The Delivery Management of Software Engagement spans Project, Client, Financial and Human Asset Managements and the following Best Practices will guide Delivery management professionals to successfully Deliver Engagements.

Projects. The best practices of individual project management are covered in PMBOK but from a Delivery Manager’s perspective, the following practices are essential.

Empower project managers to control the cost of the projects.  They should have the flexibility into team member’s cost and how best they can be deployed to maximize margins.

Encourage Project managers to connect among their peers so that resources and infrastructure can be shared at the right times.

Stress on succession planning and rotation of key resources so that different team members will get Technology and Domain expertise plus the costs of the resources also can be controlled.

Be vigilant about efforts of the team especially in Fixed Bid Projects so that timely interventions can be made to avoid cost and effort over runs..

Evangelize the virtues of project dash boards and common data repositories so that project metrics can be monitored daily.

Do not micro manage.

Do not procrastinate on critical decision makings.

Clients. Have a transparent relation with the client and build your reputation.

Don’t always insist on email confirmations and formal sign offs. Let the client know that you believe him explicitly and it will come back to you.

Always try to think of delivering more value than you have promised.

For every client meeting and conference calls, clearly have an agenda with well thought out plan of actions and always circulate the agenda.

Develop the habit of informal weekly updates of your progress with the clients.

Evolve with client needs, showing genuine empathy for his issues.

Financials.  It all boils down to dollars, so always weigh all your actions and see whether they make business sense.

Have a daily analysis of deal value and cost incurred, making sure margins never erode.  This is truer for fixed Price projects.

Always try to use technology to replace travels. Use Video conferences, con-calls, webinars. Try to cut bigger expenses without getting stingy about minor expenses and over heads.

Make a detailed cost Vs profit SWOT analysis, anticipate over runs and try to get client on our sides and see if unforeseen expenses can be shared..

Always have knowledge transfer plans so that younger team members can share the work of costly architects and Tech Leads.

Human Asset Management.  Have a holistic view of your team members and genuinely try to connect with them to know their aspirations. Your team should know that you would lead from the front.

Nurture talent. Arrange for concerted knowledge acquisitions. Set quantifiable goals, clearly mark out your expectations from them and apprise them without emotions based on that.

Have a sound rotation policy and rotate high cost resources to reduce cost. Have clear succession plans

A thorough understanding of statement of work, the project time, cost and resources that are needed to successfully execute this in a timely fashion coupled with an innate understanding how the client’s need would evolve results in a satisfied client. The success of the engagement includes an in built quality Assurance system for defect free deliverables.

Delivery manager gets the statement of work and knows the cost of the deal and what should be the over all cost of running the engagement to achieve a good profit margin.  This involves correctly planning what type of skilled resources should be deployed at what stages of the project and should plan to minimize cost over runs. A good way is to deploy skilled resources with the least cost.  A detailed costing is usually made before project start up with respect to infrastructure and required soft ware , resource cost, quality cost.  The planning percolates into micro levels of projects such as time over runs.

As is with any other discipline, having a motivated work force half solves the problems.  A holistic approach of treating project team members as assets and genuinely caring for their career, job satisfaction and work-life balance goes a long way in promoting a synergetic team

The people behind America’s space programme will be joined by the National Research Council in the $3 million inquiry into whether the current diagnosis of the “sticky accelerator” problems is correct.

The US Government’s decision to turn to NASA came as Toyota held the first post-crisis meeting of its new quality control committee in Japan. Convened amid claims that the company had begun “radically reshaping operations”, the establishment of the committee was one of the promises made by the company’s president at the height of the recall crisis.

Akio Toyoda said that the company was now setting up a system to respond more quickly to customer complaints. His chief lieutenant on quality control, Shinichi Sasaki, said that “we should be so worried about our customers we should be having nightmares”.

New turn in Toyota investigation as US turns to NASA – Times Online.

Consider this- China published only three papers in 1998 in Nature but it raced away with 93 original research findings and Publishings  in 2009, a 30 fold increase. At an institutional Level, Chinese academy of Sciences ranks in top 10. It is a agreed fact that ranking based on publishing in an high impact journal like nature reflects the quality of scientists working in that institutions. The Chinese Government has been consciously laying stress in the growth of their Basic sciences research, Bio Medicines, genetic engineering and transgenic crops and have started attracting many native scientists working to united states and Europe to settle back in China which is paying fantastic dividends. The Chinese scientists  and researchers are acknowledged as one of the best by their western counterparts and in United States they are in the fore front of research in basic sciences.  The next decade will see their full potential.

