Wednesday, March 16, 2011

How to loose an IT Project in 10 days

Sarcastic as it may sound but knowing how you mesh up a project gives you a better understanding on how to run is successfully.
And hence the need for this post. Pretty much the same way, they did that famous movie  :)

The Perception Problem
Don't get surprised if you hear this word again and again 'Perception is everything' or 'first impression is the last one'. specially if you are at the client site whom your company is charging hundreds of dollars/hourly sending you as a can-do-it-all guy.
And you are wondering : how much of that money trickles down to you ?probably none right, because you're a fixed hourly or annual rate. 
But jokes aside, wont' your client preferred that you asked qs and solved them rather than risked your perception, assumed things and kept billing them and billing them & billing them..


Compartmentalize
May sound like same point as above but the difference is you going one step further by compartmentalizing your team again with the fear of so called perception problem.
Whatever happened to that openness and collaboration. 
Not much since you want to loose the  project anyways.


Me The Boss
An organizational chart can do the trick albeit in a slower speed. If you can afford time and enjoy slow and painful killing of your IT organization, use this route. Make sure that your organizational chart (or some form of it)  is visible everywhere; on your site, all floors, break room, in all communiques/emails/memos, and what-the-hell even in your restrooms :) And those little guys who actually do the work, should be as little as possible in a wall size diagram.  

You all have seen a wheel, why not to reinvent 
 Who is not after the raising the bottom line. Since you all have seen a wheel, why not to reinvent it, especially since the client is ready to pay for it, right ?

After all you can always hide behind that 'privacy' curtain for not sharing the design of your earlier wheel and then charge for reinventing that you never need to do. Classic, rt ?

And if you have T&M project, there is the need to look at client's previous work either. Reuse is for fixed price pilot projects, just to gain customer's trust. You already have it now. Enjoy !!

The Apps Bandwagon

Unlike a regular blog post, where you try to impart your newly earned knowledge or share experience, I thought of writing this one with the sole purpose of asking questions.
Not sure if I understand the whole rush towards Mobile Apps & hence this post.

Why Not Apps ?
  • After all browsing & searching information with a fewer clicks (sorry taps), it made our lives so easy.
  • Apple & Google, ie some of the most successful companies doing it.
  • About a million apps already developed, so it must a new hip thing, rt ?
  • What better way of constant advertisement & reminder then to put a a nice little company's logo (& the apps) on your screen.
  • One can use it offline (well not always but that's what they can probably make u believe)
  • Most users usage pattern reveals using a few well known applications again and again. Installing them makes sense.
Why Apps at the first place ?

  • Do I really want to search for app store (or marketplace), log in to app store to install, accept licensing agreement etc just for a quick browse. Yes, the businesses would like me to do that , so that i am invested into that apps and keep using that rather than exploring others. But is that the best usage of my time.
  • And what about the resource ? App's installed image occupy storage and its in memory for most of the smart-phones, rt ?
  • Now an app must be doing some regular book keeping stuff before servicing my "taps" right, like  caching, authorization & authentication, session management , favorites etc. Do I really trust 100 different apps to do these in the most effective and secure way for me ? After-all its my data and my resource. When we pick a browser in laptop/computer world , that browser does these works for me and i am not concerned if Bank of America or CNN is really setting up secure connection for me or not or if they are really cleaning up my temp files once i am done or not, right ? its the browser's responsibility. Don't I  need to do the same diligence before picking up and installing and app or just go by 'Apple and Google
My Dream Browser
I know the current mobile browser lacks a few things that renders it out of competition to the apps' world. But what if it had those features like:
  • smart auto completion & favorite features so that
    • one can find (or type in) an address in as few steps as possible
    • can create and maintain & pick from his favorite list in as few steps as possible
  • can choose to view/save pages up-to few level (customizable) deep in offline mode
  • has the build in hardware access (camera, gps etc.) the same way an apps has
  • And while we at it, what about having a single or reduced sign on feature thru the browser. After-all everything is stored on our smart-phones rt, so why this nagging & repeating re-login messages.