Ideas that spread – wins!

Although it is an hour long video – but captures well why in today’s world it is vital for everyone to remain connected with their customers and help spread ideas. Also, Seth has great delivery and captures this topic so eloquently. It is fun to hear some of his usual examples around slice bread or purple cow. Anyway – enjoy.

Market-ing: Make it personal

We live in a time where communicating to broad audience alone one way has limited reach and stickiness. To make a message sticky and gain viral spread – you want to communicate through your audience. You want to foster a community of influencers who can help spread your message and communicate for you.

Ask someone who is running a business and they will more likely suggest that bigger risk they run is not getting adequate market recognition making sales cycle harder for them. Putting businesses in a position to not able to compete effectively in the market place. Unless you are doing some ground breaking invention – not many will cite they run technology/product risk as the primary reason to go out of business. Market risk usually trump over the product risk. Largely products adopts and evolves to follow customer/technology life cycle. At least until it meets a disruptive trend.

Several well known Marketing gurus have suggested how to effectively target marketing message to create the viral adoption taking “Marketing” from job function perspective to “market-ing ideas that spread” broadly. e.g. Seth Godin…around his thought process “Ideas that spread – wins” or Tribal management. or Forrester on its analysis around how to create Groundswell. Web is littered with such case studies and adoption stories – some more successful than others.

It is one of the reason - more businesses from the get go are increasingly embracing social media and encourage employees to rather share ideas broadly. Folks will invest from the start building community of developers/influencer/promoters needed to give business a market edge. Taking the discussion beyond Marketing department to engage every one involved in the endeavor to help promote your business; ideas; product; etc.

At the end of the day ask yourself – who best positioned to spread what you do best and all the creative ideas about your business than your own employees. So start the journey with your team and go get your ideas out…

Share your ideas – Social Media 101

I find myself in more situations lately educating others or asking others to embrace social media as part of professional life. It has become a norm for start up companies where social media is part of life. However, in established companies it is a journey: some leap forward and others need hand holding to get the journey started.

I usually find 2 stumbling block for the folks who have not done it before:

1. Overcome their own inertia or fear what does it mean to share ideas on the whole world wide web.
2. Not knowing how to get started – particularly how to keep personal and professional life separate and private as one deem appropriate.

I am not an expert but I have embraced few things as part of my daily personal/professional life. Here is what I do:

a. Facebook: It is my personal family/friend group. This is where I keep up with what is happening in the life of my family and close friends. I usually share personal/family stuff here. I am particular about whose invitation I accept on Facebook or who I invite to be my friend. You can find me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alok.tyagi

b. Twitter: This is where I microblog on what is happening in my professional life. Usually, I share organization thoughts that are important to me. I accept everyone who want to follow me on twitter – except lately I am finding blocking some people who seem to have find a way to push porn on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aloktyagi

c. Personal blog: This is where I speak my mind and share my personal/professional opinion on wide variety of topics – usually topics that are near and dear to my heart. You can find my personal blog at http://aloktyagi.wordpress.com

d. Company blog: This is where I represent my professional view as it pertains to the company I work for. You may want to check out your company policy. Some companies are restrictive on what you can say or not. Others are rather liberal and allows people to speak their mind. Anyway – it is better to know company policy as you blog on company site or forum. You can find my company blog at http://community.sagemas.com

e. LinkedIn: I don’t use it as much as others do. It is mostly my professional contact list and I usually use it to do quick reference check or know relationship when I meet someone new. I only accept LinkedIn requests from people that I know of or met recently at some conference/networking event. You can find me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/aloktyagi

Anyway – there are various other avenues and some people use social media more than others. I suggest find your comfort zone and start the journey – whether to start on the personal end or professional end or both. What is important is to start the journey and be regular.

Business of software

While talking to few acquaintances who are in the business of building different kind of software (Attention based; consumer product; SaaS; or others) than on-premise enterprise software products – it is interesting to observe similar discussion. This is probably the core nature of software business. At the end of the day it comes down to 2 set of metrics driving business:

1. Acquiring new customers/members/subscribers/etc. More and more businesses now run calculations to understand the cost to acquire new customer/member. Cost to acquire new customer usually is much higher than many would guess, if they had no clue. It gets costlier in mature industry where traditional market is about replacing someone else’s product. Also, it can be costlier in the web world where there is now actual cost of  goods sold (think of all the IT infrastructure that goes around delivering a service) as opposed to the cost of CD.

