Marketing Myopia

A short-sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the company instead of defining the company and its products in terms of the customers' needs and wants. It results in the failure to see and adjust to the rapid changes in their markets.The concept of marketing myopia was discussed in an article (titled "Marketing Myopia," in July-August 1960 issue of the Harvard Business Review) by Harvard Business School emeritus professor of marketing, Theodore C. Levitt (1925-2006), who suggests that companies get trapped in this situation because they omit to ask the vital question, "What business are we in?"

World Population touches 7 Billion

World's 14 highest peaks

Difference between Contract & Purchase Order

Contract : It is a mutual agreement between the contracting parties that contains the essential elements of a contract.
Contracts are normally used to purchase Services

PO : It is normally only considered an offer to purchase something when issued,it becomes a contract when the vendor :
a) issues an acknowledgement accepting the PO's T&C without changes or
b) Ships the goods or provides services in accordance with the PO

PO's are normally used to purchase Goods

Closed Book Insurance Policies

Closed books are essentially policies that are no longer sold, but are still featured on the books of a life carrier as premium paying policies. Closed books are generated either due to the discontinuation of unprofitable products or as a result of mergers and acquisitions. 

COLA : Cost Of Living Allowance / Adjustment

Employment contracts, pension benefits, and government entitlements (such as Social Security) can be tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). A Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) adjusts salaries based on changes in a cost-of-living index. Salaries are typically adjusted annually. They may also be tied to a cost-of-living index that varies by geographic location if the employee moves

Project compression : FastTracking , Crashing

Project compression is the same thing as schedule compression, and it is done by the project manager, after consulting with team members. Project compression is used to shorten the length of the project, without affecting the scope.


There are two ways to compress projects: Crashing and Fast Tracking.


Crashing is about either adding more resources to the project, or making the current resources work extra time. Crashing is usually associated with increased costs on the project.


Fast tracking, on the other hand, is about finding tasks that are scheduled to take place in the future, and make the resources work on them before that scheduled time. Naturally, these tasks cannot be dependent on other tasks that are not yet finished. Now the downside of fast tracking is that when resources work on tasks that they really shouldn't work on at the moment, risks of doing tasks the "wrong way" will definitely increase.


Note that crashing and fast tracking are not mutually exclusive, they can go hand in hand. You can add more resources to the project and do fast tracking.


The advantages of project (schedule) compression are:


- You will most likely finish faster
- Your stakeholders will be happy


The disadvantages are:


- You will probably only finish on time.
- Many tasks may need to be redone, especially when you're using fast tracking.
- Resources will be exhausted when you make them work over time.
- Costs will be higher (often much higher).

Parkinson’s Law

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Even if you are not familiar with its name, I’m sure you’ve fallen prey to Parkinson’s Law countless times… what can we do to escape it?

Do You Recognize These Symptoms?

We all know the drill: when we have too much time to complete a task, we tend to slack off until the task becomes urgent. Then, when meeting the deadline gets nigh impossible, we become super-productive and miraculously pull it off — getting the job done just in time.

The quintessential example of Parkinson’s Law in action is school assignments: even with a full month to complete an assignment, most people work very unproductively (if at all) until the last few days — when they pull one or two all-nighters and manage to get it done right at the last minute.

If you are like one of those students, you know that ‘working’ on the assignment filled up the whole time available — even if only psychologically — despite the fact that you spent little time in actual, productive work. Had you invested this short amount of time right after the assignment was handed to you, you would have completed it much sooner and could have spent the remaining time much more joyfully (either truly resting or working more productively on other stuff).

Requirement Gaps in various phases

How the customer explained it	How the project manager understood it	How the architect designed it	How the programmer wrote it	How the sales person described it
How the project was documented	What was installed	What was billed	What support made with it	What the customer really needed

Critical Path Method (CPM)

A Dupont engineer, Morgan R. Walker and a Remington-Rand computer expert, James E. Kelly, Jr, initially conceived the Critical Path Method (CPM).

RACI / RAM / LRC / RACI-VS

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), also known as RACI matrix or Linear Responsibility Chart (LRC), describes the participation by various roles in completing tasks or deliverables for a project or business process. It is especially useful in clarifying roles and responsibilities in cross-functional/departmental projects and processes.
RACI is an acronym derived from the four key responsibilities most typically used:

Responsible,
Accountable,
Consulted, and
Informed.


