back next week with another one in this series. Until then, have a great week ahead.
As I had mentioned in one of my previous blog about my interest in thinking/brainstorming on various aspects of healthcare from a consumer perspective i.e. from a Patients’s perspective. I have now started to think and understand more about ‘Doctor – Patient Relationships‘ and ‘How do patients get treated?‘. After a lot of reading/research, personal experiences, and talking/debating with many doctors including my brother – I think now I am able to come to some kind of better understanding and hypothesis in this area.
One such point of curiosity for me was to understand how do patients get treated in general. What drives a patient to a doctor? What are his/her real pain-points or drivers? I also had the curiosity from doctor’s perspective.
Doctor and Patient Relationship (img src - National Human Genome Research Institute)
How do doctors treat a patient? What goes on in their mind from the moment they see the patient? What logic do they use to prescribe the treatment which they prescribe? Do they have a crystal ball which tells them what the patient is suffering from? Do they have cheat-sheets which they look at? Or sometimes very simply put – do they really listen to what the patients are saying? I really wanted to get into their brains! I started talking with few of my friends and soon they got curious too.
So we started reading and researching and talking with many closely associated with this profession. Very soon, we realized that this is not the area where lots have been researched about or talked about. It is just assumed that both doctors and patients act and behave in a certain way – without each party completely knowing or understanding the ‘why‘ part. For example – no two doctors have given me a coherent/similar answer on my question as to why they think many patients have difficulty in communicating or describing their health problems to them. Neither have many regular patients been logically able to tell us about why do they think doctors misdiagnose some times. Our point was not that either party have a fault that they don’t know this. But it is that both parties (doctors and patients) have probably been operating under lots of assumptions about each other which sometimes are not the most correct ones. It just felt that there was lot of mystery in the ‘why‘ aspect of the behavior/approach of both the parties than there really should be.
The first question in our mind – should we start demystifying this? Should both the parties (again doctor and patient) make an effort to understand why the other behaves/acts in a certain manner? And our straight-forward answer for this was – absolutely! Our reasoning was that if both patients and doctors understand these aspects of behavioral drivers – it can only ultimately result in better doctor-patient communication. This would certainly result in better Doctor-Patient Relationship and hence potentially better healthcare. While all the progress and development which has been happening in the area of Healthcare-associated services and technology is a good thing – the physician-patient relationship remains (and will continue to remain) fundamental to the provision of acceptable medical care.
So over the next few weeks/months – as we are in process of exploring this aspect of doctor-patient relationship – I will be blogging about what we are learning. As has been my typical style of blogging – I am thinking about breaking these findings into several but discrete blogs. My aim is also to continue getting your thoughts and comments also on the same.
More than six months back, I had written about the tremendous amount of hype surrounding Cloud Computing. Then few months after that I took some clues from the Gartner Hype Cycle Report and said that this hype around Cloud Computing has reached the peak and now has started declining (Ref – “Beyond the hype – can some real work using Cloud Computing start now?“). IMO, real work or usage of any technology typically starts once the products shreds some of the hype or unrealistic expectations around it. As we work with our customers at GlobalLogic in consulting/helping them on various aspects of Cloud, I am now seeing the validation of my prediction.
However, now we have started seeing new challenge facing many who are taking or planning to take their first steps towards the implementation – figuring out which solution or technology does what and which solution to select by going through the mesh of vendors out there. The reason I say this is because Cloud Computing is a paradigm which does not suit itself to home development. Any solutions built up on or using Cloud would have to be built up by using or in partnership with the vendors out there. Deciphering the confusing marketing message sent out by various vendors about their capabilities and how these capabilities fits with the requirements in hand can be an overwhelming task by itself.
Considering the above challenge – recently I came across the vendor taxonomy created by Peter Laird which I thought was an impressive start in terms of laying the lay of the land in Cloud Computing.
Cloud Vendor Taxonomy - 2009 - By Peter Laird. (Click on image for bigger view)
This blog post from Peter also describes what each of the category stands for. It is worth reading. Although based on our experience here some of the specific vendor classification could be debatable either way – however I am in agreement with the overall structure of the taxonomy. In our business at GlobalLogic in the Consumer-oriented applications side, we have explored solutions provided by the Public Cloud, Business User Platforms, Development Platforms along with Storage and Integration platforms. As we are enhancing our expertise in building applications/products on the Enterprise side – next steps for us would be to explore the Private Cloud side along with Billing and Integration side. Also my feeling is that Infrastructure-related technologies (as listed in the figure) would be mostly seamlessly packaged in by the Private Cloud Vendors.