Good Luck- China and to your Scientists and researchers.

Check out this link in Nature-  http://www.nature.com/press_releases/pubindex.html

Below is a statement from Representative Gary Ackerman, the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, which was delivered at the opening of a hearing on the the threat of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Rep. Ackerman notes LeT’s global reach and aspirations, and questions the US support for Pakistan and the billions of dollars in aid sent to the country even as it continues to back the LeT. “Bad Company: Lashkar e-Tayyiba and the Growing Ambition of Islamist Militancy in Pakistan” While U.S. attention has focused primarily on al-Qaida, and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) and other violent, Islamist extremist groups in Pakistan have been growing in both capability and ambition. As was demonstrated in the horrific Mumbai attack of November 2008, the al-Qaida model of perpetrating highly visible, mass-casualty attacks appears to have migrated, with enormous potential consequences for the United States. With a team of 10 well-armed terrorists, a carefully coordinated plan of attack, and a team of controllers back in Pakistan in constant communication with the terrorist attack team, the LeT in three days killed 173 innocent people, wounded 308 others, and grabbed hold of the entire world’s attention. Communications intercepts that have been made public by the Government of India include an attack controller boasting about the carnage in Mumbai, “This is just the trailer. The main movie is yet to come.” We need to take this threat very, very seriously. The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics. They are well financed, ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military. The same Pakistani military to which we are selling advanced arms. The same Pakistani military that objected so bitterly to legislation this Congress passed to provide a massive $7.5 billion plus-up in American assistance to their country, Pakistan, because our accompanying language suggests that Pakistan’s military should be answerable to a democratically elected government. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, which means “the army of the righteous” or “the army of the pure” was set up with help from the Pakistani military as a proxy weapon for use in Jammu and Kashmir, parts of India that Pakistan has contested since partition in 1947. After 9/11, Pakistan officially banned the LeT, but the reality is that like other Islamist terrorist groups, LeT maintains a clear public presence—and a vast recruiting network—by providing extremely useful charitable and social services to millions of impoverished people of Pakistan. Public estimates suggest LeT operates some 2,000 offices in towns and villages throughout Pakistan, as well as maintaining ties with the Pakistani military. There is, in fact, no reason to doubt that Pakistan’s military is likely paying compensation to the families of the terrorists killed in the Mumbai attacks. These are our allies in the war on terror. Operational funding for the LeT comes from charitable fund-raising amongst the general population in Pakistan, but also depends heavily on contributions by Pakistani businessmen living abroad and other wealthy individuals from the Persian Gulf. Let us note too, these states are also our allies in the war on terror. But it would be unfair and wrong to suggest that the LeT problem is strictly confined to Pakistan and the Middle East. In fact, one of the key facilitators of the Mumbai attack was an American of Pakistani extraction. Unfortunately, the LeT enjoys a substantial global network stretching from the Philippines to the United Kingdom. There is a temptation to think that the LeT is really India’s problem; that the LeT is really just interested in the so-called “liberation” of Jammu and Kashmir. While it’s true that the primary area of operations for the LeT has historically been the Kashmir valley and the Jammu region, the LeT has also undertaken repeated and numerous mass casualty attacks throughout India and, in particular, directed at the Indian government. But the idea that this group can be appeased on the subject of Kashmir is dangerous nonsense. The LeT’s true goal is not Kashmir, it is India. And the LeT is not shy about announcing that its intention is to establish an Islamic state in all of South Asia. Neither does it hide or try to play down its declaration of war against all Hindus and Jews, who they insist are “enemies of Islam.” In the wake of the Mumbai attack, investigators uncovered in computer records and email accounts a list of 320 locations worldwide deemed by the LeT as possible targets for attack. Only 20 of the targets were locations within India. The LeT has been attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan almost from day one and their forces are present throughout Afghanistan. The LeT has been slaughtering Indians by the score for decades. The LeT has put the world on notice that they intend to escalate the carnage and spread it world-wide. This group of savages needs to be crushed. Not in a month. Not in a year. Not when the situation stabilizes in Afghanistan. Not when things are under control in Pakistan. Now. Today and everyday going forward. We’re not doing it, and we’re not effectively leading a global effort to do it. And we’re going to regret this mistake. We’re going to regret it bitterly. Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2010/03/lashkaretaiba_bad_company.php#ixzz0i1rPoIau

