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Amir Nasiri

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Should we standardize?

 

The purpose of standardization is to compare things or people with a known standard. Standards can be found throughout our daily lives but why do we need them?

Rather than asking why we need standards, we might usefully ask ourselves what the world would be like without standards.

Products might not work as expected. They may be of inferior quality and incompatible with other equipment, in fact they may not even connect with them, and in extreme cases; non-standardized products may even be dangerous. 

Standardized products and services are valuable User ‘confidence builders’, being perceived as:

• safe
• healthy
• secure
• high quality
• flexible

As a result, standardized goods and services are widely accepted, commonly trusted and highly valued.

Standards provide the foundation for many of the innovative communication features and options we have come to take for granted, and they contribute to the enhancement of our daily lives – often invisibly.

We need look no further for evidence than the GSM™ standard which facilitates mobile communication the world over between (for example):

• friends and relations
• hospitals
• business
• schools
• industry
• emergency services
• airports
• governments

ICT standards are vital for efficient manufacturing:

• contribute to better regulation
• enable multi-market access
• create active markets
• encourage innovation
• improve communication

Standardization brings important benefits to business including a solid foundation upon which to develop new technologies and an opportunity to share and enhance existing practices.

Standardization also plays a pivotal role in assisting Governments, Administrations, Regulators and the legal profession as legislation, regulation and policy initiatives are all supported by standardization.

Regarding publishing industry, standardization ensures consistency and comparability of knowledge in terms of its quality and content and ensures objective measurement and positive evaluation of knowledge. Participants subjected to the standardization process conform to a known standard that is widely recognized as acceptable and usable.

 

The landscape of publishing industry especially for higher education books and programs varies greatly, thus causing an inconsistent environment. Factors contributing to the variability include:

 

(1) proliferation of business schools and degrees with different reputation levels,

(2) different curriculum formats with uneven content and quality,

(3) educators focusing more on research (theory) and less on profession (practice),

(4) educators having work experience more in the classroom and less in the real world,

(5) variety of admissions standards, teaching methods, and learning outcomes, and

(6) number of degree formats and specialized programs with different timelines for completion.

 

The variability creates many uncommon denominators in management education, business schools, law schools etc.. Currently, graduate business education is inconsistent in scope, size, quality, and content thus making it very difficult to compare and contrast between business schools and educational programs they offer.

 

Standardization becomes more important when things are in a constant state of flux or where one person’s knowledge cannot be compared with that of another because of very few common denominators. Until now, employers and recruiters had no objective method of evaluating and differentiating job applicants.

 

Areas to standardize:

 

1. Nomenclature or naming conventions
2. Daily processes
3. Documentation
4. Communication
5. Technology

 

If companies fail to understand the importance of standardization over period of time chaos and miscommunication will overtake and company will start to see the setback.

  

 

References:

 

Various Articles from internet

Who is a project manager and what are their responsibilities?

“Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
 
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.” (Wikipedia)

 

The Project Manager is the person responsible for ensuring that the Project Team completes the project. The Project Manager develops the Project Plan with the team and manages the team’s performance of project tasks. It is also the responsibility of the Project Manager to secure acceptance and approval of deliverables from the Project Sponsor and Stakeholders.

 

The Project Manager is responsible for communication, including status reporting, risk management, escalation of issues that cannot be resolved in the team, and, in general, making sure the project is delivered in budget, on schedule, and within scope.

 

Documentation as well as process development in order to carry out the projects are also key responsibilties of a good project manager.

 

Organizaqtions that adhere to process development, standardizations as well as continous improvement have proven to be successful and profitable. because they are check and balance in place.

Amir

 

References:

Various internet sites.

 

How to measure a web site in terms of ROI?

There are no globally agreed definitions within web analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree definitions that are useful and definitive for some time. The main bodies who have had input in this area have been Jicwebs(Industry Committee for Web Standards)/ABCe (Auditing Bureau of Circulations electronic, UK and Europe), The WAA (Web Analytics Association, US) and to a lesser extent the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). This does not prevent the following list from being a useful guide, suffering only slightly from ambiguity. Both the WAA and the ABCe provide more definitive lists for those who are declaring their statistics using the metrics defined by either.

 

Hit (internet) – A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website’s actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.

Page view – A request for a file whose type is defined as a

 

page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.

 

Visit / Session – A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit is expected to contain multiple page views.

 

First Visit / First Session – A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.

