Unde-r-Writing

Big Data - A solution in search of a problem !

2012-01-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

What does Big Data solve in Insurance, that cannot be really solved by traditional technologies? This one seemingly simple question generates a good deal of brainstorming. Let’s keep Health insurance aside (that’s easy) and think about P&C and Life insurance space.

Where is the big data ?

Number Uno is Social data, ever growing and less contextual, but BIG it is.
Then we have policy data over years. We, of course, have a loss history of several years.
We have external risk data sources.
Few companies may also have real-time data streams from Cars (PAYD or commercial fleets), factories etc..

What can we do with Big Data technologies?

Sure we have many problems.
First, we need to know customers better.
How many times we tell them that you can save $400 by switching and then when they ask for a quote, we provide a quote more than their current outgo.
Do we congratulate them when they have a new baby arrival at home?
Do we know that they are looking to buy a car?
With big data, we will be able to co-relate all the seemingly unrelated data sources and link them to derive the actionable intelligence.

Another application is Fraud detection. Some people are out of bars, just because we cannot practically spend time and energy to figure out their fraud. Big Data technology makes is possible and simpler.

What about Risk Analysis? Sure! More the data you have, more you know about your customers, you are likely to predict the risk better.

The real advantage
To some extent, we are doing all this with current traditional technologies as well. More the data, Merrier it is, so big data technologies will definitely help, but is that all?
In my opinion, the real advantage of Big Data is to find the problem (or opportunity) that you do not even know about. When a data scientist dives deep into data and finds patterns and co-relates, there will be an Eureka moment, that will provide you the real ‘intelligence’ hidden in this data. Indeed, Big Data is a solution in search of a problem!

An ounce of knowledge is worth a ton of data

2011-10-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

As my colleagues return from Insurance CIO summit and other conferences, I am getting bombarded with questions and suggestions of leveraging the BIG social data.. There are many ideas floating - targeted marketing, risk evaluation etc..
Well, I adopted words of Dr. Fayyad (Yahoo’s ex chief data officer) to reply back - An ounce of knowledge is worth a ton of data!

Notwithstanding the legal and moral issues, the availability of this data does not mean 'availability of knowledge'.

The models put on this data are sometimes completely inadequate to generate any useful insight for insurers. Even if there are any, it is hard to tie back these insights to specific customers or prospects, thereby, making those completely non-actionable.

I think, the insurers will gain more, if they focus on generating 'insights' from the already available data, before looking at acquiring more data. There is a plenty of structured and un-structured data available within the premises of the organization, across several touch points.
How much that is being utilized? Do we have models to analyze the data and generate insights and predictions? Is this intelligence already integrated with the business processes - from customer acquisition, to underwriting and claims processing?
I think, we need to WALK before we RUN.

Translating Business Strategy to Enterprise Architecture

2011-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

I recently concluded a consulting assignment to define Future (after M&A) enterprise Architecture for a health insurance company, who acquired another company with considerable overlap in business.

While it was ‘relatively’ easier to come up future IT architecture by analyzing future needs and system overlap, it was quite challenging to present to executive board (completely non-technical with attention span of max 5 mins) and explain how exactly it maps to their business strategy. We had generated loads of detailed EA artifacts, however, challenge was to put all this together in just couple of slides and create a strong business case to move forward.

I found TOGAF’s Content Metamodel very useful in creating this linkage. I identified strategy business themes and for each business theme, and developed a view similar to content metamodel to link business strategy to required business services first, and then further to changes required in business process & IT systems.

A quick glance at artifacts is as shown -

Keys for success in using a Global Delivery Model

2011-04-30T16:16:00.001-07:00

My presentation at South New England PMI conference.
I shared thoughts and my experience of creating customized process framework by adopting best practices from traditional as well as agile methodologies that are appropriate for your project and your organization.

Keys for success in using a Global Delivery Model - snec pmi april 29 2011

View more presentations from Amit Unde.

What if two Turkeys make an eagle?