RACI-VS
This is an expanded version of the standard RACI, with two additional participation types:

Verifier
Those who check whether the product meets the acceptance criteria set forth in the product description.

Signatory
Those who approve the Verify decision and authorize the product hand-off. It seems to make sense that the Signatory should be the party being Accountable for its successor.

kitchen sink syndrome

Scope creep (also called focus creep, requirement creep, feature creep, and sometimes kitchen sink syndrome) in project management refers to uncontrolled changes in a project’s scope. This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered a negative occurrence that is to be avoided.

Typically, the scope increase consists of either new products or new features of already approved product designs, without corresponding increases in resources, schedule, or budget. As a result, the project team risks drifting away from its original purpose and scope into unplanned additions. As the scope of a project grows, more tasks must be completed within the budget and schedule originally designed for a smaller set of tasks. Thus, scope creep can result in a project team overrunning its original budget and schedule.

Newton's unpublished laws

I suspect that Newton wrote these after he was hit in the head by the apple.

1.     Law of Queue: If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

2.     Law of Telephone: When you dial a wrong number, you never get an engaged one.

3.     Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch. In the kitchen this applies to handling flour, meats and anything else that covers one’s hands

4.     Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

5.     Law of the Alibi: If you tell a friend you were late because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

6.     Law of the Result: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won’t work, it will!

7.     Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

8.     Law of the Theatre: People with the seats at the furthest from the aisle arrive last.

9.     Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down for a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

10.   Law of the Bath: When the body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.

11.   Law of Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone with whom you don’t want to be seen.

PEST Model

PEST Model: Political, Economic, Social and Technology Analysis

The PEST model is decision making model used to measure a market, including competitors from the standpoint of a particular proposition or a business. When used as a tool, is works well to understand market growth or decline, such as potential and direction for a business. It is a model used to measure business, in terms of (P)olitical, (E)conomic, (S)ocial, and (T)echnological factors. Like SWOT, it can be used in matrix format, and are can be used to review direction of a company, it’s strategy or position within it’s market, or a specific proposition or idea. Factors such as Ecological, Legislative, and Industry should be included within the four quadrants, where applicable.

Matryoshka doll - Russian doll

A matryoshka doll, or babushka doll is a Russian nesting doll  which is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo. Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan, a long and shapeless traditional Russian peasant jumper dress. The figures inside may be of either gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby lathed from a single piece of wood. Much of the artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be very elaborate. The dolls often follow a theme, aside from the typical traditional peasant girls, the themes vary, from fairy tale characters to Soviet leaders.

Groupthink

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, structural faults, and situational context play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.

The term "Groupthink" was coined by Irving Janis in 1972 when he was researching why a team reaches an excellent decision one time, and a disastrous one the next. What he found was that a lack of conflict or opposing viewpoints led to poor decisions, because alternatives were not fully analyzed, and because groups did not gather enough information to make an informed decision.

oToBoSoQ

oToBoSoQ stands for :
                 'on Time on Budget on Schedule on Quality'

7 R's of Change Management

The 7 R principles are worth using even if you don't have ITIL in your IT environment. You could apply them to project change requests as well. You could even apply it to requirements and work packages.

• Who RAISED the Change?
• What is the REASON for the change?
• What RETURN will the change deliver?
• What RISKS are there is we do or do not carry out the change?
• What RESOURCES will be required to perform this change?
• Who is RESPONSIBLE for this change being performed?
• What RELATIONSHIPS are there between this and other changes?

