Data visualization

In one of blog of Forbes India, blogger, NS Ramnath is talking about lateral hiring in big daddies of IT service industries. He collected data about and movement of laterals from Linkedin. In his this blog entry Ramnath has given a offer that if someone can come up with better infograpic, he will publish at his blog.

I thought of, let’s have a try. Before coming to actual infograapic, I noted down few ground rule:
1. Infograpic should be easy to understand
2. Infographic should have data arrangement in such a fashion that machine based analysis can be done on that information.

First I collected all available data present in the blog entry (purposefully not extracted more data from Linkedin or other sources) and compiled in tabular format.

To make data more presentable, I eliminated the datapoints which have gaps on data line, namely data pertaining to Accenture and Oracle. Also tried to extract some information from raw data and result is:

Now to depict the employee movement and gain/loss of company, I came up with following infograpic:

If you have any other idea, let’s publish it.

Book Review: Oracle E-Business Suite Financials R12: A Functionality Guide

Book Review: Oracle E-Business Suite Financials R12: A Functionality Guide by Mohan Iyer: Publisher- Packt: ISBN- 13: 978-1849680622 

Oracle E Business Suite Financial R12: A Functionality guide is first which covers functionality of R12 (Financial) end to end. Mohan, Author of book is running a implementation and training business which has helped in shaping the book.

Book is targeted to middle level executives who understand business processes. Due to its target audiences, Mohan has assumed that reader of this book has prior knowledge of Oracle product suite which may not be true in most of cases because business is not Oracle shop.

On the technical front again author has also assumed that reader has understanding of underlying technical aspects like flexfield.

Book covers functionality part of Oracle Financial R12 in sufficient depth and good read for one who has Oracle product exposure.

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 book from publisher for review.

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

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-E-Business-Suite-Financials-Functionality/dp/1849680620 

2. Publisher: Packt - http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-ebusiness-suite-financials-r12-functionality-guide/book 

3. Author’s site: http://www.fscpsolutions.com/

Book Review: REST API Design Rulebook

Book Review: REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Massé: Publisher- O'Reilly: ISBN- 13: 978-1449310509

I am working in designing API for a system, so combing the internet for some ready to use material and references. During that search REST API Design Rulebook got discovered. Strangely, I discovered very few reviews of the book and either they were highly negative or positive. This prompted me to read the book.

Book is short and sweet and layout the rules of REST API in nice and concise fashion. Mark has introduces WRML (http://www.wrml.org) framework which he has developed and certainly passionate about. I will not comment on WRML and its utility but if someone is smart enough to separate seed from chaff, book is excellent rule 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. Top two are RESTful Web Services Cookbook: Solutions for Improving Scalability and Simplicity , Service Design Patterns: Fundamental Design Solutions for SOAP/WSDL and RESTful Web Services .

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

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/REST-Design-Rulebook-Mark-Masse/dp/1449310508
2. Publisher -- Oreilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021575.do
3. First Review: http://ederandresan.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-review-of-rest-api-design-rulebook.html
4. One more review: http://packetfury.net/index.php/en/blog/reviews/198-rest-api-design-rulebook-by-mark-masse-oreilly-media
5. Positive Review: http://www.bennadel.com/blog/2324-REST-API-Design-Rulebook-By-Mark-Masse.htm
6. Comment on coderanch: http://www.coderanch.com/t/561097/Web-Services/java/REST-API-Design-Rulebook-star
7. Negative Review: http://greenicicleblog.com/2011/12/03/rest-api-design-rulebook-a-waste-of-e-ink

Depiction of complex information and relationship among data points

McKinsey Global Institute’s report on global workers – The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people – June 2012 which describes labour spread in very comprehensive way. Déjà vu, I want inforgrabic which can depict relationship among age, education, spread in education, spread in age, and number of workers of countries surveyed. Despite of full of infograpics and comprehensive information, report does not have this information. The closest infograpic which can fit into the bill was Exhibit E3.

Exhibit E3 in the report depicts relationship among:
1. Median Worker Age
2. Education Index
3. Number of workers
for each country in year 2010.

But I was looking for
1. Spread in Workers’ Age 2.
Spread in Workers’ Education
3. Number of Workers
for each country, yearly basis.

Now the real question. It is not the exhibit; I am looking for but the way to represent this complex relationship concise manner with least clutter and with minimum number of exhibits.

So here are my thoughts:

This infographic represents

1. Spread in Workers’ Age
2. Spread in Workers’ Education
3. Number of Workers

for each country in a given year.

