Book Review: Lean Customer Development: Build Products Your Customers Need by Cindy Alvarez

Book Review:  Lean Customer Development: Build Products Your Customers Need by Cindy Alvarez: Publisher- O'Reilly: ISBN- 13: 978-1449356354

I got a chance to look into unedited version of Lean Customer Development book by Cindy Alvarez. Book will be released in April 2014. The Book will be handy reference guide of best practices for customer development.

Lean Customer Development relies heavily on “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and Steve Blank’s “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”. Book has eight chapters and appendix with full of questions which should be asked while working with prospects.

The book is not focused on any specific type of product – software or hardware or service but in general which make is valuable and will appeal to wider audience.

My favorite chapter in the book is “Who Should I Be Talking To?” where Cindy clearly outlines pathway to who, where, when, and how of potential customers interactions.

 
I am waiting for official release of book.

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author. I got electronic format of book from publisher for review.

Further reading: There are several books on similar topic. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation toCreate Radically Successful Businesses, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, andChallengers, and many more

One can get more information about book and related topics from:

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Customer-Development-Products-Customers/dp/1449356354
2. Publisher -- Oreilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028253.do

 

 

Book Sales at Packt Publishing

From December 19^th to Jan 3 Packt Publishing (http://bit.ly/1jdCr2W)is offering any ebook or video in $5.  This also includes Oracle books as well. Go and grab few before offer expires.

Book Review: Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics

Book Review:  Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics by Stephen Wendel: Publisher- O'Reilly: ISBN- 13: 978-1449367626

 

Designing for Behavior Change is a theoretical book with full of practical wisdom.  Book explores human conscious and sub conscious mind and set path for designers to design products to influence behavior change.

Stephen (@sawendel) weaves analytical data with human behavior and led the readers to apply tools and techniques to overcome behavior change obstacles.

The book is written as self-help book like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” which walk through change and how to convert them into your benefit.
 

Though book is voluminous (approx. 400 page) but not boring and easy to read and comprehend. Book is must for any produt designer.

 

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author. I got electronic format of book from publisher for review.

 
Further reading:

 

• http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/03/design-to-change-behavior-tips/
• http://www.implementationscience.com/content/6/1/42

 

One can get more information about book and related topics from:

 

1. Publisher -- Oreilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030201.do
2. Amazon -- http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Behavior-Change-Psychology-Behavioral/dp/1449367623

 

Prediction for remaining decade (2014-2020)

1.    SAAS and PAAS will prevail for small and big enterprise.

2.    IAAS will thrive in enterprise data centers (Private Cloud).

3.    Industry specific cloud platforms will rise to cater regulatory and vertical specific needs.

4.    Fragmentation and Alternatives of Java and Enterprise Java (like Apache harmony, and Spring) will emerge stronger and official java from Oracle will loose its sheen due to lust for its monetization by Oracle.

5.    Laptop, mobile and tablet will merge into one.

6.    Indian IT workforce will shift from permanent job to contractual jobs like in USA.

7.    Developing countries will swept by telecom revelation like India in previous decade.

8.    Gamification will engulf almost all experiences especially of social media.

9.    Outsoucing will change from India focused to 2I + 1 (2 location in India and one elsewhere).

10. Digital currencies will impact financial markets in big way.

11. Application will be pervasive in devices and appliances like phones (mobile and fixed line), TVs, automobiles, refrigerators, disk (CD/DVD/BlueRay) players, and any computing device.

12. Fragmentation of Internet - There will be walls around country or region specific internet.

13. Rise of china based technology companies.

Prediction for remaining decade (2014-2020)

Top Trends of 2014

1.    Internet of things will start to emerge.

2.    Tablet and Smart phone will keep on merging into one device in developing markets.

3.    Consumers will further loose control on personal data. Advertisers will follow you from one device to another ( Phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, smart glasses, etc). Bye bye privacy.

4.    HTML5, Java Script, CSS experts will be in great demand.

5.    Android will further penetrate into automobile market as entertainment and controlling hub.

6.    Private Cloud will gain currency will ultra large (e.g. Wallmart), financial institutions (Banks, Insurance, etc.), security and privacy conscious industry (defense contractors, etc.).

