Khaled Hosseini's stories about Afghanistan

Sad stories make good books? If you think so you might love Khaled Hosseini's novels, they are all sad. Afghanistan recent history is another common denominator in all his three books to date.

Hosseini published his first book, "The Kite Runner", in 2003. Later, in 2007, a movie inspired in the book became very popular and it was then that I learned about the book. I did not see the movie and I did not read the book. I had the notion that the story was about children, and that it was not exactly fun. My own kids were little at the time and I did not feel like it was the right moment for this book.

A few years later, while searching for a new read in a bookstore (that was before I got my kindle), I came across "A Thousand Splendid Suns" (first published in 2008). I bought it and then I devoured it in just a few days. I loved the story and how it was told.

After such pleasant experience, when I saw Hosseini's new book "And The Mountains Echoed" (first published in 2013), I also read it and enjoyed it.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided the time for "The Kite Runner" had come. Tears have been shed, as I was fearing they would. Having read the other two novels though, I knew that despite the very sad and terrible events described in the book, I would still find in it a strong set of characters that would speak of courage, conscience, compassion and hope.

All novels from Hosseini have some common themes: Afghanistan tragic history in the last 40 years, a certain yearn for how Afghanistan was prior to the Russian invasion in the seventies, Muslim traditions and cultural aspects, the loss of youth only too early, the Taliban.

Khaled Hosseini is himself an Afghan, although he moved away from his home country when he was still very young. The stories he writes are all hard but, at the same time, they are warm and so very human that you just keep on wanting some more.

The Secret History

"To live without thinking" is what one of the main characters of this novel says he has always wanted most. How very appealing and yet how devastating to live by these words can be!

In my regular searches for new books in Amazon I've come across this novel, The Secret History, a fair number of times. Despite its numerous very positive reviews I did not pick it up, the reason being that this is a story about a few young people in their college years and I somehow did not think I would have a mind for it. Then one day a friend of mine happened to recommend it and offered me to borrow his own hard copy version; and this just tipped the balance.

This novel by Donna Tartt is definitely not the typical light read about a bunch privileged, happy, unconcerned youths in their University years, far from that. The characters are quite unusual, each of them deeply troubled in a different way. They all have in common a fair share of "living without thinking" though, or at least without thinking straight. Their lack of morality is also stunning. I'm still wondering if the unbelievably high amount of drinking, smoking and drugs they do somehow explains their behaviour or is just a consequence of it or both.

If you are interested in the plot you can easily find it in the net, I will not touch on it here. Personally, I've very much enjoyed the first and last thirds of the book, while I could have lived without some of the middle chapters in which little action takes place. I've definitely enjoyed Tartt's elegant writing style and the way she hints at things and then fully reveals them at just her own pace.

Donna Tartt's third and latest book is now on sale and enjoying great success, "The Goldfinch". Here's a short video of the writer and her work:

Now, at the risk of exposing my dumbness only too much, can anybody explain me what the title of this book really mean?

American Gods

My night time reading in the last few weeks has been spent on "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. I must admit I have mixed feelings about this book.

Soon after the book was first published in 2001 it received several awards. I chose to read "American Gods" encouraged by its many readers' positive comments and pretty high score in Amazon's website. Before I purchased it I noticed a comment that stated this was a book readers either loved or hated, but I disregarded the warning thinking the probability of liking it was higher than not.

Well, to be honest, after reading it all the way through I can say I started to like the book only after I had covered about 80% of it. I guess it was only then that I started to understand the plot, somehow, to see its meaning, some of its purpose. "American Gods" is a book that kept me wandering "what's Shadow - the main character - doing?", "why him?", "what's the purpose of the many characters he finds through his journey?". I was on the brink of putting the book down for many a good days, but my curiosity - or my stubbornness - made me keep on reading.

Readers well versed in mythology surely appreciated Gaiman's choice of god characters, role and even their names. Surely this is part of the fun I missed.

The book is plagued with unusual characters and situations, it certainly seems to me an original story (but that is maybe because I have not read enough fantasy novels to compare with) and I think it is well written (but since English is not my first language this is not a qualified opinion). All in all, I struggle to understand what makes people call this book a "master piece", "best book ever" or "impossible to put down". Let's see what those enthusiastic fans say when the  announced TV Series sees the light

Lessons learned? Sure, but those I keep for me.

Validating Requirements

A large number of projects do not achieve their goals. Failure to properly validate requirements is one key reason why so many projects fail to succeed.

Gathering requirements is not an easy thing to do, it requires excellent interviewing skills, persistence and a fair amount of time. It also requires truly understanding the problem the project intends to solve, understanding what is needed and why is needed (in my personal opinion, the whys are too often not explored well enough).


Validating  requirements against project goals and objectives

Once we have the requirements projects need to implement a mechanism to effectively confirm that they are actually met. Validating requirements requires understanding:

• Business needs
• The problem being solved by the project
• The expected outcomes
• How the project is expected to solve the problem

In the IT area, Testing should be planned to validate this understanding, unfortunately this is not always the case. Sometimes, the testing planning team is not familiar enough with the Project Charter, with the business needs or the details of the problem being solved. Testing is typically oriented to validating requirements, but validating project goals and objectives is more than meeting requirements.


Techniques to validate requirements and measure project goals are met

There are some techniques that help us validate project goals and objectives:

• Use requirements traceability matrix: it is important to ensure every requirement points to at least one project objective and also make sure requirements are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound)
• Develop methods for validating business requirements
• Include in the project budget the validation effort and the tools necessary for that
• Identify responsible individuals for measuring that project goals are met and that the problem has been solved

Validating meeting project goals and solving the business problem involves measurement beyond the project, part of the project work is building the tools and processes that ensure that validation can be successfully done. Tell me, have you ever worked in a project where you think  validating solving the business problem has been missed?

Intro to Analytics

In every industry, organizations are generating massive amounts of information. New technologies collect data better, faster and cheaper than ever before. Now, the question is how to obtain value from that information, value that help organizations become more profitable and productive

There are four types of business analytics capabilities that help us address different questions:

• Descriptive: What happened?
• Diagnostic: Why did it happen?
• Predictive: What is likely to happen?
• Prescriptive: What should I do about it?

Knowing what happened (reporting) and why it happened (diagnostic analytics) are no longer enough. Market leaders need to know what is happening now, but also what is likely to happen next and what actions they should take for optimal results.

Customers are being educated by e-commerce leaders like Amazon or user experience leaders like Apple and Google to expect a personalized experience in real time. As a result, customer expectations are rising quickly. Simply meeting these high expectations can be a major challenge for organizations that are not analytical.

Attracting and satisfying customers in a digital world requires significant investment in sophisticated big-data capabilities. It also requires connecting all your customer data and make sure that the data is high-quality; otherwise Analytics won't produce useful results. It may take time to collect enough high-quality data that can be used to create reliable predictive models.

Business analytics is about “anticipate and act”. Analytics is an "umbrella" term that encompasses data collection, statistics, data mining, predictive modeling, and decision sciences.

In the coming months I'm going to make it a priority for me to get further insight about this topic and I'll be sharing findings through this blog. Stay tuned!