This infographic depicts relationship among:
1. Spread in Workers’ Education
2. Number of Workers

for each country, yearly basis.

I am sure there are better way to depict complex relationship. If you have one, share with world.

Note: Purpose of this blog entry is to just demonstrate that how to represent complex information/relationships among data point. Not to finding faults with any one. You can download fantastic report from Mackinsey here.

Book Review: Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook

Book Review: Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook by Pete Wang: Publisher- Packt: ISBN- 13: 978-1849685443

Oracle BAM 11gR1 Handbook talks about the subject in very concise and efficient manner. Pete has assumed that reader of this book will be having basic knowledge of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and SOA Suite in particular which is fair.

First chapter touches the architectural aspects but literally it touches. If book has given the deep dive that might have added more value to it. Book should have covered data model of BAM in detail.

Book focuses on hands on and how which is good for beginners but experienced are also interested in why as well. Book is helpful in understanding of features of Oracle BAM 11g.

Chapters on testing and High Availability cover the topics which will help many readers.

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: Oracle BPM Suite 11g Developer's cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-BPM-Suite-Developers-cookbook) is complementary book.

One can get more information about book and related topics from:
1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-11gR1-Handbook-Pete-Wang/dp/1849685444
2. Publisher – Packtpub: http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-business-activity-monitoring-11gr1-handbook/book 
3. Virtual m/c and appliance download for Oracle Fusion 11g: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/learnmore/vmsoa-172279.html
4. Oracle Fusion Middleware Documentation Library: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12839_01/index.htm

Book Review: Architecting Mobile Solutions for the Enterprise

Book Review: Architecting Mobile Solutions for the Enterprise by Dino Esposito: Publisher- Microsoft Press: ISBN- 13: 978-0735663022

This book is about paradigm shift in computing – from desktop to mobile devices from an architect perspective. Though book is from Microsoft Press but Dino is fairly unbiased in his analysis and presentation of facts.

Book is divided into three parts: Going Mobile, Mobile Sites and Mobile Applications. Each part very nicely covers architectural aspects of mobile solution in concise fashion.

In Going Mobile part Dino discusses mobile strategy and comparison between mobile application and site.

Mobile Site parts reveals intricacies of Mobile sites in four different chapters. Dino has introduced HTML5 and jQuery.

Mobile Application part covers two major mobile platform – Apple iOS and Android. Since book is from Microsoft, so Windows platform has its own chapter. PhoneGap also has its own chapter.

Over all Dino has taken very balance approach while discussing development of Mobile Apps.

This book is certainly a read for any software architect who is involved in Mobile Strategy and/or development decisions.

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: I was not able to find any competing books though there is lot of material scattered across internet on Mobile Strategy One can get more information about book and related topics from:

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Architecting-Mobile-Solutions-Enterprise-Esposito/dp/0735663025

2. Oreilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145336224.do

3. Microsoft: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2012/05/29/new-book-architecting-mobile-solutions-for-the-enterprise.aspx

4. Extending Enterprise Applications to Mobile Devices: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb985493.aspx

Distributed Teams and Scrum

With outsourcing in vogue and Scrum/Agile methodology in full wind, how to get benefits of both? This is the question asked by each customer and each out sourcing company, product owner, scrum master, pig, chicken and virtually every stake holder.

A distributed scrum looks like:

With Distributed teams two more variables get added to SDLC, so the SCUM based development. These are reduction in communication richness and time difference. Being to be true engineer, let understand one at a time and then draw a unified picture.

On the scale of communication richness, different communication medium can be depicted as:

In distributed team, richness of communication needs to be maintained to compensate impossibility of face to face communication.

Apart of presence of communication of medium, team should have access to communication modes at all time to reduce time and resource consumption in arranging and finding access to communication medium. A pig or chicken should not be spending time in requesting for conference room, looking for shared telephone, etc. Instead she should be focusing on her core tasks.

To further enhance the person to person comfort level, each stake holder should be posting her photo graph – not place holder in contact details ( like email, self-introduction, etc.).

To answer time difference, team should have some overlap across geo locations. This certainly reduces wait time for each stake holder. With overlap, distributed teams handover the task smoothly and burn out to team members can be avoided.

To unify the both factors, discussed above, each location can run scrum separately and one scrum of scrum certainly helps to keep all horses of chariot aligned.

To further enhance personal rapport, distributed team can have rotation policy which enables each team member to have chance to develop personal relationship with other member. Product owner should be traveling to distributed locations on regular interval.

The above mentioned measure should result in integrated scrums.

The path charted above surely will help in running distributed team in effective and efficient manner to deliver extra ordinary results.