Wednesday 31 December 2014

The Top Five Hindrances for Project Managers and How to Overcome Them

Every year, the complexity of projects increases. The average requirements document is over 100 pages and changes 20 times during the development process. It’s brutal. That means as a Business Analyst or Project Manager, you likely spend hours circulating, editing and tracking changes to a hefty requirements document with the hope that your team actually stays engaged and orates it.

Wishful thinking, right? Here are the top five hindrances that are faced by Project Managers:

1. HINDRANCE: THE 11TH HOUR SWOOP - IN
An executive comes to you last minute with feedback that you needed three weeks ago.
Is it a must-have change or a nice-to-have change? Do you push the target? Do you immediately pushback to say, “Thanks, but we’ll get that into the following release?”
Maybe you go home after working late again and watch the movie “Office Space” for the 30th time to try to laugh it off so you don’t go postal on your boss the next day.

TIP: Be open

Solution:
  • Give organization improved perceptibility and a continuous feedback loop to address matters before it’s too late. To be honest, we’ve (Management and Project Managers) been on both sides of this frustration. It’s unpleasant to be the swooper and the swoopee. The reality is that managers are busy dealing with a million diverse issues, and whether right or wrong, they will focus on what’s most critical.
  • Also, thoughts come to management and other stakeholders after they see pilot product and realize what was stated in the initial requirements document a month ago isn’t the best solution now.
  • So to avoid the 11th hour swoop-in, you have to be crystal clear and open for response/criticism at all phases of the project, and have fixed check-ins to get responses initially. If your crew and executive staff are in the similar office, this is easier to achieve. Have a whiteboard or dedicated wall in a prominent location sharing the latest designs.
  • Every day, they’ll walk by and have an occasion to respond to what they see. Most people respond better to visuals vs written words to appreciate the user experience.
  • If you’re a dispersed team in multiple locations, as is common today, then a dedicated tool that delivers everyone a central hub for the project’s requirements, linked designs and real-time feedback will help.
  • They’ll see what’s happening as the project evolves no matter where they are, and you’ll be able to keep your finger on the pulse to hedge any disagreements or potential gotchas from happening later.
  • But if at all, Business Analyst/Project Manager follows all the possible protocols to get everyone on same page and in spite of this efforts last minute changes arises, then he/she has to adhere to the changes and try to focus on that changes rather than complaining about it.

2. HINDRANCE: DECISION REHASHING
Hosting infinite conferences where half the time is wasted reassessing old decisions or bringing others up to speed. We’ll admit this one drives us crazy. We dislike meetings. But, we especially dislike meetings that are subjugated by repeating conclusions previously made. “Why did we choose to alter the functionality of that feature?” “When did we approve that?” “He was out last week, can we reconsider the plan so he’s up to speed?”
Painful, disorganised, annoying.

TIP: Be clear
  • Deliver full framework of the judgements being made so everyone understands the scope of the project and why it is vital. People need simplicity and understanding to execute at their best.
  • This applies upstream to your stakeholders and customers so they appreciate what they’re getting and it applies downstream to your designs, development and QA teams so they know precisely what to build and to test accurately.
  • As a solution, new collaborative tools exist that will help you capture the healthy discussions and ongoing discussions that logically take place around requirements, and they don’t necessitate holding more meetings. People can add their feedback anytime and see what others are saying to agree or disagree, approve or reject, or propose edits to polish the solution.
  • Also, the conclusions that occur in meetings aren’t easily outlined in documents and people’s memories diminish as time goes on. How many times have you left a meeting feeling great, thinking everyone is on the same page, only to find yourself debating what the team decided a few weeks later?
  • If this is a concern for your organization, adopt a new practice like having a requirement document that would be accessible to everyone and updated by everyone which capture decisions in line with requirements, and make them easy for the team to view anytime. This will eradicate ambiguity and ensure that conclusions about the project are crystal clear.