In any regards, just wanted to share this pretty useful taxonomy created by Peter Laird to the readers of my blog. Thoughts and comments are welcome.
Like few other instances before – ever since I started blogging – I am now once again back from the hiatus away from blogging. It was not a planned one. It just happened like the other previous breaks I had taken. I have now realized that these periodic breaks are now part of the blogging routine.
Lots of things happened in this break. Did some traveling around; had to execute some work-related deliverables; attended some family chores; and tackled few things on the personal front. While all these were happening, I managed to get lots of reading done on few topics which had been occupying me since the last few months. (surely I will be writing about the same over the next few months). And on top of that – we all also moved into the new decade. Being a person who has quite a bit of interest on historical aspects of things around, spent some time in doing some reflection on the decade which just passed – where it started and how it ended. My personal thoughts – both from the world affairs perspective and personal perspective – I think the past decade was quite an intense decade. It will be remembered for many different things for long time to come.
Now that we are in 2010 – belated happy New Year to all the readers of my blog. Hope the New Year brings in (or has already brought) the best in health and prosperity for you and your loved ones. As for me – I am excited about the prospects for this New Year.
The Past Decade and 2010 (img src - www.photobucket.com)
On the professional front – over the last 3-4 quarters it has been in some sense ‘back-to-school‘ time for me. Learning new businesses/domains/roles and conglomerating it with my past experience/expertise has been extremely enriching. There are few very interesting things which I (along with few others) have been trying to understand and work upon and hopefully should see some fruition this year.
Interestingly when I was introspecting on the past decade as I mentioned above, I also realized something. This year I am also going to leave my ‘thirties‘ behind! I have always had an opinion that leaving behind a decade in our lives is always a different feeling. Few of my friends also felt the same way. Somewhere down there everyone gets that ticklish feeling. I still remember the morning I got up and realized that I have left my ‘twenties‘ behind. Someone at that time had quipped – “from now onwards your body will have a mind of its own“. It was probably a quote and it took me some time to understand what it meant. Now that I am leaving my ‘thirties‘ behind – I am taking a lot of heart from the following quote attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer -
“The first forty years of our life give the text; the next thirty furnishes the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties”.
So cheers to the ‘morals‘ and ‘beauties‘ of the life – here I come!
This year I was also thinking about trying out few new things on my blog. Few readers of my blog – while they have appreciated my thoughts and arguments on topics which I have been writing till date – have also felt that is probably too intense and some lightening-up of it would be interesting. After a bit more prodding with them, I realized that they were probably referring that I should also write more about more personal and lighter/day-to-day aspects of life. So here are some of the ideas I am thinking about -
Write about a quick take on a weekly or fortnightly basis about my take on list of events/news/observations with a satirical angle – possibly Jerry Seinfeld style. I do have a tendency to have one-liner metaphorical quips ready for many things which I see in life. So make use that skill/habit.
Regularly talk about few mundane things in life – politics, sports, entertainment, etc. which I indulge in.
Let me start with these two things and see how it goes. There are always chances of making the corrections.
Once again – a very Happy New Year to you all!
[Update|Feb. 1st 2010 - At the start of this blog, I had mentioned about the past decade being an intense one. Phillip Niemeyer, Art Director at Double Triple has done a wonderful job in putting and summarizing the last decade in pictures. Check it out at the New York Times link - "Picturing the last 10 years"]
“Chondria what? What did you say?” I can literally hear you saying! “All I had always heard was about hypochondria!”.