2011-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

If you follow ‘Mobile world’ news like I do, you might have already heard about partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, and Google’s trash-talk in response – “Two Turkeys do not make an Eagle”.
Cut to one year back – when android itself was a Turkey, however, they pretty much turned themselves into an Eagle. If you trust in Gartner’s figures, Android market share has risen from 3.5% in 2009 to 17% in 2010 and it is on its way to 22% this year. See - http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1434613 .
Nokia’s Symbian has highest share so far and having seen a world (e.g. India) completely dominated by Nokia phones, I believe they will put up a pretty serious fight for Apple and Google.
What does this mean to us in Insurance industry, who are developing mobile business apps? I think, these developments make a clear case for ‘cross-platform’ development. Rather than, making an application specifically for iPhone or Android, it’s time to seriously consider cross platform development platforms. A hybrid approach with combination of common ‘Portable’ code and some sexier ‘Native’ features appears as a good balance that provides functionality with oomph.

Naturally Yours,

2010-12-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

The stars are getting aligned for Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies, with widespread adoptions of touch phones and pads, and recent advancements in consumer technologies such as Xbox Kinect. Consumers have progressed from ‘liking’ to ‘expecting’ natural multi-touch interface. Many technologies are already creative waves. In L&T Infotech, our Tech office experimented with Microsoft Surface and I was amazed to see the possibilities. Touch IT

I suspect that we will see explosion of application of these technologies everywhere in coming years…! Consumer electronics industry such as Gaming, Phones, and computers will naturally be far ahead, however, I wonder where we will use this in Insurance industry.

I bet it will be for marketing splash and customer acquisition. I can see consumers leaning on the interactive tables and playing with Geco to understand different parts of policies OR interacting with cute Progressive lady to name their price. Who says buying insurance cannot be fun?

- Amit Unde

Is it End of Zachman ?

2010-09-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

It's very sad the way things turned out for John Zachman's associations. Just came across an excellent post by Gartner's Philip Allega on this topic - http://blogs.gartner.com/philip-allega/2010/09/01/john-zachman-is-dead-long-live-john-zachman/

One would have expected further research from such elites, rather than just attempts of commercialization of the framework. Really, not much has been added to the framework, since, it is published in 1980s... Though there is lot of value in the thoughts that are behind the framework, IMHO, the use of framework itself is quite hyped.
In comparison, other established EA frameworks ( and methodologies) like TOGAF and even the new upcoming like EACOE are quite useful. May be they will continue Zachman's legacy.. but without his name !
Looks like he wants it that way.

Agile adaptation of Architecture Evaluation Methodologies

2010-02-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

I discussed some of the architecture evaluation methods in my previous post. In short, the idea is - Rather than just using a checklist for technical evaluation, we should test drive each functional scenario against architectural decisions and judge the impact on quality attributes (utility tree) and evaluate the architecture. Such a review will be more specific to the project and hence, more beneficial.
Many accept the advantages of these methods, however, often criticize these methods for their overhead. I think, these methodologies can certainly be adapted for agile use. We do not have to stick to the the elaborate process that SEI has recommended, but instead, we should adapt it for our use by sticking only to its principles. In fact, in my experience, these methodologies are more beneficial if we use them in conjunction with agile development methodologies.

Why Architecture evaluation is important for Agile methodologies?
In Agile world, the application functionality is to be built in agile way, with constant visibility to business, and frequent changes to the features. However, the same is not the case for its architecture. If the architecture is allowed to evolve with changing requirements, it causes frequent rework, constant re-factoring and in fact, it counters the ‘Agile’ response. It makes sense to spend upfront time on architecture evaluation and ensure that it is flexible to accommodate the future changes.

What are the steps in evaluation?

I assume that you have background of standard evaluation methods such as ATAM / CBAM. If not, refer my last post. Though SEI has defined a very elaborate process, I think, only the following are critical steps –

Step 1 – Prioritize functional scenarios along with all stakeholders and identify architectural approaches and alternatives

Step 2 – Generate Quality Attribute Utility Tree and specify Stimuli – Response for each scenario

Step 3 – Analyze architecture approaches and identify all possible

a) Risks,

b) Non-Risks,

c) Sensitivity Points ( interdependencies) and

d) Trade-Off Points.

Step 4 – Quantify the Benefits of different architectural strategies and corresponding Cost and Schedule implications

Step 5 – Calculate desirability (benefit divided by cost) and Rank the alternatives.

Step 6 – Make decisions and document

What about the overhead of evaluation? How can it be done in Agile Way?

