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.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
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:
Techniques to validate requirements and measure project goals are met
There are some techniques that help us validate project goals and objectives:
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?
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
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?
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
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:
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!
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?
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!
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Another great read: "I Know This Much Is True"
I've just finished reading the book "I Know This Much Is True". The book is big, you need to take your time to go all the way through it. I wonder how long it took its author Wally Lamb to actually write such a lengthy story!
"I Know This Much Is True'' is a moving story. Dominick Birdsay's and Dominick's family's existence has not been easy, not at all. There are plenty of hardships and frustrations plaguing Dominick's mind and robbing him his sleep: a twin brother with schizophrenia, an abusive stepfather, a dead child, a broken marriage, to name just a few. And he is a bitter man
There is a lot of emotional conflict in this book, but although the specific situations seem sometimes a bit exaggerated they are all illustrative of our human soul’s biggest questions and needs.
Throughout the book Dominick learns a few things that would be good for all of us to learn: we can be wronged in many ways, but it is ultimately our decision how to live our lives. Put the blame on the others and hold grudges is certainly an option, one that will hardly lead to happiness. Take responsibility for one’s actions and decisions and forgive those who do us harm is another. You choose.
"I Know This Much Is True'' is a moving story. Dominick Birdsay's and Dominick's family's existence has not been easy, not at all. There are plenty of hardships and frustrations plaguing Dominick's mind and robbing him his sleep: a twin brother with schizophrenia, an abusive stepfather, a dead child, a broken marriage, to name just a few. And he is a bitter man
There is a lot of emotional conflict in this book, but although the specific situations seem sometimes a bit exaggerated they are all illustrative of our human soul’s biggest questions and needs.
Throughout the book Dominick learns a few things that would be good for all of us to learn: we can be wronged in many ways, but it is ultimately our decision how to live our lives. Put the blame on the others and hold grudges is certainly an option, one that will hardly lead to happiness. Take responsibility for one’s actions and decisions and forgive those who do us harm is another. You choose.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Getting Agile with Scrum. Understanding Scrum
In traditional IT development projects it is typical to write a big spec up-front and then
we resist
changes and put people through a change control committee to keep them to the
essential minimum. Change however is a certain thing in life. When software development projects have a significant amount of complexity, functional and technical, change is inevitable. Agile development principles are particularly handy in these highly uncertain scenarios: project scope/functionality is not fixed; instead the timescale is. During that time requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed. Of
course for this to work, it’s imperative to have actively involved stakeholders who understand this concept and make the necessary
trade-off decisions, trading existing scope for new scope.
There's a ton of materials out there about Agile development methodologies. One of the most utilized is Scrum.
If you are not yet familiar with the basic Scrum principles I highly recommend you check out Mike Cohn's video channel in Youtube. Mike's communication style is very direct and easy to follow.
Here's one of his videos: Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management, enjoy!
There's a ton of materials out there about Agile development methodologies. One of the most utilized is Scrum.
If you are not yet familiar with the basic Scrum principles I highly recommend you check out Mike Cohn's video channel in Youtube. Mike's communication style is very direct and easy to follow.
Here's one of his videos: Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management, enjoy!
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