This week Washington Post staff writer – Carolyn Butler – posted an interesting article titled “A glut of Google can give you a virtual fever” (registration may be required to read) in which I for the first time came across this term – cyberchondria. Yes, I somehow had missed on that! Wikipedia defines cyberchondria as -
“Excessive preoccupation or worry about having a particular disease based on medical information gleaned from the Internet”
Cyberchondria - Escalation of Medical Concerns (img src - howtosplitanatom.com)
Seems like this word (derived from the word hypochondria) was keyed around at the start of this decade but got into prominence after two Microsoft Researchers – Eric Horvitz and Ryen White – released this study titled – “Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search” and New York Times carried a follow-up article about the same. This paper from Microsoft Research studied various patterns of web searches associated with healthcare information and found that people’s medical concerns got escalated because of the kind of results shown by the web search engines. These researchers concluded this when they saw that the online healthcare information searchers started searching for and reviewing content on serious and more rare conditions that were linked with their symptoms in the same web surfing session. The paper is an interesting read and I would recommend you all to read it. I am also capturing some of my learnings from the paper below -
Majority of us tend to miss out on checking key quality indicators for any online health information - As I had mentioned in my presentation about Healthcare from Consumer Perspective too, this paper also confirms that substantial number (more than 70%) of internet users search for healthcare related information on the web. However more than 75% of these searchers also fail to check for the key quality indicators such as validity and creation date of such information. (Some additional studies have pointed out that more than 70% of the healthcare content on the internet may not be of appropriate quality)
Online search results tend to over-exaggerate possible causes based on symptoms - The probability of a cause for a particular symptom based on what seems to be implied from web-based search results and the probability of occurrence of the same cause in real world seem to be differing dramatically. Sounds slightly confusing? Let me simplify it. For example – as the paper points out – for a symptom such as headache if you were to search it through a search engine – you might feel that there is a 3% probability of you having a brain tumor. Whereas the actual occurrence rate for brain tumor is possibly less than 0.001%. This over-exaggeration due to coarse linkages done by the present-day search engines between the symptoms and the content tends to increase unwarranted anxiety among the web searchers.
Cyberchondriat’s trust in Doctors is minimalistic – Studies have shown that Cyberchondriats – assuming that they suffer from hypercondria – typically tend to express doubt and disbelief in their physician’s diagnosis and typically are not easily satisfied by their doctor’s reassurances.
Mapping a disease online based on symptoms is inherently flawed - Having hung around a family of doctors and seen them practicing – I personally had always been skeptical (and thought it was risky too) about the increasing number of healthcare websites which have mushroomed on the “you tell us your symptoms” and “we will tell you what you suffer from” information model. Diagnosing (will be blogging more on this in future blogs) as done by doctors requires intricate probing and building an hypothesis around the subtleties of the symptoms and various findings – along with giving enough consideration to characteristics of the patient (typically done face-to-face). This is not feasible with the web-based search. Well, atleast the ones which are available today! Almost all of the search engine or querying mechanism today are not designed to perform coherent diagnostic or probabilistic reasoning (a key tool for medical diagnosis). Cyberchondriates need to be aware of this.
Individuals themselves have core biases while pursuing for online medical diagnosis - The authors of the paper point to studies in Cognitive Psychology wherein they had presented evidences that humans tend to employ heuristics or speculative approaches in determining likelihood of a particular theory when presented with large amount of possibilities. Authors believe that this tendency of human beings plays a big role in cyberchondria too. Because of this habit – human beings tend to be biased towards certain medical content – which in turn drives their assumptions of what they suffer from.
Lastly, there seems to be more online information on Rare Diseases than to Common ones - The authors believe that for the sake of garnering more attention (nothing wrong in that though), there is a lots of literature and online discussions devoted to rare disorders than to common ones. However, the flip side of this is that this abundance of information may lead to biasing the search engines and ultimately the online searchers towards the possibility of they getting diagnosed with a more critical or serious disease.
Personally, I have always been vary of the potential use of the abundant healthcare related information which is available freely and easily on the internet today. My challenge is not against the content part – but on the context part! How does that content or the information apply to the individual himself/herself? This article clearly alludes to my fears – that increasing amount of healthcare information on the internet while needed can also bring in side-effects too.
More than a year back, I had blogged about buckling up for a rough ride when the so-called recession of the lifetime had started showing its ugly face.
Recession is Over!
While the expectations of many was that it was there to stay for a long period, but the recent days indicators are all pointing towards things normalizing back. A lot of credit for this, IMO, goes to the coordinated and collaborative efforts amongst the nations.
I would be hoping and praying that most of you would have weathered this recession without much strain and now are looking forward to the better times. There may be very few of you who might have felt the heat of this recession more severely than others; but again I would be hoping that you would now have emerged much stronger with the experience.
As many who might have experienced recessions in the past would tell you – recessions are cyclic and we are going to see many more in our life time. IMO, it is going to be the fact of life especially when majority of the businesses today around the world are driven by the supply-and-demand kind of a model. The key now is how well we (as businesses or individuals) learn to make use of the good times and adjust in the challenging times. More importantly how well we anticipate and adapt to the changes – again be it from a business perspective or even from an individual perspective.