To make these methods more agile, use following techniques -

Evaluate on Sampling basis –Short-list only the unique and critical scenarios that are likely to change.
Create the artifacts such as Utility Tree as part of Architecture development process and not just for evaluation. The act of creating the utility tree will improve the thought process while defining the architecture.
Evaluate everyday as soon as you discuss the scenarios in the war room. All the stakeholders are present in the war room. This avoids extensive planning, presentations, and elaborate evaluation exercises.
During the evaluation, apply the utility tree to each scenario and evaluate the Sensitivity Points, Risks /Non-risks points, and Trade-off points. In case of alternative solutions, estimate Cost and perform Cost-Benefit analysis.
Evaluate not only for the defined scenarios, but also for the possible changes. Get the ‘change’ scenarios from the business to evaluate the impact of changes. The architecture should be flexible to accommodate such changes.

- Amit Unde

Test Drive your Architectures for effective evaluations

2010-01-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

Are you one of those sitting in ivory towers of Enterprise Architecture Group, tasked with responsibility of evaluating project architectures and ensuring IT Governance? If you have done few reviews before, you would know that it is highly subjective process that depends largely on the evaluators’ technical skills, functional/environmental knowledge, authority structure, and other political forces. The evaluators who are parachuted into the project group for reviews are especially handicapped due to lack of knowledge of functional requirements, and often only concentrate on ‘technology’ implementation reviews. Hence, most of the reviews remain superficial and only partially beneficial.

So how exactly should you evaluate the architectures?

I would say do what you do when you buy a car. Test Drive! You will only know the car’s performance when you actually drive it and feel it, and not just by reading specifications or by asking questions. Similarly, to evaluate the architecture, apply it to the specific functional scenarios and measure the quality attributes.

Carnegie Mellon Institute (SEI) has developed the architecture evaluation methodologies on the same principle. The most known methods are –

1) ATAM (Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method) –

This methodology analyzes how well the software architecture satisfies the quality attributes (e.g. scalability, modifiability, performance etc), by applying the architecture to short-listed functional scenarios. It prescribes developing a quality attribute utility tree, and analyzing it for each scenario and alternative architecture approaches. For each scenario, the method prescribes identifying the following –

a) Sensitivity points – a collection of components that are critical for achieving a quality attribute,

b) Trade-off points – a sensitivity point that affects multiple quality attributes, typically trades one off for the other,

c) Risks – something that inhibits the system from achieving its quality goal (this also includes the decisions that are not taken),

d) Non-risks – something that is done right (and should not be changed)

2) CBAM (Cost Benefit Analysis Method)

CBAM begins where ATAM leaves off. It prescribes analyzing the cost, benefits and schedule implications as well for architectural approaches before making the final decisions.

3) ARID ( Active Reviews for Intermediate Design)

This is more of a design review than architecture review, but uses the same principle of applying design to scenarios, and even writing a pseudo code to evaluate different parts of design.

The SEI has documented a very formal step by step process for all these methods. One way that may be counter productive as people tend to focus on activities, rather than the principles behind these methods. There is a great scope to tailor these methods to suit your organization, and conduct such evaluation in agile way.

Clouds of Insecurity

2010-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Today, Google disclosed sophisticated attacks on its infrastructure from China and its response to it. While Google's response is a welcome move, it raises doubts in my mind about the safely of the cloud. This is not isolated instance. Recently, another public Cloud vendor, Salesforce.com, was crashed down for considerable time and raised many questions about cloud's credibility.

What makes these 'Public' clouds more insecure?
Not its infrastructure as much as its popularity ! My organization's infrastructure is not likely to be secure as Google's, however, it is not likely to be on radar of hackers either. The hackers may spend days and nights to bring google down, will they pay same attention to my organization? Probably not.
The 'Cloud' may bring-in efficiency, but it will be a trade off with the increased risk of data loss and security, at least in the near future. The benefits of cloud should be carefully weighed against the risks before committing to the cloud. Recently, Gartner published a report for Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing. Click here to read seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor.

Business Architecture – Is it IT’s intrusion into Business?

2010-01-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

OMG’s SOA Consortium working group recently published a paper on their perspective of Business Architecture. The paper is clearly by the IT Practitioners. The way they define Business Architecture is as follows –

We define business architecture as the formal representation and active management of business design. Expanding this definition, business architecture is a formalized collection of practices, information and tools for business professionals to assess and implement business design and business change.