3. HINDRANCE: CHANGE TAX
Manually sending updates to everyone when something changes kills a third of your day.
Anytime you’re doing something manually, ask yourself, “Can we automate this?” With today’s tools, often the answer is “yes.” In the case of executing complex projects, change is just something that’s going to happen. And, often for good reasons. As you get deeper into the design and development of a project, you know more than you did at the beginning. Thus, you and your team will think of better ways to build the anticipated product as you iterate upon the requirements along the way. If you try to manage versions by tracking changes in Word documents, then you’re going to experience a huge tax on your time. It’s nearly impossible to write the perfect requirements document the first time.
So stop believing that’s a goal.

TIP: Be iterative

Solution:
  • Embrace changes judiciously by linking the dots, quickly assessing the impact and communicating the changes to the right people involved automatically.
  • We can’t talk about requirements without talking about change. And we can’t talk about change without talking about being “agile.”
  • The #1 reason to adopt agile within your organization is to create a culture that is dexterous so your team can respond quickly and effectively to changing requirements. Thus, iterating as you go.
  • Don’t get hung up on the labels or the debate of whether Scrum vs. Kanban is superior. There is no definitive, one-size-fits all process. Agile first and foremost is a cultural mind-set, not a prescriptive development process.
  • You want your entire organization to feel empowered to propose a change if they find a better solution. If you’re coming from a more old-fashioned Waterfall approach, your challenge with adopting agile is to avoid going from one extreme to the next.
  • There is a myth that agile is about not having a plan and just building – which isn’t the case for most organizations. Smart agile teams maintain requirements best practices borrowed from traditional methods such as traceability, impact analysis and change management, so they can understand the ripple effect that a change has on the rest of the project. 
  • It’s a balancing act between agility and prescribed control. Some call it a hybrid approach. Again, the labels don’t matter. The key is to find the mix of practices that works best for your team so you can execute projects without resistance. That’s what matters.

4. HINDRANCE: ATTENTION DEFICIT 
Creating a detailed 200-page plan that no one has time to read once, let alone every time a change occurs. You did it.
You just completed a month-long effort eliciting feedback from 50 stakeholders and writing the most beautiful requirements document of your life. From a CMMI or BABOK perspective, it is pure poetry of shall statements and use cases. Okay, enjoy that moment for about 30 seconds, because it will quickly be ever replaced with the fear of whether anyone will actually read it.
As project difficulty increases, how do you articulate what the plan is without creating a monster of a document? It’s tough. The issue might not be the length of the complete specification document. The issue is that you’re trying to communicate the entire plan to everyone using the document. In reality, most people only work on and care about specific parts of the plan at any given time.
When one item changes and you send a new version of the entire requirements document, it’s both information overload and white noise at the same time. We can’t expect people to hunt and peck for what changed and determine each time if it’s relevant to them or not.
This old way is incredibly inefficient, and people just stop paying attention.

TIP: Be relevant

Solution:
  • Adopt the viewpoint that everyone identifies as everyone is simply too busy to absorb the entire document. Because literally, they are. To avoid being annoyed by your organization’s collective attention deficit, relevancy is key.
  • This is an area where tools can help you break large, complex projects requirements into smaller controllable parts, and let people filter in on what’s relevant to them. We recommend you manage the scope of projects item by item to get work done. If you’re inquisitive what we mean by “item,” a requirement is an item. A use case is an item. A test case is an item. A flaw is an item.
  • People naturally work on a list of a few items at a time. It’s how our brains work and we’re more productive that way. By listing the scope of your projects using a tool with a relational database, it will allow people to focus on specific items they are working on, while maintain context of the overall project.
  • Then, as needed for baselines, releases or milestones, you can group together items and summarize the project via reports or a specification document for a holistic view.

5. HINDRANCE: MISMATCHED EXPECTATIONS
A stakeholder thinks he is getting X, Y & Z and is actually getting X, A & B. It feels like a blow in the gut. You and your team put your blood, sweat and tears into delivering a product only to learn after the launch that the end users aren’t happy.