In my conversations with many – I am now very interested in knowing what has that particular individual learnt for his/her own individual self while going through this recession cycle. The learnings could be from the perspective of individuality or work or career or even from family perspective. My assumption here is that these learnings would vary from individual to individual. Also, my belief is that if the individual can abstract their lessons-learnt at this moment – better they would be prepared to adapt to these cyclic nature of business cycles in future.
What have I learnt from the Recession?
So if you have not done it already, I would strongly urge all of you to take few minutes and capture your thoughts about what you have learnt as an individual over the last year or two in these recessionary times. May be the following questions guideline to evaluate your learnings might help -
Did the recession affect you in some way that now you feel that you are well prepared for the better times and even for the next cycle? (Yes/No)
Some of your strengths which you think helped you in this recessionary phase? (e.g. skills, family support, good bank balance, etc.)
Some of your weaknesses which you think came to the fore during this recessionary phase? (e.g. inadequate skills, wrong job, expensive habits, etc.)
Hopefully while you are thinking about the above questions, you would also be thinking about how you would strengthen your attributes in Point (2) and work on your weaknesses in Point (3).
So as you prepare to take a big sigh of relief and make plans to use the better time to the fullest – I would also encourage you to retrospect. There are going to be pundits who are going to analyze the lessons learnt at a national or a business or a corporate level. But as an individual, you owe it to yourself to do this short exercise for your own sake.
And if you can share the results of your retrospection exercise with others (paste it in the comments section) – may be many others can learn from you too.
It is now more than 4 years that I have been part of Software Services Industry (focused on providing IT/Software outsourcing solutions) after all my previous association with mostly product organizations – big and small. It has been an interesting experience for me – especially considering that my job (at GlobalLogic – focused on Outsourced Product Development business) requires me to play a role across Strategy, Business Development, Sales, and Delivery all throughout the years. Compared to many others in the Software Services Business – some might consider me as a relatively late entrant. However, these 4 years itself has given me enough perspective to think sincerely as to where this industry is going, what is working for them and what ails them too.
Now with lots of personal experience, after talking with many who have been part-of or have been associated in various capacities with Software Services companies, and scanning the internet for software/economic trends – I think I have started reaching some core prognosis and hypothesis for the state of software services industry. As one of the crew member in this software services industry spaceship I am now ready to acknowledge - “Houston, We have a Problem!“.
Before I proceed further, please note that my prognosis is not about a dooms-day scenario but about certain ills which if not addressed soon can possibly adversely affect the long term growth of software services industry.
Here are some of the challenges which I am seeing that software services organizations are facing from a global business perspective -
Cost arbitrage is no longer the differentiator – Regardless of what many say – ability to help customers bring their costs/expenses down and at the same time scale too is of big value and will continue to remain so. So services organization providing any offering (while maintaining other attributes like quality, reliability, etc. constant) which successfully demonstrates this will always be attractive. However, there is always a lower limit beyond which the costs cannot be reduced. Entry points for other competitors to claim that they can provide better cost-arbitrage value is relatively very easy. So for organizations for whom cost arbitrage was the only value proposition they could offer for years – world is now catching up fast with them.
‘Cost Arbitrage‘ and ‘Value‘ are like oil in water. They do not mix! – Having realized the above challenge – many services organizations have now seriously putting in efforts to provide their customers value-added offerings beyond just cost-based offerings. Value added offerings are typically based on specialized skills, domains, business partnerships, etc. However, while there might be few cases of successes in this way, my personal opinion is that majority will have a challenge selling ‘value’ to their customers along with cost arbitrage solutions. Providing cost arbitrage and also providing value are inherently conflicting offerings. (Anyone who has read my previous blog post – “Psychology of Consumers During Consumption of Products or Services” and the associated article would probably agree with my view point).
Need to shed away inward focus – Considering the nature of the business (especially when the focus is more on Point # 1 which I listed above) – substantial portion of services organizations efforts and energy is increasingly focused internally to manage people, salaries, delivery, costs, lunches, operations, personal aspirations, etc. assuming that this is key to their bread and butter. Very crudely, I would compare this to the day-in-the-life of a shepherd managing his herd of sheep. Ratio of number of people focusing on internal operations to number of people interacting with the external market/business has to reverse in Services Organizations.