The paper advocates the active management of business design, with the same focus as that of IT. Though it sounds good on paper, is it really practical? - Especially when the fact is Enterprise Architecture is driven by IT. Will the social and power structure present in Today’s organization allow this?

No doubt that we need a clear understanding and formal representation of business design, however, the comprehensiveness should be limited to suit the need, which is typically an input to IT (and not management of business). Also, the involvement of business in driving the IT solution is critical, however, the involvement should be periodic, although frequent, and every attempt should be made to keep the overhead on business as minimum as possible. Attempting active management of business may be considered as unnecessary intrusion of IT into business and often, it is counter-productive. Instead, a process for periodic review of business models and refresh should be institutionalized. The EA-IT team should, however, do the active management of IT portfolio and ensure alignment of IT investments with business goals through active governance structure.

Having said this, the paper does provide some useful information and examples of artifacts. It will be good if OMG standardizes the business architecture models and encourage tool vendors to support it. The Enterprise Business Motivation Model (EBMM) will be a great start.

A fresh look at 2010

2010-01-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

One of my colleagues (David Roy), sent me a list of questions related to my previous post, that can guide 2009 Review and 2010 Goal settings. He got these questions from the Newsletter by David Allen (Author of Getting Things Done).

Completing and remembering 2009

Review the list of all completed projects

What was your biggest triumph in 2009?

What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?

What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?

What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?

What was the most loving service you performed in 2009?

What is your biggest piece of unfinished business in 2009?

What are you most happy about completing in 2009?

Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2009?

What was the biggest risk you took in 2009?

What was the biggest surprise in 2009?

What important relationship improved the most in 2009?

What compliment would you liked to have received in 2009?

What compliment would you liked to have given in 2009?

What else do you need to do or say to be complete with 2009?

Creating the new year

What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2010?

What advice would you like to give yourself in 2010?

What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in 2010?

What would you be most happy about completing in 2010?

What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2010?

What would you most like to change about yourself in 2010?

What are you looking forward to learning in 2010?

What do you think your biggest risk will be in 2010?

What about your work, are you most committed to changing and improving in 2010?

What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore in 2010?

What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2010?

Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving in 2010?

What one word would you like to have as your theme in 2010?

For more on this subject, visit David Allen's web site - http://www.davidco.com/

Wish you a Very Happy New You for this New Year!

2009-12-30T10:56:00.000-08:00

What will you do on New Year eve? – Fire Yourself !

If you are wondering what I mean, read Ron Ashkenas’ blog at HBR.
Ron highlights how GM Management team could not break out of their routine and do anything different, even when they were witnessing imminent demise. Somebody else had to fire them, because they could not do it to themselves.

It is similar to UnThink principle I highlighted in my last blog entry. It is so important to stop and think about what you are doing, what you are NOT doing and what you should do. You may rediscover yourself - professionally and personally.

Easier said than done! I have read about this stuff many time before, but never really acted on it until recently, when I was all alone on a business trip. I found myself thinking about my career and my family, and I started analyzing behind a napkin paper. I spent more than 2 hours – just thinking. I believe, I know myself better now and I am quite sure what I want to do in my life.
I guess the act of recognizing this need of self-analysis is important. Rest your sub-conscious will take care of.

Wish you a Very Happy New You for this New Year!

- Amit Unde

What Insurers need to ‘UnThink’

2009-12-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

KFC created quite a buzz with the launch of its "Unthink" campaign. By 'unthinking' their fried fast food, KFC is aligning to the choices of new generation, which is far more health conscious and even cost conscious (at least in these days). Keeping aside the recent marketing blunder (with free chicken and Oprah), I liked their ‘UnThink’ principal.

Should not every business do this? We are so used to our usual ways of doing business that we never really 'Unthink'. Although, we constantly strive to achieve efficiencies, and excellence in what we are doing, we actually never stop and question - is this a right thing to do?

Here are my thoughts on what (most of the) Insurers can 'Unthink' -

1) Online presence –
Most insurers do business through independent agents. The bulk of the business comes from agents, so the insurers tend to ignore the direct channel completely. Is this sustainable strategy? The value of Agent’s counseling can not be denied, however, there is a growing population who prefer to research, learn, connect and buy online. Their online world is now not just limited to computers and internet, it has expanded to mobile phones, and 3GS as well. You need online presence and strong channel partnerships not just for providing direct access for sale and servicing, but also for connecting consumers to your agents.