What the heck happened? How did we miss the mark? Why is there an expectation gap?

TIP: Be proactive

Solution:
  • People have choosy reminiscences. We all remember what we want to hear. What stakeholders forget is the auxiliary things they add along the way or the reprioritization of features as the scope changes over time.
  • The X becomes X+1, and the Y becomes Y+2 and soon Z is out and instead the priority shifted to A and B, but not everyone was clear on the trade-offs that were made because the conclusion was made over the phone from a late night call with the customer.
  • The intent was right, the team was being agile, but what was missing was the captured statement with the stakeholders documenting the demands, agreements and consents by the appropriate stakeholders.
  • Next time, get buy-in on the priorities and capture the justification of what’s in and what’s out of a project, to ensure everyone has the same anticipations. Without adding a lot of needless overhead, new tools offer the capability to capture the reviews, approvals and electronic signatures for scope changes as part of the natural workflow.
  • That way everyone can feel confident they know the true plan and the team can feel good about delivering what’s assured. You deserve to have the launch event be a celebration not an interrogation of what went wrong.
These hindrances are faced by each and every Project Manager, so it is very necessary that he should be able to tackle difficulties arising due to change in requirement, mismatch expectations of client and project manager and last minutes changes on the product during the software product development.

About Author:
Varun Shimoga is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: varun.shimoga@spluspl.com

SQL Migration from 2008 to 2012

The project that I work at the present time has received the new SQL Server hardware,
So now is the time to upgrade from the SQL server 2008 to the 2012.

An upgrade, in new environment, refers to the process of moving from the SQL server version 2008 to the new version 2012.

There are two approaches for upgrading database:
  1. In position: The SQL Server is upgraded where it is currently installed
  2. Migration: A new environment is installed; the data is copied to it and configured with the existing data.
The approach which I have taken is the second one, since I had a new server and I am going to do a fresh SQL Server 2012 installation.

The upgrade of the databases can be implemented in the following steps:
  1. Backup the SQL Server 2008 databases and restored them in SQL 2012.
  2. Change each database compatibility level from 2008 to 2012 and update statistics.

ALTER DATABASE Database SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110;

DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(MAX)
set @sql=  N'';
SELECT @sql = CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + 'UPDATE STATISTICS '
  + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id))
  + '.' + QUOTENAME(name) + ' WITH FULLSCAN;'
  FROM sys.tables;

PRINT @sql;


EXEC sp_executesql @sql;

where [database] is the database to change the compatibility level

We can do it in a more compact way with

EXEC sp_MSforeachtable 'UPDATE STATISTICS ? WITH FULLSCAN'

or go to the database properties and on the options select the Compatibility Level 110.

  3. Check the logical and physical integrity of all the objects in the upgraded databases: 

DBCC CHECKDB([database]) WITH NO_INFOMSGS

Where [database] is the database to run the integrity checks NO_INFOMSGS option suppresses all informational messages.

If DBCC printed any error messages, we must fix them so that your database will work correctly.

The following script can be useful to check database compatibility level:

select name, compatibility_level , version_name =
CASE compatibility_level
    WHEN 65  THEN 'SQL Server 6.5'
    WHEN 70  THEN 'SQL Server 7.0'
    WHEN 80  THEN 'SQL Server 2000'
    WHEN 90  THEN 'SQL Server 2005'
    WHEN 100 THEN 'SQL Server 2008/R2'
    WHEN 110 THEN 'SQL Server 2012'
    WHEN 120 THEN 'SQL Server 2014'
END

from sys.databases order by compatibility_level

About Author:
Raghwendra Mishra is DBA who works as associate consultant with Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. He in free time reads and write on various web technologies. He can be contacted at: raghwendra.mishra@spluspl.com

Friday 12 December 2014

Big Data for Application Support and Maintenance

Today, we live in an intelligent economy where there is intensive convergence of various technologies, broadband communication, and analytics. Increasing technology has defined new dimension to business and has created new challenges and opportunities. Recent decades have seen phenomenal increase in the online data in terms of its context and value. At some point in the future, every object we see will contain a device that will transmit data. Big Data is the emerging trend for creating new level of business value. Organizations now want to take advantage of changing and increasing data environment to enhance the business opportunity.