 

Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User – The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor’s computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors.

 

Repeat Visitor – A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor recency and is measured in days.

 

New Visitor – A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits.

 

Impression – An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user’s screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression.

 

Singletons – The number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of Click fraud as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to identify automatons bots).

 

Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between.

% Exit – The percentage of users who exit from a page.

Visibility time – The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner…) is viewed.

 

Session Duration – Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.

 

Page View Duration – Average amount of time that visitors spend on each page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.

Page Depth / Page Views per Session – Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session.

 

Frequency / Session per Unique – Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience.

 

I thought this was a great article:

 

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=291023

 

Amir

 

references:

 

Various websites

How to Avoid Pitfalls while managing a project?

Have you ever successfully planned a birthday party, a wedding, a charity event? If so, aside from any embarrassing moments that may have occurred, chances are you’ve got a handle on the basic project planning and management process. Interestingly, these types of projects often experience the same basic issues that large corporate projects do. Even strong, organised and experienced planners have found themselves managing a project that ends up in chaos and results in missed deadlines and budget overruns.

While certainly not an exhaustive list, the following are some common pitfalls that projects experience and some tips to help make a project more successful and avoid the potential for chaos.

Pitfall #1: Not creating a common project vision at the onset of a project

A shared vision (or goals) and expected project outcomes across key stakeholders is key to managing project efforts and avoiding scope creep.

• Involve leaders and managers in the development of the project vision and ensure that all anticipated benefits are clearly understood and agreed upon.
• Identify success criteria and be specific. For example, total project costs will not exceed a certain dollar amount and the project will be rolled out within a specifically stated timeframe.
• Define the boundaries of the project by knowing what is out of scope (as well as in scope).

Words of Wisdom: Facilitate your stakeholders to the creation of a common vision and ensure that they own the vision and the ultimate solution.

Pitfall #2: Not getting organised, staying organised and organising those around you

Strong planning and organisational skills are essential traits of a successful Project Manager.

• Develop your project plan at the task level and communicate it to your project team and stakeholders. It’s well worth the time in order to keep you and everyone else organised.
• Create a robust communication plan and make sure it’s a “living document.”
• Understand who you need to communicate with, how they want to be communicated with and the frequency. Then determine how your messaging should differ by stakeholder.
• Conduct an interactive kick-off meeting to ensure everyone involved with the project is fully engaged.
• Ask for continuous feedback and be prepared to adjust your plan to address changing stakeholder needs.
• Develop risk and issue logs. Risks and issues are a part of every project. Get ahead of the game and brainstorm with people on potential risks and ways to avoid them before they become issues that impact your project’s scope, timeframe, quality and/or budget.

Words of Wisdom: The devil is in the detail. Review your plans at least twice daily. It’s the best 15-20 minutes you’ll ever spend.

Pitfall #3: Not involving the right people on the project

• Engage the right people at all levels of your organisation (and not necessarily those who simply want to chime in because it’s a high profile project) to solidify the project vision, avoid scope creep and implement.
• Ensure that all stakeholders understand what needs to happen, how it needs to happen and when.
• Identify a project sponsor, someone with authority and influence, and have them actively involved throughout the project.
• Communicate the project vision, project team roles and responsibilities and clearly set expectations.
• Ensure your key project decision makers understand the principles of good project management and that they need to operate within that framework.
• Include frontline personnel who can be key contributors to a project. They often provide insight into the “goings-on” of an organisation and have the ability to rally the troops when the rubber meets the road and things need to get done.
• Identify the nay-sayers and keep them very involved in the project (keep your friends close and your enemies closer).

Words of Wisdom: Don’t assume that senior leaders are the only ones that should be in your sights. Keep a laser focus on decision makers and those who directly impact your project.

Pitfall #4: Not asking for help and learning from others

“Mum’s the word” is not a mantra any project manager should embrace. Project managers who are new to project management or are managing a different type of project than they’ve managed before can have a steep learning curve.

• Identify people internally who have managed a similar project and talk about lessons learned from previous projects.
• Identify external sources who can impart their own words of wisdom on how to effectively manage a project.
• The Internet is a beautiful thing, use it to research project management best practices and tools and understand new technologies.

Words of Wisdom: Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s better to ask for help then to place a project at risk. Let’s face it, every project has its ups and downs but it’s what you, as the Project Manager, do to handle the good and the bad that leads to project success and avoids project chaos.