2) Risk Management –
The one thing the recession has taught us is importance of Risk Management. This year really distinguished the insurance companies who do risk management well from those who do not. Are your risk management techniques, actuarial models and financial tools modern enough to manage the risks effectively?

3) Innovation Strategy –
Do you ask for the Business case for every program or project? Well, UnThink. You might be just killing the innovation in your company.

3.95) Customer intelligence –
How much do you know about your customers? Do you know why they are with you and why will they stay with you? Do you know what you can cross-sell to them or to somebody in their household?
Your legacy systems and acquired systems might be holding you back by not providing a single view of customers and enough intelligence about them. It’s time to UnThink and challenge the status quo.

What’s with 3.95? Well, I like this number :)

- Amit Unde

Cloud computing or not – Should you really care?

2009-12-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

I was reading a debate between Private and Public cloud computing installations on David Tweedy’s article on Business Insurance . It seems that every vendor is now replacing ‘ASP’ by ‘Cloud’ and jumping on the bandwagon. ( Not that it is completely wrong in every case.) Another interesting aspect is that the public cloud computing infrastructure such as Amazon, SalesForce is enabling relatively smaller vendors to provide a reliable, specialized and cheaper services to their customers.
It is all good, but I have a problem with the marketing hype and jargons surrounding all these offerings. The words like Cloud, SaaS, ASP confuses the hell out of you without realizing the exact benefits of the offered service. Really, should the business care if the hosted service is a perfect ‘Cloud computing’ or not?

I would say - yes, however, rather than going by the word, they should look deep for the meaning of the word. So, what makes a perfect Cloud computing environment for hosted applications? and what does it mean in business terms?

Here are some thoughts -
1) Hosting Model - When you choose a Cloud based application, you should not be worried about Technology infrastructure beneath the application, in fact, and you have no control over it. All you should worry about is the Service levels. This is same as the most of the traditional hosted ASP models.
2) Scalable, reliable Infrastructure - The application should be highly reliable, available 24 X 7 and should perform at the optimum level. In other words, the infrastructure supporting the application should be equipped to support your growing business needs and also those of all your fellow businesses, using the same hosted application.
You should ask your vendors questions to clarify how they are planning to scale their infrastructure, especially when they add more and more customers. A virtualized environment is typically deployed to dynamically scale the infrastructure.
3) Customizability (or in terms of jargon ‘Multi-tenancy) - It should be quicker and inexpensive to implement the customization that you need and it should not degrade the performance. In other words, the application should be built in such a way that the customization is considered in the basic architecture. For example, every time you ask for new variable, the vendor should not add a new table or column in their database. Such a design becomes unwieldy as you add more customizations or vendor adds new customers. A new paradigm of architecture called ‘Multi-tenant’ architecture is often used in Cloud computing environment to address these issues.
4) Security - Your business data should be secure from errors, hackers and disasters. Ask vendors about the database and data structure – whether the data is logically and physically separated, user access control, transportation security, storage security ( encryption mechanism) etc.

So, unless your vendor provides minimum of above 4 points, don’t let them claim their application as ‘Cloud’ based application. In my experience, many vendors do not satisfy 2, 3 and 4. If they are offering hosted service, they tend to call it ‘Cloud’ based service.

- Amit Unde

My Favourite advertisement made it to Time's Top 10

2009-12-18T06:53:00.000-08:00

A cute dog worried about its prized possession, insures with Travelers. Very creative ad, and a great music by Ray LaMontagne

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944054_1944082,00.html

- Amit Unde

Ignoring Blackberry for your Mobile app - Not a good idea !

2009-12-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

I see that many insurance companies are competing to release Consumer facing applications on iPhone, but they are not doing it for Blackberry or any other smart phones. Is it really a good idea?

Contrary to popular beliefs, iPhone does not have the largest market share in Smart phones, but in fact, it is Blackberry (RIM), who is leading the front.

According to latest research released by ComScore, around 36 million Americans use SmartPhones. Out of which 41% market share is with Blackberry and 25% is with Apple. Apple’s growth has been good, but it is not taking it from the Blackberry. Surprising, the Blackberry growth in year 2009 is better than that of Apple.