To drive business growth, organizations need to ensure that their applications deliver value throughout their cycles and ensure that the applications stay optimized by continuously measuring and analyzing their application portfolio’s performance. Big Data offers a helping hand to innovate and make margins while still focusing on the traditional application support and maintenance.

Level 0 or Level 1 Support:
  • This is the vital point for most of the call center or support techies that determine the efficiency in handling support queries.
  • Ideally support team should be properly trained and updated with real time information. But in reality there is latency in the data that is made available to support team.
  • The reason for this is that most of the information available is from data warehouse which is not updated to the real time.
  • To reduce this interval there is a need to sync data warehouse with the real time data.
  • Big data helps allows choosing updated data from the various logs and presenting a 360 degree view of all transactions made by the caller/customer to CSR real time. This helps in making an informed decision.
Analysis of logs:
  • Big data helps in effective and efficient analysis of logs from various servers like database, web, applications or networks. It also helps in tapering down the log streams and allows the focus on particular set of logs rather than scan through multiple pages.
Stability:
  • Big data enables application stability which can be proactively monitored based on various parameters like growth in application size, database size, increase in number of users, problem log history, increase in number of releases and various other reasons that cause instability and affect the business growth.
  • This can be altered using big data and ensure effective analysis of a cluster of parameters and throw potential insights on the application stability.
Customer Satisfaction:
  • Big data helps monitor customer life cycle management by analyzing and understanding real customer satisfaction.
  • This analysis would help companies to identify the area of improvement and take necessary steps and action.
Big Data means new opportunities for organizations to create business value — and extract it. In today’s fast moving economy, decisions need to be made faster than ever before. And those decisions must be based on the facts. Big data offers prospects to exploit the ever demanding needs of business to survive the competitive edge of success. Selecting the right big data technology for your application and goals is important. Various leading companies are using big data to achieve significant outcomes and an ability to predict trends before they happen and stay one step ahead of the competition. The most essential point on which lies the success of implementing big data for application support is aligning the business and IT professionals throughout the journey. The most effective solution is identifying the requirement through at first and tailor the processes, data, and resources to support and enhance business needs.


About Author:
Mohini Bhandari is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at mohini.b@spluspl.com

Thursday 11 December 2014

Check SQL server Restart date & time

A DBA would always like to know when the database server was restarted last time, this helps them to figure out or track the issues related to the server, whether it was automatically restarted due to power failure or somebody has restarted, at least they will get some clue about the database server during the troubleshooting.

There several ways you can check when was SQL server restarted last time.

Below are some sql queries/Command to quickly find out the server restart date time.
We can run any one of below, all will give same result.
  1. Last SQL Server instance restart.
  2. Last DB server (windows services) restart.
HOW TO CHECK?

SQL Server Restart:

We can check it easily and by the Easiest ways (SQL Query)


SELECT sqlserver_start_time FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info
SELECT 'Statistics since: ' + CAST(sqlserver_start_time AS VARCHARFROM sys.dm_os_sys_info


OR

EXEC SP_HELPDB 'Tempdb'


 DB Server (Windows Services) Restart:

Option 1-

This method helps you to figure out root cause for the restart.


Start -> run -> eventvwr

Choose: Windows Log – > System
Open filter and following Event Id’s



6005 to see when the Event Log service was started. It gives the message “The Event log service was started”.

6006 to see when there was a clean shutdown. It gives the message “The Event log service was stopped”.
6008 to see when there was a dirty shutdown. It gives the message “The previous system shutdown at time on date was unexpected”.
6009 is logged during every boot.