We cannot keep just consuming, we need to produce too! – Substantial number of Software Services organizations (including where I am employed) have been in business for long period of time and majority of them today can boast of servicing huge number of businesses / products / domains / technologies under one roof. Over the years majority of the services companies have done this by ‘consuming‘ knowledge / experiences / technologies / best practices produced by someone ‘not‘ under their roof. I am not saying this is wrong or bad. However, I am also assuming that with the years of experience under their belt now (again across domains, technologies, best practices, etc.) – software services organizations should be in much better situation to contribute back new discoveries/inventions/practices, etc. to the industry. We need to ‘produce‘ too! So I will confess here that in the day-to-day tactical efforts to manage points listed above, majority of services organizations are not able to properly concentrate on this count.
Surely, we will get recognized by the company we keep; but we will finally get valued by the work we do! – Take a random survey of the Software Services Organization portfolio and look at how many of them claim that they work for a ‘Microsoft’ or a ‘Oracle’ or a ‘Cisco’. More than half of the thousands of Software Services Organizations would (honestly) claim that they do. Without any doubt that is the first big achievement. Now find out how many of these organizations do the Microsofts or the Oracles of the world acknowledge in their products that it was built with these organization’s help. Getting recognized or people knowing about us is one thing, but people acknowledging us as a thought leader is completely different matter. IMHO, majority of the Services Organizations still have to cross that bridge.
and finally – focus on building the Taj Mahal, not the number of people billed to build the Taj Mahal – Perhaps slightly related to above point but a different perspective! Almost all of the customers of the Software Services organizations are focused on building something which they strongly believe would be the next Taj Mahal. Special, different, beautiful, strong, ever-lasting, etc.! The focus of organizations like mine should be on that. The number of people or hours billed in a billing cycle – though important – is a temporary thing and will eventually get replaced from the records with the change in the financial cycle, but if we can help an organization to be the next Cisco – the returns are going to be far better.
My intention in this blog post is not to crucify anyone or any particular organization, but to point out few things to correct the course. And this case, I am pointing these things out to the organizations which I am happily part of. Like in any retrospection along with an introspection discussion, I am possibly expecting a polarizing reaction from readers to my blog post. However, the key for me here is to start the debate and hear your view points. So let the comments/feedback/fires flow in.
Over the last few months, I have had an opportunity to present my thoughts/views on the state of Healthcare Services in India in different types of people settings – big and small/formal and informal – including the one which I described in my previous blog post.
At a crossroad
Based on my observations and my views (and after validation from various different sources), I had mentioned that I sincerely felt Healthcare Services in India is at a crossroad in its phases of evolution. Many had asked me why I felt that way. To explain my reasonings and arguments for such observations is the motivation behind writing this post.
Before I make my case, I hope you have had an opportunity to read various of my other previous blog posts about Healthcare in India. Hopefully, after reading those you would have realized that I am no medical practitioner nor do I have any association with any policy making organization. My views are more from my observations and experiences from Healthcare Consumer perspective.
‘Being at a crossroad’ for me means that the contrasts between the state of various things or options starts becoming so evident that people dealing with it (be it individuals or society or a country) have to very often face or deal with options and associated consequences of each option. In some sense it is about making a selection which potentially would determine the direction in which we as individuals or society would go. In the healthcare case, in some symbolic sense, I felt that the state of matters or the options provided by the Indian Healthcare Services seems to have started showing various different signs of contrasts. Hence my argument for Healthcare Services being at the crossroad!
Components of Healthcare System
To look at the contrasts one has to have an objective view. A view from a 10000 feet! From such a high view, IMO, if we were to look at the ‘state-of-the-union‘ of the healthcare system – I felt that we can see distinct two categories – the ‘good news‘ category and the ‘bad news‘ category. The ‘good news‘ bucket has the real progress which the country has made in comparison with the previous decade/s. And the ‘bad news‘ category contains the increasing developments which in some sense the dampens the ‘good news‘ category.
When you look at the baggage which India carries (over-population, years of apathy towards infrastructure development, traditional social lack of awareness towards health management, etc.) and then put things into perspective – one cannot miss out the noticeable growth and progress being made in the last decade in the area of Healthcare. And it is continuing. At a national level, India is among the top contender for the destination in the area of Medical Tourism.
