Unplanning

3-4 years ago, as part of the business climate evaluation and 5 year planning exercise for the company, we came up with scenarios on how to tackle the situation where the rupee would hit 34 against the USD.

Today, the rupee is at 52.

How can the world's best economists and planners and financial wizards have got it so wrong?

And indeed, if things are so difficult to forecast after all algorithms, ideas and efforts put into it, why and how can we afford to do so much planning and execution based on it?

In the software development world, more and more companies and customers are realising the benefits of keeping it simple, agile and responsive. We do not buidl software for the future any more, we keep it live, we design it to be agile and easy to adapt to changing requirements, and focus on what today's user wants today!

Shouldn't we do the same in business planning? Isn't it better to focus more on the situation, see how it impacts business, and be prepared for frequent course corrections, instead of spending efforts on looking into a future that is guaranteed to keep changing?

Unplan. Get agile. Get ready to move. Fast. Survive and prosper.

Gamification

Gamification is the process of using game-based mechanics to make ordinary business process and data visualizations more interesting, fun, and effective at the same time. Most "gamifications" today involve giving badges and points for tasks completed, and some basic social networking. I believe this is an early trend that will quickly outlive its usefulness and attraction. However, the process of gamification itself is here to stay, and more and more Enterprises and application developers will begin to see the huge value in learning from Angry Birds and Farmville, and applying it to everyday problems.

User Experiences

User experiences on tablets, especially from a point of view of input gestures, are every different compared to the desktop/laptop experience. It is a big mistake to believe that users will be happy as long as the application runs in a browser, or can be easily ported to the OS/platform supported by the tablet. On tablets, users use completely different gestures like swipe and multi-touch, not double click and right click! It is necessary to keep this in mind when you port your application to a tablet, and engineer/design your application to support these new gestures.

NASSCOM LaunchPAD

Off to Bangalore tonight for the NASSCOM LaunchPAD event tomorrow at the Taj Gateway, where we will be launching eMee - one of the 10 products selected for this prestigious event out of 60+ aspirants! Watch out for updates....

Criminal Minds

You can learn a lot about what makes great teams from watching my favourite crime series, Criminal Minds...

Standing up for your team members, and standing by your leader
Allowing each team member to focus on what they do best, building on individual strengths...
And yet, being able to move on when one team member goes away
Allowing team members to maintain their individuality
Unquestioned loyalty and respect to the team lead - but that doesn't mean you cannot question
And as a leader, heeding the advice and suggestions from your team members...
... but taking complete ownership for the results when things go wrong
Being there for each other in their moments of weakness, but giving them their space when they need it
Revelling in each other's success, sharing losses
One Minute Management - clear goal setting, clear recognition of good work, one min reprimands
No tolerance for indiscipline, yet complete tolerance for individuality

Needless to say, it's one of the best crime series too!