Tuckman's Stages of Team Development

Every team goes through the five stages of team development. First, some background on team development. The first four stages of team growth were first developed by Bruce Wayne Tuckman and published in 1965. His theory, called “Tuckman’s Stages” was based on research he conducted on team dynamics. He believed (as is a common belief today) that these stages are inevitable in order for a team to grow to the point where they are functioning effectively together and delivering high quality results. In 1977, Tuckman, jointly with Mary Ann Jensen, added a fifth stage to the 4 stages: “Adjourning.” The adjourning stage is when the team is completing the current project. They will be joining other teams and moving on to other work in the near future. For a high performing team, the end of a project brings on feelings of sadness as the team members have effectively become as one and now are going their separate ways.
The five stages:

• Stage 1: Forming
• Stage 2: Storming
• Stage 3: Norming
• Stage 4: Performing
• Stage 5: Adjourning

Focus Group

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. The first focus groups were created at the Bureau of Applied Social Research in the USA, by associate director, sociologist Robert K. Merton. The term itself was coined by psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter.

Difference between SLA vs OLA

OLA, or Operational Level Agreement, and SLA, or Service Level Agreement, are agreements that are widely used in the Information Technology sector. Well, the names itself show that they are different in their characteristics.

When taking about the two, OLA refers to the operational level of agreement, and SLA refers to the service level of agreement. SLA focuses on the service part of agreement, like the uptime of services and performance. On the other hand, OLA is an agreement in respect to maintenance and other services.

Let us first see what SLA stands for. The Service Level Agreement is basically a contract between a service provider and a customer. The agreement ensures that all the computer equipment will be well maintained.

When talking about OLA, it is an agreement between the internal support groups of an institution that supports SLA. According to the Operational Level Agreement, each internal support group has certain responsibilities to the other group. The OLA clearly depicts the performance and relationship of the internal service groups. The main objective of OLA is to ensure that all the support groups provide the intended Service Level Agreement.

Unlike the Operational Level Agreement, the Service Level Agreement connects the service providers with the customers.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants are substances or nutrients in our foods which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body cells use oxygen, they naturally produce free radicals (by-products) which can cause damage. Antioxidants act as "free radical scavengers" and hence prevent and repair damage done by these free radicals.  Health problems such as heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes, cancer are all contributed by oxidative damage. Antioxidants may also enhance immune defense and therefore lower the risk of cancer and infection.

Types of Estimates

There are many different names for estimates: Rough, Ball Park, SWAG, Big Picture, Budgetary and Final to name a few. Each name attempts to convey the accuracy of the figure. All of them fall on the continuum between three points: Rough Order of Magnitude, Budgetary and Definitive.


The accuracy of the Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) Estimate ranges from -25% to +75% off. That means a $100,000 estimate can be as low as $75,000 or as high as $175,000. It is the type of estimate usually given when very little is known about the project but management needs to decide whether to move forward or not.


A Budgetary Estimate is put together at the time the Project Charter or Statement of Work is defined. At this point enough is know about what is in and out of scope that boundaries can be established. The accuracy range is between -10% and +25% ($90K and $125K for our $100K project).


The Definitive Estimate range is between -5% and +10% ($95K and $110). This estimate is done based on detailed project information that, in IT, comes after the Requirements or Design phases.

AIM strategy in Project Management

First, analyze the situation and get involved with the key stakeholders, develop the plan as a team, and obtain formal acceptance (approval) for the project plan.

Second, implement the approved plan.

And last but not least, manage the whole project and nothing but the project.

Tablet for Common Man from India

Key dates in Apple history

The following are key dates in the history of Apple, whose co-founder Steve Jobs died of cancer Wednesday at age 56.

1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak unveil the first Apple computer in Palo Alto, California. It consists of little more than a circuit board and costs just under $700.

1977: The Apple II with a one-megahertz processor becomes the first mass produced computer and an instant hit.

1980: Apple becomes a publicly traded company.

1983: Lisa, the first personal computer featuring a mouse for navigating and desktop icons and folders, is introduced. Its failure is blamed on a daunting price of nearly $10,000.

1984: The Macintosh PC makes its debut. It is affordable and features innovations such as a disk drive, built-in monitor, and a mouse.

1985: Jobs resigns after being stripped of control of Apple in an internal power struggle.

1986: John Sculley becomes Apple president. Jobs starts computer company NeXT and buys Lucasfilm's computer graphics division, renaming it Pixar.

1996: Apple buys NeXT and makes Jobs an adviser.

1997: Jobs returns as head of Apple. Arch-rival Microsoft invests 150 million dollars in the company.

1998: Jobs revamps Apple's product line, churning out colorful $1,300 iMac PCs with monitors and drives in the same casing.