It will be interesting to look at the age groups. I bet that the Blackberry is being used mostly by business executives, whereas the iPhone is more popular with younger generation.
Question is - What will be the target audience for Insurance companies and which phone they are likely to use?
I would not take any chances and support Blackberry platform as well.

Reference - http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/pages/what-were-top-smartphone-operating-systems-october

- Amit Unde

Oracle in Insurance

2009-12-16T11:56:00.000-08:00

By the close of 2009 Oracle had acquired 56 companies--30 of which filled out Oracle's applications portfolio, and 26 of which spruced up its technology lines of business. As Oracle’s marketing team points out 100 of Fortune 100 uses Oracle and in Insurance 20 out of Top 20 uses Oracle Applications.
The strategy has given Oracle broader market leverage with a full stack of Technologies and also the domain specific offerings.

How does it matter to Insurance?

It has been over a year since Oracle created a separate global business unit focusing on the Insurance industry. It has provided some sense of how Oracle wants to integrate the acquired assets and the future direction – at least on the paper. Oracle has a full set of product servicing Insurance, starting from a Policy Admin system, Claims system, Rating, Financial/Billing, CRM, document generation, Data warehousing, Reporting to name a few. It also has a complete set of middleware technologies – thanks to BEA and Sun.
Oracle is already showing results. It has closed many deals with likes of Marsh and Farmers to set the tone for the coming year.

My take – I think, Oracle is serious contender in the Insurance industry. It's industry focus is a BIG PLUS.
It will be of advantage to mid-size insurance companies to be an 'Oracle Shop' and leverage synergies and volume discounts. Also, as Oracle has presence in almost every big organization, it will definitely penetrate more into many of those. I think, it’s time to stop ridiculing the Oracle for their aggressive acquisition strategy and start paying attention to how it can be leveraged.

- Amit Unde

Data Dispensers - Interesting !

2009-09-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Coca-cola has come up with RFID based drink dispensers, which will give consumers choices of more than 100 beverages.. ! It will also allow experimenting by sending new drink formulaes to these machines..
It is not just drink dispenser, but also a data dispenser. It will collect the data of what customers are drinking and transmit it over night to its datawarehouse. The company will get valuable first-hand information on how new drinks are fairing in the market, the regional taste preference and also help managing inventory efficiently.

I loved the concept.I think, it is applicable everywhere - making 'Point of sales' to dispense quality near real-time data will vastly improve the business intelligence. No middlemen, no corruption of data !

Cut your losses !

2009-03-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have been working with customers to help them modernize their IT systems for few years now. I have seen that customers are more receptive, if we prescribe to build over the existing systems rather than rebuilding from scratch. Though it is comforting to see optimal reuse of existing, practically, sometimes it makes better sense to rewrite than reuse, especially if the current systems are architected in a fashion that will hinder achieving the desired target state for the business. Most often, it is a psychological block that makes it difficult to move away from something that we have cared for a long time. It is like an affinity of share pundit to his or her loosing stock. They buy every time stocks go below and average out its price, but they end up losing everything at the end. It sometimes makes sense to cut your losses and invest somewhere else that is likely to give you most returns.

Success secrets of Portfolio Management

2008-12-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to talk with divisional CIOs of a large consulting firm about my experiences of implementing portfolio management and CIO dashboards. One question from them kind of intrigued me – What it the success secret of portfolio management? Is it a process, tool or people?
I reflected on my previous experiences and stories that I have heard from my colleagues. Many large organizations put in millions of dollars in setting up Portfolio management tool, only to abandon it later for want of value. Almost in every case, the root cause is – lack of quality data and inability to keep up with changes in the data. Garbage in, Garbage out !
So what could be secret for the success? I think, it is simplicity of the solution. Strive for it without compromising the analysis value. More often, the portfolio management exercise often starts with selection of a tool and implementation of that tool. The tool is often comprehensive and offers to capture a whole lot of data and provides numerous reports. The question one should ask – is it worth the value? The first time, you can capture the data, but can you keep with the changes in the data? IMHO, the first step should be to decide what you must see every day, every quarter and during your annual budget exercise. Keep it as simple as possible. Develop a data capture process, simpler tools and governance process around it. Try to integrate tools to your operational systems so as to keep the data entry minimum. For example, get the operational FTE cost by integrating your tools with timesheet systems. Enhance your process and tools over the period in agile way as you start using it.
After a year or so, once you are confident of the captured data and the process, you may want to look at professional portfolio management tools that can act as your repository. That is solely to keep your future maintenance costs minimum and get in-built integration capabilities. It may appear reversed approach as you will need to migrate data to the tools, but trust me, if you know what you want from tools, often it will be simpler exercise to select, setup and maintain tools. Otherwise, tools are sure to overwhelm you and set you in undesired direction.