Question usually gets asked: Beside product strategy to attract and differentiate offering from competitors – keep cost of customer acquisition in check; what other ways to generate traffic/leads; foster communities; target competition; create winning buzz; adjust pricing or terms; bundle products/services to make it more attractive; etc. Increasingly more web based product focus on marketing presence on the local/industry circuit from the get-go rather broadly within ranks via blog/communities to earn credibility. Increasing emphasis on Marketing too important just to leave it to dedicated few – every one has to play.

2. Retaining a customer. It is about understanding the likelihood of customers staying on the product. Generally a combination of understanding attrition rate (as some folks leaves the fold) and knowing life time value of a customer/member. Although harder to find, however, there are industry best practice metrics for the type of busines one can use as a guideline. These days businesses (particularly on the web) have a greater understanding of trends among its existing customer base. One suggestion: if you don’t already know about your customer trends – invest quickly and gain better understanding. By the nature of it -Web based businesses know well how many of their customers renew membership; what is their average monthly dues; what %age of customers usually don’t renew; on an average how long customers remain a member; what feature gets used most; demographics details; etc. Likewise, enterprise software products – SaaS or otherwise have similar metrics to help project maintenance or recurring revenue.

Question usually gets asked: What needs to be done to keep a customer happy using our product/services? What features to add (particularly that generate stickiness); what pricing lever to play; how to provide value without disrupting the apple cart; what promotion to have; etc. To find the secret formula that can help a customer retained longer paying healthy dues – is what makes a business sticky and profitable in long run.

So to remain growing – it is about adding more new customers than the customers leaving the fold. Visualize a funnel – add more while few trickle away. A math described easy but takes an organization with a winning attitude to achieve…

Bookworm

I love reading books. Books have been helpful and insightful in guiding me all along. Beside several great mentors  who supported, coached and guided me along – I credit few good business books in shaping my thought process thus far.

My younger daughter, Mansi, is another bookworm. Over the last 2 years or so – I hardly find her sitting idle. If she has no home work or other chores to do – a good chance is that she is reading some book. She usually read fiction books that come in series.

Yesterday, I asked her to provide me a list of the series of books that she has read during the last 2 years or so. Here is what she provided me a short while later – complaining she can’t remember all. I also asked her to include number of books in that series she has read.

1. Keys to the Kingdom                                                                          7
2. Spiderwick Chronicles                                                                        8
3. Heir series ( Warrior Heir, Wizard Heir, Dragon Heir)                       3
4. Harry Potter                                                                                       7
5. Series of Unfortunate Events                                                                         13
6. Nancy Drew                                                                                        57
7. Flora series ( Flora Segunda, Flora’s Dare)                                        2
8. On The Run                                                                                         7
9. Pendragon                                                                                          10
10. ( The City of Ember, The People of Sparks)                                       2
11. ( The City of Stars, The City of Flowers , The City of Masks)           3
12. Twilight Saga                                                                                      4
13. (Nobody’s Princess, Nobody’s Prize)                                                 2
14. Secret of Droon                                                                                   8
15. Chronicles of Narnia                                                                          7

Total                                                                                                                140 

Incredible!!! I hope she keeps up with her book reading spirit as she grows up. It also explain all those trips to the local library every other week or so to drop off and haul the next bundle.

Twitter Frenzy

Now you know why anything and everything I think any given moment is so important for the whole world to know. It is not just an isolated case of having short attention span.

I gotta run and tweet… make sure you are following me on the twitter <grin>

Enjoy!!!

Visualization Techniques

If you ever need to know any kind of charting/visualization technique  - look no further. Check out the periodic table of Visualization methods.  It is interactive – so give it a try and hover over.

Be a fisherman

While driving back home yesterday, I tuned in to the NPR as a routine habit. At that time, I happen to catch a story on Fishermen’s life – particularly how they deal with the highs and lows in their life. In fact it is the only way of life a fisherman knows. Various thought sparked in my mind and prime being – what a tough life!!! One would wonder how to tackle life when nothing is predictable or usual. To top off the story – it is amazing that fishermen encourage their kids to follow the same profession. It must be the love of fishing.

Anyway, I thought the story appropriate to share given current tough business environment. Check it out or listen to the audio.