Reference: From Internet an Article by Claudine Sirgant

How to use technology to leverage your competitive edge and have a competitive advantage?

Analyzing the environment – Five Forces Analysis

Five Forces Analysis helps the marketer to contrast a competitive environment. It has similarities with other tools for environmental audit, such as PEST analysis, but tends to focus on the single, stand alone, business or SBU (Strategic Business Unit) rather than a single product or range of products. For example, Dell would analyse the market for Business Computers i.e. one of its SBUs.

Five forces analsysis looks at five key areas namely the threat of entry, the power of buyers, the power of suppliers, the threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry.

The threat of entry.

• Economies of scale e.g. the benefits associated with bulk purchasing.
• The high or low cost of entry e.g. how much will it cost for the latest technology?
• Ease of access to distribution channels e.g. Do our competitors have the distribution channels sewn up?
• Cost advantages not related to the size of the company e.g. personal contacts or knowledge that larger companies do not own or learning curve effects.
• Will competitors retaliate?
• Government action e.g. will new laws be introduced that will weaken our competitive position?
• How important is differentiation? e.g. The Champagne brand cannot be copied. This desensitises the influence of the environment.

The power of buyers.

• This is high where there a few, large players in a market e.g. the large grocery chains.
• If there are a large number of undifferentiated, small suppliers e.g. small farming businesses supplying the large grocery chains.
• The cost of switching between suppliers is low e.g. from one fleet supplier of trucks to another.

The power of suppliers.

The power of suppliers tends to be a reversal of the power of buyers.

• Where the switching costs are high e.g. Switching from one software supplier to another.
• Power is high where the brand is powerful e.g. Cadillac, Pizza Hut, Microsoft.
• There is a possibility of the supplier integrating forward e.g. Brewers buying bars.
• Customers are fragmented (not in clusters) so that they have little bargaining power e.g. Gas/Petrol stations in remote places.

The threat of substitutes

• Where there is product-for-product substitution e.g. email for fax Where there is substitution of need e.g. better toothpaste reduces the need for dentists.
• Where there is generic substitution (competing for the currency in your pocket) e.g. Video suppliers compete with travel companies.
• We could always do without e.g. cigarettes.

Competitive Rivalry

• This is most likely to be high where entry is likely; there is the threat of substitute products, and suppliers and buyers in the market attempt to control. This is why it is always seen in the center of the diagram.

How to design a competitive web site?

Free Web Tools

I thought you will like these web sites as well. Most of them should be free please always read the footnotes carefully.

Please note these are 3^rd party web site and I don’t have any affiliation or partnership. Any usage by you or your company or anyone else is at your own discretion and I or my company bears no responsibility or liability. You are using it at your own risk.

1. Any kind of templates you need anything from writing a business plan, financial plan, a Will or any legal non-legal documentation and templates free at your disposal from the God Father itself: Microsoft

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx

2. If you want to have conference call with multiple users in different locations.

http://www.freeconferencecall.com/index.asp

3. Access to Web Page:

http://webpages.charter.net/bobalston/Documents/Microsoft%20Access%20Developer%20Transition%20to%20Internet.htm

http://www.asp.net/community/projects/

4. Steps to Creating a Simple Form in FrontPage 2002:

http://www.microsoftfrontpage.com/content/ARTICLES/dbpower.html#_Toc517024652

5. To create Surveys

http://www.surveymonkey.com/Default.aspx

6. To have share calendar. This tool is very useful if you want to use it for your social club so you can share meetings or dates of events with all the members:

http://www.my.calendars.net

7. Share PowerPoint presentations without email attachments

http://www.authorgen.com/authorpoint-lite-free/powerpoint-to-flash-converter.aspx

or slide share

http://www.slideshare.net/

8. Designing Flash Design

http://www.5min.com/Category/Arts/Digital

9. List of some free Applications

http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/find-the-difference.htm

10. Free Desktop remote connection must have skype installed. You can remotely connect to someone PC and have control. Both parties need to have Skype and Yugma on their desktop or laptop.

https://www.yugma.com/share_skype.php

11. To set-up a meeting web site for your cluc, social club or non-profit agency

www.meetup.com

12. Free Gantt Chart application to show the progress of your project

http://www.ganttproject.biz/

13. Free Blog page for any kind of blogger

http://wordpress.org/

14. All Kind of great free tools from www.google.com

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

I mainly use Book Search, Picassa and Groups