In the eye of the storm

2008-11-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

Great interview with Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit at Knowledge@Wharton - http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2068

Vikram explains the root cause of financial crisis and his solution - going back to basics of banking. He has a great advise for leader wannabes .. A must read.

Open source within your organization

2008-11-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

I recently made a trip over the seas in order to rescue a very critical project out of missing deadline syndrome. The project timelines were very aggressive with many parallel work streams. When I was involved remotely, I could not figure out why a bunch of sharp developers can not deliver as agreed. More painful was not able to estimate correctly for the remaining work and commit to next deadline. When I sat down face to face and talked, I discovered a shocking truth - people are wasting most of the time in waiting on each other. There were defined custodians of different parts (or services if you may) and almost everybody was dependent on each other. The problem was everybody was too busy with their own priorities and not able to get the time to help out others. To fill the waiting time, they did stubs and mocks, but it all contributed to the wastage.

I read recent blog entry by Martin Flower - http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/ServiceCustodian.html and I think it is very interesting solution to such problems. He proposes to adopt the 'Open source' strategy within the organization. Rather than waiting on custodians to enhance or fix their services, go ahead and change the code as per your requirements. Send the patch to custodian who will review and merge with the main code. It is always easier to review and merge, rather than code and test. Now, I am aware that it is not as easy as it sounds, otherwise, there would have not been any need of custodians. However, if it works for open source world, it should sure work within your own organization. I guess, it depends on maturity of the existing code and developers as well. It may be possible after the initial versions of services are released. It is MUST that you have a mechanism for knowledge sharing and collaboration, otherwise, no other option than waiting on others.

Google Chrome - Loved it !

2008-09-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Just downloaded and played with google chrome.

The speed is impressive, so are cool features of showing history with timestamps and ability to search through the history. How many times we need to go back to the link that we had crossed on our way, but not able to find again !

I liked 'most visited' on the homepage. Great feature to quickly launch your everyday sites. It is like browser determining your favourites rather than you having to specifically mention it.

Incognito mode will be handy on shared machines.

There are some glitches as well - most irritating being 'favorites'. It is so complicated to add any link to favorites and manage it.

I am not sure if it can be real threat to IE. Most of the audience that get benefited or excited by such features is probably already on FireFox and rest (like me) probably hate change !

Role of an Architect

2008-04-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

I recently published an article in Microsoft Architect Journal about the 'Role of an Architect' from system integrator perspective. http://www.msarchitecturejournal.com/pdf/Journal15.pdf

For HTML version, click - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/cc505970.aspx

Any comments ?

How True - SOA This. SOA That.

2007-12-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

I loved this video by SOANowJournal..

Microsoft Certified Architect - Is it worth it?

2007-11-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

Since I pass my MCA certification (solution architect) last year, I keep getting many questions from peers about MCA. Given the cost and efforts involved in getting certified, many wonder if it is worth getting certified.
I think, it definitely is. Here is why -
1) First, it is pretty hard to get through. That is what makes in more valuable. It is recognized highly in the industry. You may be surprise to know how many CIOs are aware of this certification. I am personally benefited from the MCA title at numerous occasions.
2) It is not only the Technology certification. It stresses equally on many other aspects such as Leadership, Communication, Organizational Dynamics, Strategy, and Processes along with technology (breadth and depth). You will not be able to get through if you are too operational OR too hands-off.
(Contrary to popular belief it is nothing to do with Microsoft technology. I presented case study based on J2EE technologies.)
3) It certifies the experience and not the knowledge alone. In the interview, all the questions are targeted for judging what you have done (rather than what you know). The questions are pretty deep. It is almost impossible to bluff in front of 4 experienced senior architects.
4) It is a great experience of going through the certification process - the mentoring, preparations and appearing in front of the board for interviews. You learn a lot in the process. You don't lose much even if you happen to fail.
5) Finally, though it is tough, if you have experience of architecting systems and if you put right efforts preparing your case studies and presentations, it is something achievable. It is definitely worth trying if you want to make career as an architect.