  
Option(CMD) 2-

·         Run the following from a command prompt:


           systeminfo | find “Time:”


OR

·         Run the following from a command prompt:


          net statistics server


About Author:
Raghwendra Mishra is DBA who works as associate consultant with Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. He in free time reads and write on various web technologies. He can be contacted at: raghwendra.mishra@spluspl.com

Essential techniques used by BA for project success

In today’s world businesses frequently face intricate state of affairs that entail an assessment of their position and identification of innovative ways to stay ahead. With the correct strategy in place, the potential of a business can be improved.

To stay competitive in today’s fast paced economy, organizations are required to deliver innovations. Tools like PESTLE, SWOT and MOST enable organizations to discover their contemporary status and position as well as their individual relation to their peripheral environment. These tools can effectively used as a foundation for future planning and strategic management.

There are various techniques / tools that are used by a Business Analyst to carry out an effective and productive analysis, but I would be discussing in detail mainly on 3 techniques:
  1. PESTLE
  2. SWOT
  3. MOST
PESTLE

PESTLE analysis is in effect an examination of an organization’s ecological influences with the intention of using this information to channel strategic decision-making. The assumption is that if the organization is able to assess its contemporary environment and potential changes, it will be better positioned than its contenders to respond to changes.PESTLE analysis is a useful tool for understanding the ‘big picture’ of the environment in which an organization is operating. Ideally, when an organization is planning to venture into new markets, this technique serves as a pre-requisite to understand if the market is in line to the organizational goals or business needs.
It covers Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors. Depending on which elements are included it can also be referred to as STEP, STEEP, PESTEL, PESTLE or LEPEST.


PESTLE stands for following six attributes:
  • Political (P): The Political scenario in a region plays a pivotal role in determining the industries future prospect. The policies of the current leadership towards an industry can make or break the same. It is of utmost important for a business to thoroughly analyze the political scenario before planning to venturing into a new market
  • Economic (E): It is critical to analyze the economic situation in a region as well as globally for an organization. Economics affect every aspect of business starting from the input costs, execution costs as well as the target market.
  • Sociological (S): Society forms a nation and thus it is important how it perceives the organization. Often ignored, a society can have major influence on the organization. They say “Think Global, Act local”.
  • Technological (T): In the fast paced technological age, no organization can expect to grow without aligning its strategic goals as per the existing and upcoming technologies. It is also important to analyze the market readiness for any new technology to ensure the successful acceptability of a product.
  • Legal (L): Similar to political aspects, national legislation and global legislations also have major influence on the organization. An organization should make sure that the local laws in a region are favorable to the business plans and will not act as a roadblock in the long term.
  • Environmental (E): Local, national and international environmental impacts, outcomes of political and social factors 

SWOT

SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat) is a strategic planning / decision making tool that helps a decision maker to achieve goals and objectives with in-depth analysis and transparency of the low-level details present with the business / project. SWOT is mainly used when the company is revamping their business processes, functions and departments or expanding business which is the basic motive of each organization.




The point of a SWOT analysis is to help you develop a strong business strategy by making sure you’ve considered all of your business’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in the marketplace. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company (think: reputation, patents, location) whereas Opportunities and threats are external (think: suppliers, competitors, prices).

SWOT analysis can be used for all sorts of decision-making, as it enables proactive thinking, rather than relying on habitual or instinctive reactions.


MOST

MOST analysis for an organization is what a “compass” is for a ship. It is used mainly for the corporate strategy and strategic planning of an organization. For any organization, big or small, it is important to make sure that it is heading in the right direction and the employees are aware of the same. This is important to ensure that everyone works in the same direction towards that one common goal.

MOST stands for following four attributes:
  • Mission (M): Mission in simple words is where the business intends to go.
  • Objectives (O): Objectives are those key goals that would help a business achieve the mission.
  • Strategies (S): Strategies tell us what are the different options/paths to go forward.
  • Tactics (T): Tactics tell us how these strategies can be put into actions. 

