General Blog January 06 2012

Love of my Life.......

That was just another normal working day, perfect weather, food and tasks. I have wondering how my mom is progressing with the new smart phone that my dad gifted her. Probably over the time I was quiet least bothered about her activities how she is using all of the features of the phone. Well that evening I was over the call with my Fiancée and we were just talking about all the fun we had how we grew up and also talking about the new phone which my mom is recently using. As time went by I was just giving a kidding talk that my mom often insists us to tech her some computer literature and help her to balance her English fluency well, where me along my bro would just ignore at times not concentrate much on that in the hour time. To my surprise she stopped me and very sympathetically asked “Anoop how can you do this to your mom?, are you not aware that she is the one who gave you the basic of everything in your life, from your kindergarten to school until you left home?” there I was totally mind struck, thrown away, totally guilty of myself. I know I dint stop ignoring my mom completely but this talk with my fiancée was a true eye opener for me. I realized and I said yes dear that’s very true. This isn’t me, this is not how I used to be either. Soon after the conversation ended I thought to share my guilty thought with my Bro and text him “Dude you remember our mom was the one who taught us A,B,C,D…. until we started reading paragraphs and helped us write comprehensives. but often times we ignored her to help her with her  basic computers and some English literary.” Oh to my pleasant surprise guess what my brother text me in return to the convero,”Dude what happen why so senti all of the sudden?”  I replied him “brother you realize it?” and there was another lovely reply from him for the conversation we had, ”Dude, I never ignored her man.” Following with “She is the love of my life.” Wow how generous. I truly realized that no love in this world can be so compassionate to a mothers love. Here’s what followed up the week after I turned over to my native I completely started helping my mom in every simple aspects and just realized I had never ignored doing this earlier but was only the weird thought literally I had in mind.  

with lots of Love,

Anoop Baalu

Business Analyst Task NOV192012

Getting on Board!

It’s getting curious day-to-day binding with the title as a Business Analyst. You know that how the possibilities are for a BA and either the limitations, it’s definite task of a BA to decide upon the boundaries of the software that can actually be delivered to customers besides their requirements. Yes, despite all the various brain storming sessions to the stake holder meetings it’s always the BA who actually has to resonate and pipes the project to existence. It’s a lime light show where actually the essence of a BA is felt. Today was a complete different day at office, as earlier I was discussing upon the naïve BI tool, I am going to take the total ownership and represent the BA role for the upcoming version of the BI tool.

As getting on board I was to finalize the complete documentation along brain storming and conceptualization hand in hand with the architecture board. Software requirements and methodologies are ever changing as ever growing, I was looking over the internet to get the update on the available strategies for software re-engineering, since our naïve BI was on version upgrade. I realized that the Software validation tools, testing tools along the V-Shaped SDLC would be the best suit to proceed with the development and other modules. This is because we had a lot of varieties of bugs in all our previous releases and at the client implementations too. The V model along with retrace ability matrix testing would help us get a full pledged output bringing down the bug history to an extent.

Okay I have downloaded few SRS and FRD’s to jet start the project update you often on the tasks I am hooking with, and good luck to me.

See you guys!

Business Analyst Task BATNOV172012

How would you prefer to do an analysis over the sales people? I had a short of data, not even piled up for over a year period. This was indeed tough for me to get over since forecasting was definitely an indefinite solution for now. I had to google over the net to find the relation or the actual formulae to get a clear shot in-order to proceed ahead with the forecasting. To my luck there were some handfuls depicts to sort the problem out. First and foremost I had to find the sales team and later sales rep, following region, brand and all other stuffs associated to the forecast, after getting all the relevant data that has meet the prerequisite I had to work with the formulae, though sales forecast often relies on the forgoing events rather than present data I on my own worked on few constants depicting the picture of the future and applied it to the Total Sales Amount by .05, .08 and .15 variances. Let’s say if Total Sales Amount for the fiscal year is resulting at $400000 and Net profit of $35000 I am looking at the Total Sales Amount as a predictable event and applying it to my constants