(The audio is 5 min or so long)

3 thoughts, I picked up:

1. Cooperate and Collaborate – foster your community; commit to it, help and support each other

2. One has to love the line of business so much to encourage your kids to follow the same

3. Above all – have a positive ATTITUDE. It is THE difference

Find good people around you who share your enthusiasm and “can-do” attitude and let’s go to bat (fish) together. Enjoy!!!

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

Tough time present opportunities otherwise not available. Current economic environment is just one such opportunity.

Much depend on how we as individuals act and enable others to act to make the best of it. It is  our collective attitude that determine how an organization will fare as the rough weather passes.

Few thoughts:

1. Know yourself – recognize your strength and weakness. Position where your strength can make a difference

2. Work with people, regardless of their position, who share optimistic perspective on things (equally important shield yourself from individuals with negative attitude)

3. Know where you are going; bring focus on critical few; and make hard choices necessary to accomplish

4. Have sense of urgency to achieve. It should be driven out of what you plan to accomplish and not fear. Fear usually motivates but in the wrong direction

5. Roll up your sleeve and get involved directly with your customers, products or whatever your line of work. It helps appreciate perspective otherwise missing

Lastly –  communicate openly and candidly.

Remember, in the current environment – it is high time to demonstrate the winning attitude and make a difference. Opportunity is knocking at our door step – question is who is prepared to respond?

Weekend wrap

Few stories caught my attention as I wrap up the weekend:

1. Use of hologram during election coverage by CNN. I am not sure how many saw it during the telecast on Tuesday. It looked cool on TV. Although technology remains some what weak.  Also, some time back Cisco shared its telepresence initiative that is making buzz as well.

Anyway – Gizmodo has details on how holograms were brought to life during election coverage. Check it out.

2. Need entrepreneurs. While I am on the topic of election – I was reading an article on Forbes written by Sramana Mitra about President Obama and his promise to create 5 million jobs. Her point to create 5 million jobs will require creating 50,000 entrepreneurs. I agree. Listening to entrepreneurs and nurturing a supportive environment is what will take get economy back on track.

3. Is humility and ignorance a missing trait in business environment? This article from James Montier on investment captures the thought well. Somewhere along the line people start to appear know-all; can’t-fail, over-confident bunch. Anyway, few nuggets from the article that caught my attention: 

Quote from Confucius: “To ask a question is but a moment’s shame, but to live in ignorance is lifelong shame”

“…that we need to learn more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing…”

Buy American

To say the least – last couple of weeks have been rough in the financial market. It is hard to bring trust back in the system particularly after seeing retirement or life savings getting wiped off. It takes a while to come to term with things.

On the other hand – it is the time for leadership to reassure the masses. Particularly who can pave the path and put down their own money where their mouth is. Warren Buffet is one such leader. Beside being so successful – he remains as someone who touches lot of hearts due to his down to earth personality; simple living and high thinking.

 
Warren recently penned down an Op-Ed in New York Times titled: Buy American. I Am. It captures the essense why it is time to believe the market and invest. I like Warren so much that I stole the title from his Op-Ed. It is simple and powerful to convey the thought. 

It is glass half-full not half-empty.

So here are the few investments I made recently. It will be interesting to see how these pan out in the long run.

Exxon Mobile – XOM

Home Depot – HD

Lowes – LOW

Diamond Offshore – DO

Stryker – SYK

3M – MMM

Can east keep its edge

Both China and India largely used to be the nation of bicycle. Both countries are growing leaps and bounds. I just hope both countries can find a good balance between modernization and tradition to keep the pendulum from moving too far. Also, hopefully learn from what West is trying to do to encourage more eco-friendly environment.

Now at much of Europe you can rent a bicycle (and it is gaining prominence) to go around locally – particulalry when you are travelling in the heart of the city.

Here is a sampler – from Europe, China and India – all happily biking away.

Vote for my daughter – Next President

Call about creativity. There was a time when producing such a video would have been an effort. Now it is child’s play.

Anyway – Ayushi, my elder daughter nominated to run for the Presidency by her friends. Easy to pull such pranks now.

Here is the video link – check it out!!! and may be vote for her when you hit booth on Nov 4th.

Guess who?

I grew up in India so not sure how I would have looked during 70’s and 80’s in US. Particularly how my high school yearbook portrait would have been. Now one can visit yearbookyourself and travel back in time to create portrait from yester-years. Check it out:

 

Ouch!!!

