Top 12 Knowledge Requirements for 2012

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2011 gave a very powerful positive impact on specialized business life for Social Media and Smart Phone Professionals - many new Gadgets, Applications, Job Profiles, Start-ups and Success Stories.

2012 – Definitely, is coming with lot more new opportunities for IT communities.

Well, what is essential for your success in 2012 – Let’s take a quick look on top knowledge requirements.

• Mobile Application Programming – It is not just Android, Windows Phone and IOS Programming. Look into HTML5, CSS3, Advance Java-script, JSON, JQuery and PHP. Mobile WEB Frameworks are going to be an excellent option for “Develop Once-Deploy to All” Concept.


• Customized Agile Project Management – Agile is still not professionally implemented in many organizations. Most of the Small and Medium size companies are using it as simplified version of traditional project management – but in the name of Agile. Certified Scrum Master and Agile Scrum Trainings for your Project Team are essential for a success with quality.


• Location Based Services – There are very few applications with Location based Content Identification as a feature and most of them are just social and Infotainment. There are lot more requirements which can be fulfilled with LBS – for Example: Tourism, Education etc.


• Data Center / Networking Technologies- The demand for networking professionals is high with virtualization and cloud computing projects. Virtualization and the Cloud could also be behind the increased need for IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration.


• Smartphone Security – Smartphones are becoming part of corporate network elements now days and security for official and personal data becomes major question. Data Security Applications, Anti-virus Tools, Remote Content Management, Policies for using Smartphones are high in requirement.


• User Interface Design – UI Design and Development is an important presentation layer element, which decides the success of many Smartphone and Tablets apps, and also PC and WEB Apps. There are certification course available to educate you about best practices and standards and it is a hot item in job market too.


• Mobile Commerce / Payment – Smartphones and Feature phones are fully capable for Money Management now days with Applications from various vendors. There were few banking apps, mobile malls and payment apps showed success stories last year, and I am expecting more to come in 2012.


•  Context Aware Applications – A new technology provides improved user experiences by using the information about a person's interests, intentions, history, environment, activities, schedule, priorities, connections and preferences to anticipate their needs and proactively serve up the most appropriate content, product or service.


• Gaming Smartphones, Devices – estimated to $800 million business, it provides numerous opportunities for business owners and technical professionals.


• Help Desk/Technical Support–Mobile operating systems have added a new dimension to help desk and tech support community and this will improve a lot in future.


• Business Intelligence – from Cost saving to investing in Technology, I am expecting many new prospects with BI.  There are certifications, Business Analysis best practices to improve it.


• Life with Open Source – Open source is not just limited to PHP and MYSQL, but there are more useful, free to use, efficient platforms for developers, designers, project managers, analysts, testers, business owners and general IT end-users.

I wish you all the best in this New Year 2012 for many new success stories, career improvements and business values.

How to - Improving the Scrum Practice

Daily Scrum meeting alias Daily Standup meeting is an important element of Scrum Process Practice. It is usually a 15 minutes discussion and it makes everyone to answer three basic questions. "What did you do since the last meeting?", "What are you going to do until the next meeting?", "What impedes you from being more productive?". The purpose of this rigidness is for making sure that daily Scrum is to help team members synchronize between themselves, not to solve problems.

There are few quick improvement ideas below.

• Visual Progress Artifact board based discussion – ideally in front of the task board with the sprint and backlog.


• Everyone should attend – because this meeting should be utilized as a wide communication bandwidth as possible.


• Don’t take Notes – Take only micro notes by hand. Don’t use the laptop typing.


• Concentrate on "What are you going to do until the next meeting?", "What impedes you from being more productive?" – to figure out what’s blocking the efficient work and who could help it.

The above mentioned simple tips can be good starting points or reminders. However, every team knows best how to adjust its stand-ups to serve them better. The important part is the goal, not the method.

Managing Risk in Project Management

Risk Management is one of the essential subdivisions in Project management – particularly for fixed budget projects. A project manager is expected to do Risk management as a Key activity in every organization. I remember my initial days, we used a simple excel sheet to list down some common risk items and have a management plan for each of them. Most of them are scope and resource based. Recently I met few managers; they concentrate only on Risk Management in large scale projects – as primary activity. Let’s discuss few suggestions from these managers to manage risks efficiently in small and medium size business.

1. Scope your deliverables
Many projects get started without a clear definition of the required deliverables. A project Charter – can be a simple WBS excel file – helps here a lot. This document should define the project vision, objectives, scope and deliverables.

2. Identify Risks at early stages
A simple discussion session with team – or a workshop – can help to identify risks at early stages. A Risk is an unforeseen event that might impact negatively on the delivery of project in the future. The third party delays, resource unavailability can be examples here. The best suggestion is to document every risk and determine its likelihood and severity of impact on the project.

3. The Team should take the accountability
As a project manager, the best way is, passing few of the responsibilities to each member of team. Suggest the team, which elements of the project charter they are responsible for delivering and makes them accountable by holding review meetings each week to measure progress.

4. Plan and Monitor Risks
The Risk plan should be created at early stage. This document helps to identify actions that the team can take to reduce the likelihood of the risks occurring. As the project progresses, the Risk monitoring meetings are required to review the risks we already identified. Ask questions, and measure review responses and action items.

Communication helps to reduce the stress in risk management. The suggestion is communicate the project risks openly with boss / project sponsor, so everyone is aware of them. Share regular report lists of the risk and plans / actions for resolving them. It will give them confidence in your ability to control the project and it will help gain their support when you need it.

5 SCRUM Project Management Keywords

Couple of weeks before, one of my friend called for a quick discussion. He is a Tech. Lead in IT, and the recent appraisal gave him an opportunity to play the role of project leader for a new software project. We discussed general project management “TO-DO” practices, and I shared some checklists for his benefits. While discussing, I found that he is already doing some set of project management activities without knowing the right ‘technical’ titles of them. So I suggested him to also ‘know’ the keywords. I am sure many Technical Leaders, and Project Leaders and in same scenario. As knowledge sharing, let me share some keywords and meanings for SCRUM project management model today.

Daily SCRUM Meeting: Basically a 15 minutes daily meeting to discuss about 3 essential questions. Question one is “What have I done since the last Scrum meeting?”, Question two is “What will I do before the next Scrum meeting?”, Question three “What prevents me from performing my work as efficiently as possible?”

Product Backlog: The Scope / Requirements for a System, expressed as a priority list of Product Backlog Items. The requirements will be both functional (ex: a menu) and non-functional (ex: performance) customer requirements, as well as technical team generated requirements (ex: Tools). Product owner is responsible for the prioritization of the Product Backlog.

Product Burn-down Chat: The Progress of a Project. It shows how much work was left to do at the beginning of each sprint. The scope of this chart spans releases. A release burn down chart can be made for release specific.

Sprint: An Iteration of work during which an increment of product functionality is implemented. The duration will be maximum 4 weeks. Every Sprint starts with a sprint planning meeting. At the end of the Sprint, the Sprint review meeting and retrospective meeting follows. During the Sprint, the team must not be interrupted with additional requests. It guarantees the commitment.

Sprint Backlog: Defines the work for a sprint, represented by the set of tasks that must be completed to realize the sprint's goals, and selected set of product backlog items.

Velocity: Typically, “how much product backlog effort a team can handle in one sprint?” This can be estimated by viewing previous sprints, assuming the team composition and sprint duration are kept constant. It can also be established on a sprint-by-sprint basis, using commitment-based planning.
Once established, velocity can be used to plan projects and forecast release and product completion dates.