Young women shouldn’t have to carry the cross of upholding family honour by Manjul Bajaj from times of india 08/03/10 edition
Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu. Tina Isa. Hatin Surucu. Vandana Bhadodiya. A Sikh girl from Toronto. A Palestinian girl in the US. A German-Kurdish girl living in Berlin. A Gujarati girl from Vadodara city. Women of different backgrounds, from different countries, of different religious persuasions, yet united by the circumstances of their death. They were all executed by close kin – fathers, mothers, uncles, brothers – for the crime of choosing their life partners.
   But that doesn’t mean that young women are killed routinely only for asking for the right to love and marry whom they wish. Sometimes a young woman’s life costs less than a song. Take Heshu Yones. Or Ayaman Udas. The former, a 16-year-old teenager from Acton, London, was killed after her family heard a song dedicated to her over the radio. The latter, a poet and singer from Peshawar, was killed by her brothers for performing on PTV, the national television network.
   At other times, the reason for death can be as flimsy as a headscarf. Aqsa Parvez, a teenager in Toronto, was killed by her father for refusing to wear one to school. The reason can also be as facetious as an internet chat. An unnamed woman in Riyadh was killed for chatting with a man on Facebook. The ultimate irony is that the murder came to light not because of protests against the killing but because a Saudi cleric protested the corruption of society by social networking sites.
   According to UN statistics, over 5,000 women die every year in honour killings. Throughout South Asia and the Middle East, young women carry the cross of upholding family honour. This happens across religions, cultures and social classes. Yes, it happens to Muslim women. But it also happens to Hindu and Sikh ones. Yes, it happens among the poor. But it also happened to Saudi Arabia’s Princess Misha’al despite the fact that she was rich and royal.
   The fact that these killings are sanctioned by the cultures in which they occur makes them doubly dangerous. In countries such as Iraq, Syria and Jordan, laws are sympathetic to the killers. Closer home, caste or khap panchayats, operating in large parts of rural Haryana and Uttar Pradesh routinely mete out death penalties to those defying their diktats. Such cases rarely end in convictions as no witnesses are forthcoming. Politicians too remain wary of addressing the issue as cultural sensitivities are involved.
   If we widen the scope of the argument beyond honour killings to other forms of repression and control, it becomes even clearer that young women in our part of the world carry too heavy a burden in the name of family honour. Many communities in India like the Syrian Christians, Parsis and Tamil Brahmins, otherwise associated with high levels of education and attainment, enforce strict rules of endogamy. Girls are generally not free to choose who they marry. All across north India, the word sala (wife’s brother) is a common expletive. Consider this: even when the sister is duly married off to a husband chosen by the family in a ceremony presided over by priests and approved by society, her brother doesn’t emerge untainted. His dignity is compromised by the fact the other man sleeps with his sister.
   What precisely is the link between a young woman’s freedom to choose and her family’s honour and why does it go so deep? Feminists attribute it to the patriarchal structure of our societies. The maintenance and perpetuation of human society as we know it depend in a very large measure on the invisible, unpaid, undervalued and unending jobs done by women – the cooking, feeding, washing, cleaning and breeding services provided by wives and mothers. A young woman is a productive and reproductive asset in the larger scheme of things and she can no more be allowed to take her own decision on who she’ll marry than a domesticated cow or horse can determine who it will be milked by or whose cart it will pull.
   Islamic cultures are marked by a distrust of female sexuality. In Christianity too, it is Eve who bears the stigma of succumbing to temptation. Likewise, the Hindu text, the Manusmriti, prescribes that “day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control. Women must particularly be guarded against evil inclinations”.
   Finally, it all boils down to issues of community identity and hurt male egos. When a girl marries outside, she rejects a man from her own community in favour of a man from another. In the process, she violates norms that have been built up and guarded over centuries to preserve community identity. Her choice further implies a perceived lack in the males of her own community. By crossing over, she becomes enemy property, deserving the harshest of ends for she is now seen as a traitor.
   It is ironical that education and social liberalism have not ameliorated these trends but rather exacerbated them. Technology renders the world smaller each day, bringing traditional and modern lifestyles in tense, unresolved proximity. Dead daughters are simply collateral damage as two disparate worlds collide.

via The Hindu : News / National : AGNI-III test-fired successfully.