(i)                 Sales forecast @ 0.05 %

=(((400000*0.05)/100)*100) + Total Sales Amount

(ii)               Sales forecast @ 0.08%

=(((400000*0.08)/100)*100) + Total Sales Amount

(iii)             Sales forecast @ 0.15%

=(((400000*0.15)/100)*100) + Total Sales Amount

Over the above case I would consider the constants as a dynamic value which is dependable upon the client to choose their forecasting based on the previous trends. This forecasting is only a blind analysis I tried to perform over the naïve BI tool I was exploring with. There are lot more features that need to be unlocked using the daily day-to-day mathematical and statistical methods to make this BI tool and outstanding one in the market.

Keep you guys updated on the forefront development on the BI I am exploring with. Good bye for now.

Waiting suggestions. Bye 

Business Analyst Task Code: BATNOV162012

I got an opportunity to explore one of my company’s native products which is a Business Intelligence tool. Since I am already familiar with few of BI tools such as Qlikview, Tibco Spotfire, MS CRM Dashboard, I took this chance to explore the in-depth of the naïve tool that my organization is developing. I have no outstanding or out of curiosity words to describe it but rather it’s another BI which had its own methodology in analyzing the data loaded into it.

I noticed that the tool didn’t have a setup wizard for the first time users and navigation was quiet scattered. Eventually I had no clue to where to begin or get started with the tool. I somehow managed to perform operations since I was there in company now and then absorbing the development team’s activities. Well security was so mannerly placed, scopes for each of the roles were easy to define and mapping users to modules were also done using the simple check box. This gave me the similar thought that this security module had been morphed from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Well going forward data management was either not so much complicated but it’s tough for a layman to understand the productivity of the data management.  As of you all know that data management plays a vital role in forming the entire BI reports or dashboard I found the data management module pretty easy or telling it clean it was “fun”.  Moving from there I landed in the cockpit where I need to familiarize all the terminologies for each different modules and some haw managed to build all modules only keeping in assumptions that I would find a wonderful dashboard in the end of all these activities. Absolutely as said I found the dashboard come magnificently, but users still need to analyze or repeatedly need to come back in order to familiarize with the functions.

Data insights are yet another mind crowded functionality of any BI, and yes this naïve BI tool I was working had beautifully drafted me into the core data analysis, it by itself finds the relationship between scattered data and maps it by showing a clean understanding of the data and the aftermath.

Here we go, this is another opportunity I grabbed in-order to horn my BA skills. Beside I also worked into different mathematical and statistical functions.

My review to conclude is that, this tool requires a lot of attention towards the UI, interactivity between the user and the product, Help modules and Wizards to help users understand the outcome of their data.  

Business Analyst - Profiling youself

Profiling the best fit solutions for different Business atmosphere would be one of the best aftermaths for a perfect Business Analyst. I have been stacking myself into this career close to half a decade, though my experience are an inexperience what the experienced mammoths call, but I have learned how a technology can play a significant role in Businesses and Enterprises.  Consulting is an important orientation that a Business Analyst can provide for the consumers particularly when an Enterprise looks for a far better solution preferred over the existing one. His/hers view should negotiate  from the baseline for outlining a solution to the security aspects, interoperability, Domain, User Administration, customizability and complete extent-ability, these aspects should fit for Web solution to Applications running over the Web or domain specific applications.

From the conceptualization to the prototyping, an UI and Web designs plays a crucial role in giving comfort to the clients, I would say a perfect, principal UI layout with all proper standards can be the first step in acceptance for a project to move ahead. A Business Analyst should forte from the client location mesmerizing and capturing properly all the business flows, disciplines, existing flaws, handshake methods, repetitive steps, authorities, user roles and most importantly the systems boundaries. Once all these gives a complete picture then the BA can start building the Business Plan along other required documentation for both the Client and Development cycles.