7.    Big Data and Social networking Analysis will rise further.

8.    Spatial gesture sensitive and voice controlled devices will rise further.

9.    BYOD will gain further momentum

10. Digital currency will have devastating affect on financial market controls.

11. Jobs will keep on shifting from Hardware to Software.

12. Wearable computers will emerge stronger.

13. Mobile payment will rise further

Top Trends of 2013

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 6

This is sixth chapter of Oracle Fusion Middleware BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning. This chapter covers EM Fusion Middleware Control and WLS Admin Console tuning .

Your comments will make this book useful and valuable.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978068/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-6"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 6

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 5

This is fifth chapter of Oracle Fusion Middleware BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning. This chapter covers BPEL Engine tuning.

Your comments and views are always welcome.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978065/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-5"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 5

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 4

This is fourth chapter of Oracle Fusion Middleware BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning. This chapter covers WebLogic Server tuning .

Your comments are valuable to improve book.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978045/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-4"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 4

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 3

This is third chapter of Oracle Fusion Middleware BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning. This chapter covers JVM (HotSpot as well as jRokit) tuning.

Please give your comments, so book can be improved.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978039/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-3"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 3

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 2

This is second chapter of Oracle Fusion Middleware BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning. This chapter covers basics of BPEL PM 11g.

I hope you will enjoy reading and give your valuable feedback.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978036/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-2"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 2

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 1

I will be compiling my learning on Oracle Fusion Middleare with respect to Performance tuning into a book. and publishing on my blog in chapter format. I hope you will enjoy it and help to make it more useful and relevant.

Today, it is chapter , which simply talk about Loan and Performance test and Performance tuning in general.

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/189978033/BPEL-PM-11g-Performance-Tuning-1"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >BPEL PM 11g Performance Tuning - 1

by http://www.scribd.com/tusjain"  style="text-decoration: underline;" >tusjain

Book Review: Getting Started with Oracle Public Cloud

Book Review:  Getting Started with Oracle Public Cloud by Hemant Kumar Mehta: Publisher- Packt: ISBN- 13: 978-1-78217-810-1

 

Getting Started with Oracle Public Cloud is high level summary of services offered by Oracle public cloud. This book also covers essential requirements to how to start working with Oracle Public Cloud. This book can be used as first step to understand Oracle public cloud.

Book has been divided in chapters very neatly as per the services offered by Oracle Public Cloud. Book also layout few of the best practices of Oracle Public Cloud for its various services.

The book part\, which I like most is chapter 2, which talks about transitioning from on premises to cloud.

 
As name suggest book provides very initial understanding of Oracle Cloud but nevertheless the book is good starting point.

Good book to lay foundation for developer as well as management to start understand Oracle Public Cloud.

One could get more info aabout book at http://bit.ly/IjUmUa.

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author. I got electronic format of book from publisher for review.

SCRUM Master - Job Description

Summary

The Scrum Master will be responsible for developing and maintaining an agile SDLC for a development organization for a project team spread over multiple geographies, time zones and mix of multiple vendors (contractors) and employees. Scrum Master will also be responsible for the coaching/mentoring of existing development managers/leads on Scrum methodology as it is implemented and used during the project development life cycle.

As Scrum Master you must act like "Glue" or "Lubricant" depending on what the situation requires.

Role and Responsibilities

·         Develop and maintain agile SDLC for a software development organization, creating necessary standards, tools and best practices.

·         Guiding the team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers

·         Guiding the team on how to get the most, out of self-organization

·         Champion values of self-organization across organization

·         Assessing the Scrum maturity of the team and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization

·         Removing impediments and/or guiding the team to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.

·         Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem solving.

·         Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work.

·         Act as protector of team and moderator to resolve issues within team if arise.

·         Helps team to focus on current Sprint, achieve sprint goals  and value optimization

·         Strive to help team to become high performance team with transparency, self-organization, business value focus, cooperation with competition

·         Helps Team to learn from its experiences

·         Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog.

·         Educating Product Owner on benefits of sustained velocity and setting up cadence of delivery

·         Providing all support to the team using a servant leadership style whenever possible, and leading by example

·         Ensures a proper power balance between PO, Team, and Management

·         Addresses needs efficiently and effectively

·         Detects hidden problems and strives to solve them

·         Facilitating discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution

·         Assisting with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information

Required Skills

·         CSM certification from Scrum Alliance

·         The ability to distinguish between what "is Scrum" what is "not Scrum"

·         Knowledge of other Agile approaches: XP, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, TDD, etc.