1999: The iBook, marketed as a mobile iMac, is introduced.

2001: Apple launches the iPod pocket digital music player for $399 and opens its first retail store in Palo Alto.

2003: Apple opens online music store iTunes.

2004: Jobs undergoes an operation for pancreatic cancer.

2007: Apple kicks off the era of the touchscreen smartphone with the new iPhone.

2009: Jobs goes on medical leave in January, returning to work in June after undergoing a liver transplant.

2010: Jobs unveils the iPad tablet computer, a huge hit after it goes on sale in April. Apple passes Microsoft in May as the largest US technology company in terms of market value.

2011:

January 17: Jobs takes another medical leave of absence.

January 18: Apple reports a record quarterly net profit of $6 billion on revenue of $26.74 billion

March 2: Jobs makes surprise appearance to unveil of the latest iPad

June 6: Jobs again surprises by launching Apple's free online storage hub iCloud

July 19: Apple second quarter profit hits $7.31 billion on revenue of $28.57 billion.

August 9: Apple briefly passes ExxonMobil as the world's largest company by market capitalization

August 24: Jobs announces his resignation as CEO and is replaced by chief operating officer Tim Cook, but stays on as Apple board chairman.

October 4: Apple unveils the iPhone 4s, which includes a built-in "personal assistant" but fails to dazzle investors as it is not the next-generation iPhone 5 smartphone many had hoped for.

October 5: Apple announces the death of Jobs at the age of 56.

Steve Jobs passes away at 56 on 5th Oct 2011

The Evolution and History of the Apple Logo

The Newton Crest: 1976-1976

The first Apple logo was designed in 1976 by Ronald Wayne, sometimes referred to as the third co-founder of Apple. The logo depicts Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, an apple dangling precipitously above his head. The phrase on the outside border reads, “Newton… A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.”

The Rainbow Logo: 1976-1998

Not surprisingly, the above logo only lasted a year before Steve Jobs commissioned graphic designer Rob Janoff to come up with something, oh I don’t know, a little bit more modern. Janoff’s eventual design would go on to become one of the most iconic and recognizable corporate logos in history.

According to Janoff, the “bite” in the Apple logo was originally implemented so that people would know that it represented an apple, and not a tomato. It also lent itself to a nerdy play on words (bite/byte), a fitting reference for a tech company. Quick sidenote: Corporate design sure was a lot simpler in the 70’s. Nowadays, companies like Pepsi spend millions of dollars on logo re-designs that are based on complete BS and new age mumbo jumbo.

As for the rainbow stripes of the logo, Steve Jobs is rumored to have insisted on using a colorful logo as a means to “humanize” the company. Janoff has said that there was no rhyme or reason behind the placement of the colors themselves, noting that he wanted to have green at the top “because that’s where the leaf was.”

The relatively simple origins of the rainbow colored Apple logo hasn’t stopped some from reading a bit too much into what it represents. Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple executive and founder of BeOS, quipped about the logo:

One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy.

The passion of the French knows no bounds!

The multi-colored Apple logo was in use for 22 years before it was axed by Steve Jobs less than a year after his return to Apple in 1997. In its place was a new logo that did away with the colorful stripes and replaced it with a more modern monochromatic look that has taken on a variety of sizes and colors over the past few years. The overall shape of the logo, however, remains unchanged from its original inception 33 years ago.

The Monochrome Logo: 1998 - Present

TInkering with one of the most recognizable logos in the world wasn’t done simply because Steve Jobs is always looking to change things up. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was bleeding money, and Jobs and Co. realized that the Apple logo could be leveraged to their advantage. That meant experimenting with larger logos to make it more prominent.  If the shape of the Apple logo was universally recognizable, why not not put it where people could see it?

That being the case, placing a large rainbow Apple logo on top of the original Bondi Blue iMac, for example, would have looked silly, childish, and out of place. Not exactly the direction Jobs wanted to lead Apple in.  So instead of placing a somewhat minuscule rainbow colored Apple logo on its products, Apple began placing sizeable and Monochrome styled logos on its products in all sorts of places:  on top of the original iMac, on the side of the Powermac G3 Tower, and in an assortment of colors on the good ole iBooks.  This trend, which began in 1998, continues to this day.