Medical Tourism Booming
If I were to look at the local level – especially at my home town – the medical specialists and the treatments which were only available after traveling more than 400 miles to the West, is now available within miles. Indian Medical System seems to have gotten into a factory-like approach in churning out specialists in a recurring way. The private hospital chains (Apollo’s, Max’s of India) seems to have started taking steps in providing healthcare management facilities (although still affordable to a subset of the population) which even the respected Government-run medical hospitals (AIIMS, KEM, etc.) seemed to have ignored over the years. Recent news about Max investing in Electronic Health Records (EHR) mechanisms or Apollo venturing into advisory services in helping other nations to open up the hospitals are some big validations of the progress. Investments in this field are coming from all corners with McKinsey predicting that the Indian Healthcare market would grow to about $52 billion in 2012 (from the current $35 billion) and to about $150 billion in the year 2017.
Spinning the Money
Indian government (possibly under pressure from World Health Organization too) have been increasing the number of medical colleges by more than 12-15% year-by-year since the last few years. Increasing population, increasing income, increasing reporting of medical ailments can only be good news to any investor (pun intended!). So in a sense there is a big air of optimism around which one can certainly feel if one looks around.
India Short of 6 Lakh Doctors
However along with the above sense of progress there are also instances or developments which are so visible around which makes one think that many things are also ain’t going the right way from the healthcare perspective in India.
Basic Doctor Mistakes
Progress made in the healthcare options is not yet reaching to all in the society at the pace it should ideally be. 80% of the Healthcare providers and specialists are concentrating on the 20% demography located in the urban areas (hence the rural areas continue to suffer). Common basic mistakes in medical treatments which probably would be synonymous to the state of medical system in a third-world country are still being made (e.g. babies being declared dead only to found alive after couple of hours, incidences of some doctors refusing to treat HIV patients because of social taboos, etc.).
Indian Medical Journal of Medical Ethics
The relationship between the doctors and the patients have increasingly started coming under big strain (both ways) with increasing number of incidences where law-of-the-land have been broken by either parties.
Doctors protesting
Cases of medical malpractices which frequently comes to the fore typically leaves a stink and big blot with the progress. Accountability is a key component in any progressive system and Indian healthcare system continues to lack in that to a big extent. My personal confidence in the maturity of the Indian Healthcare system maturity also got shaken when I read that Indian Medical Association (IMA) itself came forward and said that they have lost track of number of doctors in the country in the recent years. I had also recently blogged about my apprehensions of the Indian Healthcare System during the H1N1 outbreak few months back.
More afraid of medical errors
I am not sure how many of you have also noticed this contrast the way I am seeing it. Please do not get me wrong here. My intention is not to paint a black or a white picture here. In my conversations with many on this topic – that is lot of contrasting opinions out there about the state of the things. And hence the extra motivation to my point of this post. Because of such visible contrast, my opinion is that India’s Healthcare System is at a critical crossroad as it continues to evolve fast. The steps it takes in the next few years would determine its long-term success. But the good news is also that such contrasts opens up lots of new opportunities too.
This weekend on Saturday, I presented a talk titled – “Healthcare in India – Consumer Perspective – Opportunities!” at Startup Saturday – New Delhi. The talk was more about my thoughts on what kinds of healthcare opportunities from the consumer perspective exist or will exist in India. Many of the attendees (and also some who missed the talk) requested me for the slide deck. For them I am putting it here.
(Does not seem like SlideShare did a great job in properly converting the ppt. Please feel free to reach out to me in case you have questions on anything specific)
For those who missed it out – it was fun talking in front of the lively audience with many questions and strong view points. Some key highlights of the questions/discussion points -
There was a lot of debate on my “Good News” and “Bad News” slide and why I felt about it in that way. I will be putting my thoughts on it in a separate blog post.
Interesting debate when I said that India was a Developed country. (Needed help from the politicians there)
Few misunderstood that I was encouraging opportunities for replacing the doctors. No folks! Doctors cannot be replaced! Few in my own family would have killed me if I had that view.
Many felt that the healthcare domain was difficult to crack considering the insufficient domain knowledge they had. My suggestion to the wanna-be entrepreneurs was not to build any solutions by excluding the doctors.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts and/or views too!