·         Understanding of technologies used by team

·         Must understand evolution of Scrum Master role in team over time period

Optional Skills

·         CSP certification from Scrum Alliance

Does unstructured data exist?

While talking to NO SQL enthusiastics, I often hear that No SQL database can handle unstructured data. Similar arguments are also echoed by Hadoop and BigData devotes.  Are these people are technically correct or just using marketing hype to influence IT decision makers who are business savvy but technical dependent?

In my point of view, there is nothing called unstructured data. NO SQL, Hadoop and BigData zesty people are calling any dataset which does not fit in relational data base as unstructured data. What do you think?

In the context of data, there are two attributes which defines complexity. First is relationship among objects (equivalent to tables in relational database) of data and second is varying number of elements (equivalent to columns in a table in relational database) in objects. With respect to these two parameters there are four possible combinations:

      * Both number of elements in objects and relationship among objects is fixed; it is not changing over time period.

a.       Numbers of elements in objects are fixed and relationships among objects are simple and can be described using relational math. This type of data is prime candidate for relational database.

b.      Numbers of elements in objects are fixed and relationships among objects are not simple and difficult/nearly impossible to describe using relational math. For example if relationships among objects are mimicking graph structure than graph database (e.g. Neo4j) is better choice than relational or any other type of database.

      * Numbers of elements in objects are varying on ad hoc basis irrespective of complexity of relationships among objects than relational database is not the solution. You need database which can accommodate varying number of elements in  objects such as MongoDB

       * Numbers of elements in objects are fixed but relationship among object is varying on ad hoc basis. Again relational database is not the solution. You should explore HBase or MongoDBfor this scenario. 

          *Both numbers of elements in objects are varying and relationships among objects are changing on ad hoc basis. Yep, you guessed correctly, relational database is not the part of the solution. For this scenario you can explore HBase or MongoDB.

In above discussion, I have not considered volume of data.

In truly unstructured data, structure of data is not definable. If one can’t define a structure, then structure does not exist from programming perspective. 

There is no unstructured data. Data has structure, we may have not been able to discover or comprehend it yet.

Book Review: Good Math: A Geek's Guide to the Beauty of Numbers, Logic, and Computation (Pragmatic Programmers)

Book Review:  Good Math: A Geek's Guide to the Beauty of Numbers, Logic, and Computation (Pragmatic Programmers) by Mark Chu-Carroll: Publisher- Pragmatic: ISBN- 13: 978-1937785338

Good Math is excellent book for software programmers who do not have formal education in Mathematics. Book covers variety of topics.

Part 1 of book starts with Pop Sci style (discussion on very light topics like Natural Numbers, Integers, etc). In Part 2, book strengthens Pop Sci style while discussing Zero, Golden Ratio, etc. In Part 3, book is at its epitome for Pop Sci style while discussing about Roman Numerals, Egyptian Fraction, and Continued Fraction.

Part 4 diverges from Pop Sci and ventures into realm of Logic and Programming. Discussion about Logic (with reference to Mr. Spock of Star Trek is superb). Part 5 prepares readers to take a dive into Set Theory which is fantastic. Lastly, Part 6 enters into kingdom of Lambda Calculus.

Though book has some flaws (like In Chapter 13, mathematical notation is used but basic introduction in provided in chapter 16) but no one is perfect.

I would like to see some talk around Prime numbers, infinity, and infinitesimal in Pop Sci part.

Good Math inspired me to extend my ninth grader/sophomore blog post to include Lambda calculus apart from other software topics.

Good Math is certainly going to live long on my bookshelf.

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Further reading: I am not aware of any other book which covers topic of mathematics and computers in similar fashion as Good Maths. Only one book I can think of near to style and concept of Good Maths is Understanding Computation: From Simple Machines to Impossible Programs  by Tom Stuart.

One can get more information about book and related topics from:

1. Mark’s blog: http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/
2. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Math-Computation-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/1937785335
3. Publisher -- Pragmatic http://pragprog.com/book/mcmath/good-math