The key for the above to work effectively for an organization is that, it should hold together in a bi-directional manner i.e. top to down and bottom to up. It means that from top, missions should drive objectives based on which strategies should be formed, which in turn forces required actions to be taken. Similarly, every action that is taken on ground must make the strategy work, all strategies should then help achieve the objectives and all objectives should take the business towards the ultimate mission.

Business analyst plays an extremely significant role, as the depth and breadth of each aspect that he is able to scrutinize might determine the success or failure of a project or a business. It is imperative that along with the internal factors, external factors are also analyzed in detail and thus ensuring that the management is able to take well-versed, multi-faceted strategic decisions.

A basic mistake all organizations make is having unrealistic Strengths and Weaknesses and understanding the current scenario of the organization and what the market demands. A simple decision making tool is beneficial to save time and getting more clarity to achieve the dreams each organization has to expand and earn profits.



Thursday 27 November 2014

Useful Business Analyst Practices!

Business analysis has in recent times emerged as a core business practice. Innovative companies achieve goals through projects that translate customer needs into new products and services for the customer and business analysts make it happen more efficiently and effectively. Skilled business analysts act as the vital link between an enterprise’s IT capabilities and its business objectives contributing to its profitability, in almost every industry.

The primary role of business analyst is to implement technology for developing cost-effective solutions by determining the requirements of a business project, and communicating them to all stakeholders and partners. He/she is the key role player in a company’s act of bringing together various pieces of the complex puzzle called a business process, and act as a binding force between clients, business users and customers on the one hand and IT developers, QA testers and the corporate governance on the other.

Common reasons for failure of solution provided in business analysis:

In general, solutions often fail to conform to the required norms because of one of the following conditions or a combination of these:
  • Inadequate understanding of the business problem
  • Lack of clarity in the stated requirements
  • Inadequately explored options to solution
  • Mismatch between requirements and project scope
  • Inefficient project planning
  • Not focusing on value
The team members are the key drivers of all planned activities in the design, build, test, and release and operation phases of the IT Service overall lifecycle. Requirements-driven changes would be recognized and run by the Business Analyst, and so that the BA’s overall understanding about the ITL Change Control process is used efficiently in the execution of project. Following are the practices divided into 2 parts.


Below are the Best Practices followed by business analyst.
  1. High Level Scope Document
    How can you capture project objectives before having a completed set of functional and technical requirements? The main goal of the scope definition document is to clearly describe the limitations of the project .The BA puts together a preliminary High Level Scope document which includes initial document like SOW or any other important document based on the user input and present it to the business users of the organisation.

  2. Time & Cost Estimation
    The development team provide efforts required for building the application based on which business analyst estimates the overall development time and cost and puts it forward to the business users. This would then help in estimating time for user acceptance testing and expert time required for supporting the new solutions.

  3. Capturing Detailed Business Requirements
    One of the important roles of the business analyst is to capture business requirements using various tools and do detailed analysis of the same. These requirements have to be captured in such a way that they can be easily converted to test cases to support QA testing. A variety of tool sets can be used which can help in merging the QA test results and the original business requirements.

  4. Requirement Document for Documenting Changes in Business Processes
    Most organizations have a group of business process analysts (BPA) specializing in documenting current state and the desired end state of business processes, through a flow chart tool.

  5. Requirements Document for Development of User Training
    It is the job of business analyst to document the training requirements which describes the basic and timing requirements and a high level description of the performance objectives that need to be achieved through training of the operational or support users for the product under development.

Business strategy and IT Services are indirectly related to each other. IT Services are built to substantiate business processes which are an integral function fulfilling the business requirements, which are defined by business strategy. Thus, the role of the Business Analyst is crucial to define and deliver the right IT Services.

About Author:
Nisha Bhatt is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: nisha.bhatt@spluspl.com