$4 Trillion and counting – that is how much market cap of the financial sector has reduced in the current meltdown taking with it the nest egg of so many…

New York times has a good interactive map showing the meltdown and change among major players. Check it out.

Here is an interesting punch – this has wiped off wealth almost equal to the GDP of Japan, 2nd biggest economy after us. This data is from 2007. 

Ouch!!!

Imagineering

Last couple of week, I watched Discovery channel “Project Earth” series. It showcases ideas that environmental engineers are working on to reverse the global warming and reduce carbon dioxide in our environment.

One thing that occured to me watching the series is the imagination of people involved. Although, most of the ideas are still scratching the surface of the huge environmental problems and true large scale deployment remains elusive – but the thought process is simply remarkable.

Consider these ideas:

1. Cover the ice cap with reflective material to reduce the polar cap melting

2. Re-ciruclate the ocean water from far deep to start the fertilization process in the Ocean that can help soak carbon dioxide from the environment and over time green vegetation sink taking carbon to the watery grave

3. Shoot some mirrors in the sky to reflect sun light back cooling the earth

4. How about creating clouds in the Ocean and use wind pattern to help cover the earth with clouds again blocking sun rays resulting in cooler temperature

5. My personal favorite – how about building a helium filled (kind of blimp) rotationary wind turbine high in the sky tethered with wires to the ground generating electricity using wind energy. Essentially mining winds at high elevation thus making wind energy feasible around the globe.

and on and on…how bright brains are tackling to help slow down the melting process or some how soak carbon out of our environment.

It just speak to the human spirit who on the face of seemingly impossible task find a way to make it happen. All the global warming and over $4 a gallon gas has created enough sense of urgency for us to put planet first and find solution that remove our dependency on fossil fuel.

Keep on trying…

I enjoy watching Olympics and this inaugural weekend was no exception. It was fun. It is amazing how host country keep setting a new bar every time during these mega opening shows. This one was no cheap and came at a price of $300M.

I like knowing about various other countries, its athletes and their stories. Traditionally, Olympics weekend are littered with life examples of people after people; country after country desperately trying to participate and win. There is no lack of inspiring stories talking about adversity; struggles; losses; and every other odd one can imagine but people still prevail and keep up their determination to succeed.

Someone said it rightly – life is about the struggle not the triumph.  In some regard, it is the battle within your mind. If you care about something than keep giving your best try.

So with all the show and pomp and fun – Olympics is a fine example of human struggle and our endurance.

Brick wall are there for a reason. Failure goes along with the success. Even an NBA starred US dream team becomes a redeem team in Beijing. So keep trying on whatever Olympics size quest that you care.

Another observation about Olympics and living in Southern California – it is probably you are surrounded by more Olympian than any other part of the world. Just look at the US team and you will find players from Irvine, Costa Mesa, Riverside, Orange, LA, San Diego,… you name the county/city and there is someone at Beijing representing the country. Infect, my daughter’s badminton coaches are in Beijing representing US. Now where else you will find the opportunity to be coached by someone of that talent.

Go World!!!

Last lecture

Video of Randy Pausch’s last lecture. He was a CS professor at CMU. He was suffering from Pancreatic Cancer when he gave this lecture couple of months before his death. One need to watch the video to gain a sense of his personality. Worth watching and inspiring.

Well done is better than well said…

Earlier today, I was watching an interview of Arnold Schwarzenegger on ABC. In response to a question he quoted his belief around “Well done is better than well said”. I love it…

Action just speak louder than the words. It is great to be of creative mind and think new ideas. But the fun is in converting those ideas and making it real.

Which idea do you want to work on today?

PS: This quote gets originally attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

People process

Bob Bennett from Sage Payment Solution Division recommended “The Future of Management” and also send me a copy to read. It is an interesting read and the book compares the management practices of the yesteryears to what is needed now to build an innovative/high performance organization. Management Innovation is called out repeatedly touting empowered employees in a self managed, transparent organization where peers hold each other accountable to build a high performing organization.

Truly, at the end of the day an organization success is a direct product of the people it employs. I like the example of Toyota’s TPS (Toyota Production System) fondly known as “Thinking People System” is a good example of how it can be a differentiator in tough industry environment. It is keeping Toyota healthy despite all the challenges within the automobile industry.