Few months back in the month of June, I had wailed against the increasing marketing hype and the resulting over-expectations set on Cloud Computing which IMO is a powerful concept but yet is still at its nascent stage. (read my blog post titled “Cloud Computing – Is this the case study for Marketing gone out of hand?“). Then in the very next month of July, Gartner came out with their much anticipated annual “Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009” which in some subtle way examines the maturity of emerging technologies.
(For those unfamiliar with what Hype Cycle means, you may want to refer to this Wikipedia description. Coined by Gartner, the Hype Cycle hypothesizes that any emerging technology typically goes through an initial period of over-enthusiasm and popularity which in some sense results in inflated expectations from the emerging technology. After this initial period, the hype around this emerging technology typically falls possibly because of disenchantment. Few technologies recover from this phase of disenchantment with a practicality/sanity of usage taking over.)
As the 2009 Hype curve shows below – Gartner feels that Cloud Computing has now reached the peak of the hype cycle and based on their theory it many now be entering into the depths of disenchantment.
2009 - Gartner Hype Cycle (Source: Gartner)
Personally, I usually take any of the Gartner data with lots of salt and many a times also have ended up pondering upon their validity. However in this case I would seriously like to believe (or like to pray) that they are right especially in their assumptions about Cloud Computing. Because if they are – I am betting that the real work with proper practical expectations using Cloud Computing would start now. This is the time when many of its potential users would try to cipher through the confusing hype; take baby and practical steps in its adaptation; and let the top spin to see how its application spans out for their needs.
Going forward beyond the peak of the hype, as I am looking into my crystal ball – I am predicting that the usage/adaption of Cloud Computing across products or IT infrastructure would go through the following five stages (see figure below). My assumption of these five stages are derived from what I have typically seen how many other technologies/business processes (e.g. IP Telephony, Enterprise Automation, etc.) have found their way to mass/mature adaption. Note that in the figure below, the curved blue line in the backdrop indicates the Gartner Hype Curve.
Beyond Hype – Predictions about Cloud Computing Adaptations
To describe these stages in more details -
Adaption Phase - This phase (and we are well into this phase from Cloud Computing perspective as we speak) is where organizations would start taking the initial steps in looking at the application of Cloud Computing paradigm within their products or infrastructure. Products/applications hosted on traditional infrastructure are getting moved on Public Cloud. SaaS-enablement of existing products is another example. Using Virtualization to create in-house Cloud environment is another activity which many organizations are seriously looking at or many have also started implementing.
Stabilization Phase - As with the adaption of any new technology, the teething problems would need to be overcomed. This is the phase where the myths/hypes/over-expectations associated with the technology would meet with the real-world realities. Various risks associated with the new adaptation would start cropping up and would need to start getting mitigated. To do this certain applications would have to be re-architected; existing business processes would need to be remodeled to find a win-win situations with the business needs and advantages which the Cloud Computing platforms would possibly bring in. I personally believe that this phase would be the most critical of all. Adaptations of many new technologies have struggled in the past in this phase for a long periods and sometimes resulting in the ball getting completely dropped altogether too. From Cloud Computing perspective, I am predicting that the concept itself is going to evolve a lot as organizations go through this phase.
Measurement Phase - Once the adaptation and implementation of any technology stabilizes within any product or organization – the natural next step is to start measuring the day-to-day health and throughput. This is the stage where the Service Level Agreements (SLA) definitions and its measurements is going to start becoming important (as compared to usage of SLAs in the previous stages). At this stage, the measurements associated with uptime, disaster recovery, scalability, response time, etc. would start giving an idea about how well the implementation of Cloud Computing has gone.
Optimization Phase - Measurements would naturally lead to optimization of the implementation – be it from an architecture perspective or simply from the basic notion of how Cloud Computing should continued to be used. It would be too presumptuous of me (or anyone else for that matter) to start predicting how the optimization would play out for Cloud Computing today. It is just too difficult to predict today. However, like all technologies, cloud computing would evolve heavily (for better) in this particular phase.
Management Phase – This is the final phase where success stories associated with successful Cloud Computing implementations would start becoming a regular norm. At and beyond this stage, the implementations of Cloud Computing would continue to focus on regular Management which would include activities such as coordination, reducing regular expenditure, productivity improvement, improving functional statuses and satisfaction.