India’s longest range nuclear-capable Agni-III was successfully test-fired from the Wheeler Island, off the Orissa coast on Sunday.

The more than 3,500-km range home-grown ballistic missile, believed to be most lethal of the weapon systems developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientists, was blasted at 10.50 hrs and covered the pre-designated range with 100 per cent accuracy, top officials told The Hindu from Wheeler Island soon after the successful launch.

The solid-propelled, two-stage missile can carry nuclear warheads weighing up to 1.5 tonnes. It is 17 metres tall and has a launch weight of 50 tonnes with a two-metre diameter.

When contacted, V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister and Director-General, DRDO, said it was a fantastic launch and a “hat-trick for Agni-III with three successes”. The trajectory went perfectly according to the plan till the last decimal place, and only mathematical people would understand the success, he said. “It gave us full range and pinpoint accuracy,” he added.

A.Sivathanu Pillai, CEO and MD, BrahMos Aerospace, called the success an “important milestone for the country. It will lead to induction of the missile”. The success would bring credit to DRDO scientists, he said.

A. Selvamurthy, Chief Controller, Life Sciences and Human Resources, DRDO also termed it as an “important milestone in developing the country’s defence and developing the second strike capability. The flight proved the robustbness of all the systems and software”.

With the third consecutive success of Agni-III, he said “it is now a proven missile. It is a big morale booster for our missile scientists and institutions”, he observed.

Avinash Chander, Agni programme director and director, Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), called it a “perfect success”. Stating that all the mission objectives were met, he said all the events listed in the launch were executed with accuracy and described it as a “thrilling experience”.

A top DRDO missile technologist said the mission was a “good success and the trajectory of the flight was excellent. Everything worked well, including all payload systems”, he added.

Even though the missile did not carry a live warhead, its nuclear triggering mechanism worked well. Instead of a nuclear warhead, it carried chemical explosives, the missile technologist added.

Kim Peek, The Rain Man passes away.

Kim Peek was the inspiration behind the Dustin Hoffman, Oscar winning movie “The Rain Man”.

Kim was born with a brain defect where a small lump of tissue connecting the two hemispheres of Brain was missing, resulting in sever motor skills and other difficulties. The first neuro surgeon told Fran, Kim’s father to do away with his child since the kid would not survive.  Frank stuck on for the next 5o years helping his son button up his dresses and with his daily chores. When he was an year and half, Kim started displaying remarkable memory capabilities.  He could read separately with his left and right eyes finish pages in seconds and books in an hour.  Later, he played piano, recollecting the notes he memorized forty years before.  After the success of Rain Man, he and his devoted father toured extensively, were telling audiences that you do not have to be handicapped to be different.  Everybody is different.

How True.

We treat disabled people shabbily with disdain, forgetting all of us have our own shortcomings.  We all look for similarities in religion, language, nationalities, skin and color, to cocoon our selves in closeted circles, forgetting that we are all uniquely different and we need to respect people who are different from us.

In my moments of difficulties, I always used to look up to men like Kim who fought on despite having severe congenital disorders.

Kim Peek passed away due to hear attack last Sunday. Good Bye- Kim.  We all salute you

Do read this great article by Scientific American on Kim

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=inside-the-mind-repost

I am simply amazed about some Humans who were pioneers in their Field and defied all norms.

Considering millions learned Economic theory from a book written by Samuelson 50 odd years ago and that a few of them went on to win Nobel prizes is a standing testament to this great Economist laureate who passed away this week at 94. Samuelson opened new frontiers in Economic theory, exposing Mathematic models to expound the theories of Fiscal deficit, successfully postulated that free markets are not panacea to a nations growth and that in periods of time, Governments intervention is critical to balance market depressions. His theory on public and private goods and how governments should away from over regulating and his predictions on importing from labor cheap countries which would result in losses in native jobs were visionary. A staunch supporter of free trade, a Humble man, a great mentor and teacher and a man of wry and sharp words who defied conventional wisdom, Samuelson taught at MIT and used mathematical models to turn Economic theories into a more meaningful predictable models, combing them with intuitional wisdoms.

An inspirational Man, a great Economist.  The world is left poorer with his passing away.

If you have not read his book on Economics, buy and read it. It is written when he sweated blood.

A great tribute from New York Times.  Check it out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/economy/14samuelson.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2009/12/postscript-paul-samuelson.html

Good Buy, Paul.