If you are not aware of Microsoft certification process, refer to - http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/architect/solutions/default.mspx

I found a very interesting blog that describes the architecture process in a much lucid way - http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/natashamocke/archive/2007/09/02/microsoft-certified-architect-certification-process.aspx

I will be happy to assist if you are preparing for the certification.

Bogged down with EA frameworks?

2007-11-08T07:46:00.000-08:00

If you are one of those overwhelmed with enormity of the popular EA frameworks, take my word – don’t sweat it too much. It is enough to look at 6X6 table of Zachman framework and understand it completely. You don’t have to go for Zachman conferences (unless you want to get thoroughly entertained. He is a great speaker!)

Don’t get me wrong. I like these frameworks as they give you idealistic view of what all you should consider for your EA exercise. Use these frameworks as reference, but never take on ‘all encompassing’ exercise as prescribed by these frameworks. It will only end when you run out of money.
Take a step-by-step approach. I would like to refer to the disciplines mentioned by Scott Ambler in his Enterprise Unified Process
Define what is important for your organization and only concentrate on those disciplines.

Typically, the EA exercise can be divided into 2 parts –
1) Define Enterprise Architecture and IT strategy roadmap
Here you concentrate on following disciplines –
· Enterprise Business Modeling ( Current state & desired state)
· Portfolio Management
· Enterprise Architecture ( Current state & desired state)
· Strategic Reuse
(Assuming that you have decent software development processes already in place. If not, you will have to include process definition discipline as well. )

Use these models to define the gaps / opportunities with your current IT and define the roadmap for implementation by dividing the work into manageable projects and also prioritize the work depending upon your budget and resource availability.

2) Implementation
Once you have identified smaller, manageable projects, apply the development and support disciplines (as defined in EUP) to each of this project and take it further.

I know, it is easier said than done. If you are doing it for the first time, make sure to have experienced resources on your side – especially those who have failed and learned.

Testing time for SOA

2007-11-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

Recently, I had been invited in a meeting to assess the problems with the high profile ‘SOA’ project. The common business services, which are supposed to be reused across multiple applications, were not performing up to the mark. More than 80% of the problems were related to integration and the performance. The application development teams have already missed deadlines multiple times and some are threatening not to use common services, but instead build their own bridges to the legacy systems.

The common services have been ready for long time; however, the problems are discovered only at the time of integration with applications. This late discovery of issues has put many projects into jeopardy and people are cursing the day when they thought of implementing SOA.
Now, why this happened? Some of the problems could have been tackled at the architectural level, however, I felt, this could have been avoided if only somebody had planned testing at the service level. It is not sufficient just to buy a SOA testing tool. The SOA testing need much more attention and detailed planning.

Here are some of the considerations for your SOA test planning -

1) Context orientation – It is not just enough to send an input to the web service and test whether the outcome is received and compare variables. It is important to know the context in which the service will be called and what the output variables those are more likely to be used. There should be a separate test case for each possible scenario in which the service will be called. Many a times, the output payloads are not fully populated and testers are often told that these variables are not meant to be populated. It would be good idea to verify the assumption against the context.

2) Reduce complexity of testing – The SOA testing is complicated enough. It is not easy to test without a user interface. Typically, it is very challenging to generate test data in the form of input XML. Sometimes, the output XMLs run into MBs and it is impossible to compare them with the ‘expected’ result and find out problems with them. Invest into tools to simplify the invocation of the service and output comparisons. Try to use more user friendly interface such as MS Excel to create test cases and test data, and build a framework around it to take these excels as an input for SOA testing tool.

Remember- If it is not simple to do, it will not happen.

3) Test the service choreography – Most of the times the services are called sequentially from the controllers, however, at the time of testing, those are tested stand-alone with certain assumptions about input and output. It would be good to identify the sequence in which the services would be called and connect their outputs/inputs and simulate the real-life scenarios. Invest into building the tool that can help building up such choreography for testing.