A team from Detroit once took the tour to Toyota to find out the difference. Initially, success was attributed due to the Japenese culture and different work ethics resulting in Toyota (and similar other Japanese auto marker) an edge over its Detroit counterparts. It soon got belied as Toyota expanded its manufacturing base in US. Now, even within the same cultural context and country Toyota continues to make the difference that has made it famous.

The key to the success, as people find out, is the constant change that happens at Toyota – mostly driven by its employees who are always looking to optimize or making things better. It is widely touted as “Kaizen“. Contrast this with other companies where change is induced from the top when the need is drastic and employees resist change resulting in half hearted adoption akin to too little too late. Thus companies struggle to remain agile and difficult to keep up with the market need.

In mature market and competitive industry landscape where margins are hard to acheive and average growth remains minimal - it is such a boon for Toyota where employees bring gradual change among themselves ensuring organization to remain current with the need. Also, it fosters a culture of team work, collaboration, and change that thrive to remain agile. Essentially, Toyota is successfully reaping on the bright brains it employs.

Learning here is no different for other industries including enterprise software. Key to success remains empowering employees who regularly reflect on day’s work and adapt; fostering a cross functional team environment; and an environment where peers hold each other accountable for the joint success.

Globalization: Rise of the rest

I just wrapped up Fareed Zakaria’s book titled “Post American World“. It is a good read and attempts to provide macro view of the world; discusses trends and perspective on things to come/shape future in the next couple of decades. Here are the excerpts from the book covered on Newsweek.

Here is Fareed’s interview on BBC providing glimpse on the book and his thought process.

If you need a short synopsis and key takeaway – here is Fred Wilson, a popular VC, sharing his key take aways.

Key theme that I pick on in the rise of rest is how citizens of growing nations are showing passion; having hunger in the belly to grow; risk taking; willingness to change; sense of optimism on what they can do and countries evolving to become more democratic in their own ways. It speaks to a lot of what had helped fuel America in its growth due to similar entrepreneurial nature and what we need to keep doing to remain in the leading position.

I like the closing of Newsweek article (quote from the book) that lured me to read the book:-

“Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world. We don’t want them to write that along the way, we forgot to globalize ourselves.”

Let’s keep our innovation edge going and growing…As Steve Jobs once quoted in his commencement speech at Stanford “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish“.

Beam me up Scotty!!!

This is an exciting preview of Cisco’s telepresence initiative. It will be way too cool in the future to hold meetings that include remote sites. Check it out :-

Read more about it here.

 

Organization thoughts

Organization is much in my thoughts these days. So I thought of capturing some of those that worked well for me over the years.

1. Think globally act locally – Understand the big picture from business perspective and know where the ship is sailing to rationalize everyday decisions and their impact towards the goal.
2. No Surprises- Trust gets built overtime. One way to foster trust in any relationship is to avoid surprises. It is mutual and my #1 ask of people who work with me – just don’t surprise me. More important – just don’t surprise when there is bad news. It helps keeping lines of communication open and over time groom trust needed in the current competitive landscape.
3. Good news is no news, bad news is good news, no news is bad news- Idea being you can proactively work on improving should you know what the bad news is. It is just terrible when you have no clue what needs fixing or get no red flares. Key is being proactive in identifying bad news and aggressively working to fix it.
4. Learn, Unlearn, Relearn - We live in a time where change happens more often. Technologies and business landscape is ever changing. One definition of illiteracy in the current world order is how fast one can learn, unlearn and relearn the new skills. Ask yourself do you have an appetite to learn as new opportunities knock on the door? Better yet present yourself to those new opportunities.
5. Failure is an option - At times, we make mistake and fail. It is OK to make mistake. Knowing there is a safety net allows new ideas to nurture. But understand successful individuals also know how to fail early; correct quickly; and learn from it to avoid repeating it. You get additional point when you share the learning to peers so that others learn from your mistake. It help build openness, collaboration and trust.
6. Bias to action – Remember - we all have an equal if not more chance to win. As the saying goes – luck favors those that are prepared and destiny is defined by the collective action we take. What need to be done is – act and act now. Take one step at a time without getting caught up with analysis/paralysis. Demonstrating progress and successes all along goes a long way than simple talk for the perfect grandiose plan.
7. Be a problem solver - Highlight the problem but more importantly suggest alternatives and propose solution. Remember fun is in action and showing progress improving things – not by having the best idea in your brain that never gets to see the light of the day.
8. Keep your commitment everyday - If you committed to finish something today – do it. Time and schedule are only as important as you would like them to be. It takes a discipline approach and soon one learns how to constantly prioritize everything that comes their way to ensure what is committed gets done. Whatever we slip – we slip one day at a time.
9. Participate – Be engaged in understanding/participating/influencing organization goal; share your opinion and provide feedback. Also, know when a decision is made how to be the best soldier and execute.
10. Lastly, have stretch goal – Impossible speaks loudly to I-M-Possible. We constantly see things that others would call hard but actually possible for some. This is one difference that makes an organization win over others in the marketplace. Keep in mind organization succeed when people succeed – not the other way around.