As discussed earlier the BA’s most strategic input as a consultant should be a parallel input throughout the complete Software development lifecycle’s of a project. These inputs should not restrict a BA only from the stakeholder but also from the multilevel users who actually use the system. Keep in mind this would suit for most of the Agile development projects where the actual requirement change over the time. BA’s should always have a lookout for the best solutions available in the market to ensure that what they deliver have the maximum throughput whenever compared.  

Coming to the development lifecycle a BA should have a timely lookout to ensure that the product developed is in phase with the requirement analyzed from the client end, over which he should also ensure periodic meetings to show the clients or customers the stages of development happening at the development center. Every meeting would definitely move with certain change requirement accordingly with the client, this the BA’s should ensure to properly document the Versions and change management are captured.

Ensuring a promised deliverable is what holds the fidelity of every Business Analyst. For this the BA’s would need to closely work with different designated co-workers comforting them and along with the client’s requirement are met. Working with deadlines and dates are yet other critical events, at this time BA’s as a Consultant should go hand-in-hand with Project Managers and Technical Leads who actually ensure to deliver the project in time. Executing Test cases are once again an imperative task for a BA, for this a BA has a variety of options to test the applications I am not talking much on this since Testing is once again a multitalented activity which builds the confidentiality for the complete system build.

So here’s to conclude, being just a BA on any project is a mere task but providing consulting in delivering the best solution and keeping up in par with the global needs is what a complete Business Analyst profession is all about.

Feel free to comment.

About.me/AnoopBaalu

Inscribing Yourself - You & Your Identity

Since beginning of mankind to the nonexistence of species once ruled the earth Identity marks an important event, say it an realm of existence in this Universe.

There are so many controversial theories that existed and denoted that keeping up with your true identity is utmost the toughest character to discipline mankind. Yes and that's true. It's very hard to self demonstrate oneness, or harder to be self made. all people should be wise enough to differentiate between self-made and self-sustained.

Self-made and self-sustained are more over interrelated at most of times but keeping them bay is where both the proportions produce two different outcomes. Lets talk about self-made, every human being needs to learn from others and reproduce what have been thought to the universe, this outcome differs from person to person. Kids from same school study the same portions and come from a different background which in turn adds a different flavorsome to both these identity. Some understand easily, for some its difficult, some present good vocabulary some lack, similar to this there is difference in each magnitude of the response what comes out from the individual. Now self-made is the one who collects all these interests from the intellectuals and reproduce them the exact same way. He never overcomes neither justify himself for what he does. He is so much prolonged and happy with what he contributes and never bother to think beyond what can the other side of the analysis be. But still this person too leads a win-win strategy. Its easy to identify these people since the competition that's prevailing around makes them to easily drain off from the odd. These self-made personalities are often dependent on others for their inputs which in turn keeps their profile low and confidence too. Self-made are mirrors in my views who doesn't dare to cross the boundaries which laid in-front of them.

Talking about self-sustained individuals it's again tougher explain and harder to understand. These individuals are the same as above(self-made) but anchor themselves in a much different way. These individuals often try to hold the same phenomenon in absorbing things but produce a different outcome, often these resources are sourced themselves as Sales, Administration, VP's and Management subsidies. It's not that all the top management people represent this bunch of folks, but they are over the time molded from a self-made to a self-sustained individual. Since organizations only welcome people who do things differently in favoring to what the Organization actually expects.

So there of you who are reading my blog, it's easy to make out to which theory you belong?

Good luck all. Happy reading

Weekends at my uncle's place

It's been month I used to travel all my weekends to my uncle's place. food, fun and chat were the ultimate time we used to spend out there. My uncle was my mentor, guide, philosophical guru to me over the times I shifted to Chennai, he always used to give clear views over my profile, well ultimately I wanted to share this texture of the tree in front of my uncle's home, have a look and enjoy!