The rainbow colored logo might always be a source of nostalgia for Mac enthusiasts, but the monochrome logo allows Apple greater flexibility when it comes to branding its products.  Also, Steve Jobs isn’t exactly the type to get wrapped up in warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia.  When Jobs returned to Apple, he needed to transform Apple’s image from that of a failing company into one capable of churning out sleek and cutting edge products, and he needed a new logo to match.  It doesn’t appear likely that Apple will change up its logo again anytime soon, but one thing that will undoubtedly remain is the shape of the logo itself.

Why Apple had to abandon the rainbow

The rainbow logo just wouldn’t fit on the iMac pictured to the right.  Rainbow on beige? Alright.  Rainbow on metal?  Not so much.

Imagine if MacBooks looked like this?! I think Apple made the right call.

Triple constraint of PM

The triple constraint of project management describes the interdependency between the three cornerstones of a project:
(1) Scope: all the work we have to do in order to create the clearly specified product.
(2) Schedule: the time we need in order to create that product.
(3) Budget: the total amount of money we need in order to create that product.


Applying common sense, it seems obvious that changing one of the three cornerstones implies a change of the other two.
For example, if we increase the scope - because of additionally required features of the product – then we obviously have to increase the necessary time and amount of money. Similarly, in order to shorten the time we could reduce the scope and consequently reduce the budget of that project. We also could shorten the time by involving more resources and thus, increasing the budget.
In short, we can say:

A project is defined by its scope, schedule, and budget, and the triple constraint of project management describes the phenomenon that, if we change one of the three, we influence the other two.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and later by his son Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States presidents (in order from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.
South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region.

Origin of PMI & PMBOK

The 1950s marked the beginning of the modern era of project management as we know it today.

This new era ushered in the need for a framework of globally recognized standard processes, tools, and methods. A small group of project management professionals recognized this need and in 1969 founded a nonprofit organization called the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI began documenting a proposed set of project management standards they called a “white paper” (an authoritative guide) in 1987. Their intent was to standardize project management information and practices. The white paper later became the original A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), published for the first time in 1996. This guide became recognized as a worldwide standard and provided common processes, principles, knowledge areas, tools and techniques, and a global project management discipline.


PMI launched the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam in 1994.

Sydney Opera House and Project Management

Sydney Opera House—one of the most recognizable images of the modern world. It was designed by Jørn Utzon of Denmark in 1957 and deemed, at the time, a spectacular failure. Even though it is now revered as an icon of Sydney, it was originally labeled a “white elephant” and “acoustic nightmare.” When construction started on the Sydney Opera House in 1959, it was estimated to cost AU$7 million and take five years to build. It was finally completed in 1973 (9 years behind schedule) at a cost of over AU$100 million (AU$93 million over budget.) Even though this project failed to meet the traditional project management success metrics, it is
considered a huge success.

What is Red herring

Red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to the rhetorical or literary tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance. For example, in mystery fiction, where the identity of a criminal is being sought, an innocent party may be purposefully cast in a guilty light by the author through the employment of deceptive clues, false emphasis, "loaded" words or other descriptive tricks of the trade. The reader's suspicions are thus misdirected, allowing the true culprit to go (temporarily at least) undetected. A false protagonist is another example of a red herring.
In a literal sense, there is no such fish species as a "red herring"; rather it refers to a particularly strong kipper, meaning a fish—typically a herring but not always—that has been strongly cured in brine and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with a strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish.

Speed of Sound and Airplanes

Speed of sound at sea level = 1 225.044 kilometers per hour

 We refer to the speed of sound as Mach 1, named after physicist Ernst Mach. If an airplane reaches the speed of sound, its speed is Mach 1. If the airplane reaches double the speed of sound, its speed is Mach 2.

Airplanes speeds that are less than Mach 1 are considered subsonic speeds, while those very close to Mach 1 are said to be transonic. Velocities surpassing the speed of sound are divided into high supersonic (Mach 3 through Mach 5) and hypersonic (Mach 5 through Mach 10). Speeds swifter than Mach 10 are considered high hypersonic.