Please note that I am not suggesting that the above phases are always going to sequential; however it is more from lines of trying to figure out the order of the stages of implementation or even the maturity of the implementation. For example, it certainly does not make any sense to start measuring SLAs even before the implementation has stabilized. In void of such staged approach, I have seen that many a times many false results can dampen the potential which a new technology or paradigm can possibly bring in. And as I have said it before, Cloud Computing is certainly one such powerful platform. However, as many of you would agree with me that even a powerful platform can render itself ineffective if not implemented in a proper manner.
[Note: I seem to be landing up on many of my articles which I had written in my pre-blogging days. Few weeks back I had posted another one titled "QA Tester vs. QA Engineer vs. QA Architect". Once again, rather than having it cold-stored on my file system, I am posting it here with the hope that it might be useful to the wider community.
As a background on this article - this was written when me and my team were in process of conceptualizing the need for an integrated engineering platform in GlobalLogic because of the increasingly different product development landscape today. The motivations and need listed in this article finally resulted in the evolution of what today is referred to as GlobalLogic Velocity. It also won the "InfoWorld Top 100 Innovation Award" for the year 2007]
Main Motivation – Art of Product Engineering Today
There is no doubt today that teams are becoming increasingly distributed. Also the art of building products is rapidly changing now, more than ever in the new world of Web 2.0 or SOA. Product Development is now less upfront and more emergent. Requirements are driven more driven by Black-board, IM, or Wire Frames. Product Development today needs to be more collaborative and collective. The testing process for products is more continuous rather than at the end of the cycle with the practice of Test Driven Development. End users have also started playing a key role in this testing process. Table below provides a quick comparison of how the art of building software products has changed. As tough as it is to practice this in a uni-location team, complexity is much higher in a distributed team.
Then
Now
Primary Collaboration Mechanism
Mails, face-to-face, one way media (documents, etc.)
Web, Sticky Notes, Wiki, IM, Black Board, Wire Frames
Source of Innovation
Industry Technology Leaders
Users, Customers
Release Cycle
Months, Years
Weeks, On Demand
Feedback Mechanism
Market Research, Surveys, User Group Study, Customer Support
Online, Continuous, Community Contribution
Customer Engagement Style
Controlled, well-defined
Spontaneous, Chaotic
Development Process
Upfront design
Less upfront, more emergent
Product Architecture
Closed, Grounds Up
Open, Built to extend, Reuse
Product Development Culture
Centralized, Departmentalized, Linear Approach, Individual Heroics
Distributed, Highly Collaborative and Collective, Partnership-based
Product Testing
Internal, Dedicated Test Teams, Ownership-based, End of Life Cycle
Continuous, Test Driven Development, Users as testers
Development Tools
Heavy enterprise oriented, expensive, complex.
Lightweight, Simple, Free, fast.
Product Engineering Art – Then and Now
One of the thing which becomes clear from the above comparison is that product development is just not about core product knowledge, but also about about understanding the design and the product engineering processes. The different phases of a lifecycle engineering are becoming increasingly more collaborative and knowledge intensive. Thus a product representation must convey additional information/knowledge that answers not only “what” question about a product engineering but also “how” and “with what” questions.
Product and Stakeholders Dynamics in an Organization
Another factor which governs the product development is the way internal department structures are modeled within the organization. Typically there is a Product Management group which interacts with the end customers and prioritizes the business requirements based on the market needs. Program Management has the responsibility of prioritizing these requirements internally along with the roles and responsibilities. Program Management also needs to bridge the gap which typically exists between the business side and the technical side. Product Development Management then takes the requirements and converts that into a working software. Quite occasionally, organizations also have Product Delivery Group which is finally responsible for delivering the software to its users. Figure below represents such dynamics within a product organization
Product & Stakeholder Dynamics in an Organization
While the distribution of product development work across departments helps in work categorization, it is also important for Management to have one view of the state of product development. This becomes much more complex when the entire product development is spread across geographies or time zones. Hence there is a need for an efficient integrated platform which aids the complete life cycle of the product.
Any Product Engineering Platform should be an integrated set of applications, systems, repositories and tools used by Software Product Engineering teams which would facilitate -
Integration of technology/applications
Integration of the business/engineering processes
Integration of information and knowledge
Integration of people and organizations units
Any Product Engineering Platform (including ours) should be able to facilitate the above characteristics.
[Note - Partial credits to the table titled "Product Engineering Art - Then and Now" mentioned above goes to an article which I had read on the internet. Unfortunately I am not able to locate or find the reference to it now and the old link has now disappeared too. If anyone has any reference to the same, would be great if you could point it out.]