Bottom line – Keep an open mind; don’t shy away from going beyond what you know possible and have fun along the way. All work and no fun gets boring pretty quickly.

 

One laptop per child (OLPC)

I came to know about this initiative couple of year back from an article in Fortune. It was an interview with Nick Negroponte – founder of the OLPC initiative.

At the time the effort was in development stage. I remember discussion around the computer to be less than $100; some kind of hand crank process to charge the batteries given much of the developing world don’t have reliable electricity supply; building it rugged for longer life and low maintenance need. Also, there was controversy about laptop going out with an open source alternative (namely Sugar) as opposed to the popular Microsoft Windows.

It is good to see the effort maturing and the laptops made available to the kids in several countries. So as I stumbled on some articles on OLPC this weekend – it is interesting to observe changes/improvement including solar powered battery charger; mesh network to chain these laptops building collaborative infrastructure; and supporting Microsoft clients beside open source (Sugar) available on these machines.

Final price $188. Not bad.

And improving as the next phase gets in development touted XO 2.0 or XOXO with dual touch screen.

 

Here is a review of the laptop on Youtube.

Now comes the responsible (hard) part – ensuring right social behavior gets instilled as millions of kids gets connected and are now accessible to unrestrained information sources; reliable or otherwise. Hole in the wall experiment highlighted some of the accomplishments and challenges in this regard.

Also, I happen to stumble on an article from universities in India quoting to attempt to deliver a laptop for $10.

 

Social networking fatigue

This one is a funny jab on social networking sites. If you have teenagers at home – you are saying good riddance <grin>

Enjoy!!!

Pun on Apple

I have several friends and colleagues who are die-hard Apple fan. This one is for them – particularly who now owns Apple Air. It is hilarious <grin>

 

Sage recognition in the SMB space

Sometime back, I read Warren Buffett suggesting “franchise value is like having moat around the castle of a business”…durability of channel has profound impact on the business.

Anyway, recently CRN announced its 2008 Channel Champion Award in the category of SMB Software Suites.  This is a measure of channel perception of its software publisher products and services.  It is survey based market study in the industry where award is based upon the responses from the channel partners and their overall level of satisfaction across various categories.  

Check out the Sage Software press release here. Sage continues its recognition in the SMB space.

 

Insights 2008

I will be at Insights 2008 next week. I look forward to meeting several MAS business partners and our Sage fellow colleagues. Time flies. This will be my second Insights conference and I am looking forward to meeting friends, having dialogue, and sharing lot of exciting things happening in our organization.

See you soon!

 

Simplicity – Next frontier?

Recently, a blog post on Sandhill suggested how Simplicity is the next frontier for Enterprise Software.

This topic usually gets its share of debate – particularly what it means in the enterprise space. I tend to agree that Simplicity need to be on the cross-hair of an enterprise development organization. I will venture and suggest Simplicity to augement the definition of “Quality” and make it measurable while product is in development. To continue to differentiate in the market place, enterprise software simply need to go beyond functional and be usable as well.

There are various studies/surveys that suggest enterprise software functionality usage (or lack of usage) due to the end users challenges working with the applications. Functionality already in the product that gets overlooked and don’t get to see the light of the day…

Good news is much of the enterprise industry is investing in usability and developing best practices for wider adoption. The real gains though start to happen as Simplicity becomes part of the culture; grooming champions within the organization; including it as part of the software development process; encouraging indivduals to address Usability issues with the same sense of urgency as it would to the Quality/functional issues. Of course, sooner in the release cycle the better.

 

Holi – Festival of Color

I happen to be in India on a weekend which coincided with “Holi” – a fun filled festival of color.

If you happen to see me with purple hair or pink nails – it is not that I developed some weired interest lately – but the colors from Holi were washing out. I just got carried away since I happen to play Holi after 20 years.

 

Enjoy!!