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25 Best kept secrets

satishr — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:41:19 +0000

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/23/magazines/business2/business2_bestkeptsecrets/index.htm

Extreme Benchmarking
Compare everything you do against your rivals
Bad News Folders
Keep a constant eye out for trouble
Strategic Strategy Reviews
Turn going-through-the-motions meetings into no-holds-barred debates.
A New Office Pool
Use prediction markets to tap hidden knowledge.
The Tech Box
Create a lending library of ideas.
Outside-In R&D
Bring in experts to help spark new ideas.
Office Graffiti
Let workers speak their minds.
Surgical Visits
Seek brutally honest feedback from customers.
The Contra Team
Appoint official devil’s advocates to challenge the merits of deals.
Equity as You Go
Take no stake until you earn it.
The Chief Shareholder Officer
Head off shareholder trouble before it starts.
Always-On Board Members
Get the directors out of the boardroom.
The Corporate Beehive
Use office design to keep the queen in touch with the worker bees.
The Job Audition
Turn the interview process into an all-encompassing tryout.
Peer-to-Peer Promotion
Let employees choose their leaders.
The Shrink Shrinker
Reward workers for keeping their hands off the merchandise.
The Anti-Star System
Determine pay using just two factors: Profits and seniority.
The Pyramid Scheme
Use kickbacks–the legal kind–to attract executive talent.
The Long Goodbye
Keep retirees in the labor pool.
The Three-Minute Huddle
Start each day with a lightning-fast, all-hands briefing.
Gainsharing
Pass cost savings on to those who achieved them.
Open-Source Ad Campaigns
Let your customers do the marketing.
Late-Night Recon
Turn employees into trendspotters.
The “Just Looking” Badge
Neutralize your customers’ worst fears.
Phone Shopping
Become your own customer.

Travel Planner idea was realized

satishr — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:07:15 +0000

Last week, I posted on this business oppurtinity on travel planner. It is very encouraging to see that, some other ppl also got the same idea and went ahead to materialize it. Roshan desilva wrote in his blog about the commencement of new travel portal startups.

www.makemytrip.com
www.yatraonline.com
www.travelguru.com
www.cleartrip.com

Out of above, two are under constrution, the other two operational. I checked the features on makemytrip.com. Though, I found the concept of packages they provide interesting, i had different ideas on the services that can be provided to the customers.

Instead of providing only pre defined packages to the customers, i think it would be much more useful if they provided more flexibility to the end user in terms of making their own travel plan. i know it takes lot more effort to provide that level of flexibility to the end user. it could be the next phase of development for them.

Travel Planner

satishr — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:16:47 +0000

Two days back, one of my friend got frustated with the routine life and got a wonderful idea of taking a break and going to holiday. She called her friend and told her about the idea. The other lady is also equally exited about the idea and both of them set to make the trip a reality. Some of the necessary things they have to take care are…

People who are going to join them
The places where to go
Travel Plan like dates, transport means, budget, etc..

I am also one of those guys, who desperately wants to escape summer in AP at this point of time. The place where we are going is decided as Kerela. With some difficulty, we are able to finalize the people too.

But the big problem I have seen is coming up with the travel plan. The difficulty comes because of constraints like money, time, fun. Simply put, the problem statement is, you have to come up with a most economic plan with loads of fun in less time. But the problem becomes complicated because the number of parameters for each constraing are many. Like for transport means, we can go by train, flight or road. and each one will have a cost associated with it. Also, the avaialbility and timing of these will complicate further. Some people feel that long hours of journey are waste, so we should opt for flight which takes you to your destination sooner, other people say it is costly. Instead, they say we can have fun during journey.

Those two ladies worked hard to come with a plan which is okay with everyone of us. After seeing all this I thought, is there any other easy way to solve this problem. or someone who can solve for us I thought, if there are travel agents who can do this for us. Unfortunately, to my knowledge there are no such travel agents avaialble, who will take specifications and instructions from interested people, work out for them as per their interests and come up with a good plan.

I was thinking about this all thru yesterday night.. and thought that, it would be one good business avenue, if you carefully work it out. Infact the more i think about it, I see more chances that it would become a good venture. If you see the peoples attitude lately, many people wanted to go for trips

Corporate s/w Projects Vs Open source s/w projects

satishr — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 10:41:36 +0000

When I am reading thru this, about the viewpoint of software development and project management in Coorperate world and open source world, I got interested with the argument the author makes in the article.

One big difference we have to notice between two places is the commitment of the developer towards the project. In open source world, the developers of the project, voluntarily came forward to contribute to the project. It is this INTEREST which makes the difference between the coorperate world and open source world. In open source world, people feel committed to the modules they own, which is not often seen in the coorperate world.

Moreover the trust the team concept never works in the coorperate world because, your will competing with one of your project mate. So always a friction will be present between the members of the team. Under this circumstances, it is the duty of the project lead to move all the people in right direction, because he is the captain of the ship. He should make things transparent to the team members by keeping more meetings.

The problem we find in coorperate world is, often, we will not find good project leads. Most of the times project leads will be working on adhoc basis, instead of proper planning. Quality is one term which will be forgot by almost all the project teams until there is push from the upper management, for some audit.

In my opinion, the reason for the least quality s/w developement in coorperates is due to the ignorance of the developers. Because, they simply cannot understand or imagine the dynamics of the software developement. When they encounter a bug, most people will give a temporary fix which will solve the problem for time being, instead of root causing the problem. And naturally, as none of the team members are intested in the review of others work, the Lead will be happy that the problem is solved. 1 or 2 months down the line the problem resurfaces again in another form, because the acutal problem is not solved at all.

Buying Laptop

satishr — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:29:09 +0000

I am planning to buy a laptop. As with many things, there is no “THE” best model to buy one. It depends on a number of paramaters like cost, usability, interests which determines to which model you have to choose.

When I searched over the net, for the recommendations, I could not zero in on any single site, where they the comparisons are rational. So I decided to learn about the individual components like CPU, Memory, Video Card etc.. and select the best model configuration wise and economically.

Following are the major components which, I found needs to pay attention.

CPU and Chipset details

I dont have any idea which processor is best, but I found Intel’s Pentimu 4 with hyper threading technology very intesting. The above link also tells which Intel Chipsets supports this processors. So I decided to go Processor with HT technology. Its told that Intel’s Centrinos Processors and Chipsets are specially designed for the Laptops. This chipsets essentially contains thes the Wireless related hardware in the chipset. But I am not sure whether the Centrino chipset with HT powered processor is avaiable in the market or not.

Video Screen

Two kinds of videso screens for the laptops are available. 1. Active Matrix 2. Dual scan/ Passive Matrix.

One Important thing to note down while buying a laptop is Store Return Policy. You should be able to return the laptop if you dont like it. In US, many stores supports this, but in India, it very much depends on the vendors.

Available Brands:

Dell, Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Compaq

Hello world!

satishr — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:20:38 +0000

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