" Leaders don’t force people to follow, they invite them on a journey ! "

The year 2011 has been filled with many milestones for us at Railsfactory. We had the pleasure of servicing more clients at different service offerings. Our engagement with each of them has been so fulfilling and learning too. There are some milestones that we crossed in this year in our journey that will stand out . Among them are ...

1. We have expanded in geographies and opened our second branch in Chennai to meet our growing customer engagements

2. We are Railsfactory LLC in USA ! To service some of our perineal engagements and the elevate our brand confidence we have forayed to set office in US as a step towards servicing them onsite.

3. We have an immensely healthy order pipeline that will keep us busy until July 2012. This is a resultant effort of a stellar marketing team supported by Business Analysts from various domains like Mobile solutions and Saas. They are geared to working on quick turnarounds catering to customer specific requirements.

4. To match this growth we have added new members to our growing family and will shortly cross 150+ in India . At Railsfactory we differentiate ourself in aligning individual expectations with that of corporate vision.

4. We have established a competency center on Mobile applications development that cater to customer needs on development in Iphone apps, Android Apps and HTML5 . This is resultant of growing demand from our customers and as we have gained adequate experience developing apps we felt the need to have a dedicated development center for this.

5. The HR is focused on building a culture that makes Workplace as fun. Providing plans for career enhancement activities, mentoring sessions and team building activities and fun with team.

6. We are on the way to becoming the worlds largest resource center on Ruby on Rails in 2012 . We have some committed plans to strengthen the Ruby community in India too with hosting community events. We would like to invite you to join hands with us in this exciting journey as we step into 2012. !

Happy New Year

2011 has been the year of Ecommerce witnessing explosive growth. ( http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-17/news/30528766_1_e-commerce-smartphone-sales-4g ) The Forrester Research forecast quotes by 2015, online retail sales in US alone will exceed $250 Billion and account for more than 8% of the total sales. ( http://4.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-1.08.09-PM.png ) . One of the leading indicators of this trend are the increasing valuations of social coupon sites, increasing popularity of deals and bargains and customers using such deals.. All these online retailers need vital information on users and their campaigns to effectively manage traffic to their sites. This is possible with building executive dashboards integrating their systems.

An executive dashboard is an online interface that displays the key performance indicators (KPIs) that corporate officers need to effectively run an enterprise/ online business. This is a graphical user interface (GUI) that organizes and presents information in a format that is easy to read and interpret. Aggregating Information from multiple sources and feeds onto a single graphical intuitive dashboard will provide a great insight to the entrepreneur and business executives on performance. Executive dashboards aren’t just for the CEO and CFO’s instead, managers need executive dashboards so that they can quickly make decisions based on moves in the market instead of waiting around for the CFO to get back from lunch so that he or she can examine the data and make a decision…after the opportunity has passed. The faster you can make decisions, the more efficient and the more successful your business will be in this increasingly faster paced business world that we live in.

Understanding customer requirements and key performance indicators serves as a vital input for determining the elements of the Executive dashboard. Integrating Social media and linking marketing initiatives to it serves to make the dashboard robust and realtime. Similarly including not only social but also mobile elements to the entire equation will make the dashboard ubiquitous. Our experience in integrating executive dashboards goes way back from 2009. We have tremendous competency in building extensive executive dashboards for Realty sector and Ecommerce. They serve as a critical enabler for decision support systems.

If you are an online retailer or a business looking to build a dashboard that helps you effectively manage your online assets pls talk to our team. We would be happy to discuss further on how executive dashboard can be a value differentiator to you and your team .

A master story teller has always captured our imagination during childhood. Stories told by our mom and dad , by friends have been a key influencer in our formative years. We have sought inspiration on stories at school, home and at work in building key input for our system. Stories have a powerful impact on the communication. Back in 1893 one dark man was thrown out of a train bound to Pretoria at the Pieter Maritzberg Railway Station just because he was on the first class compartment that was mentioned for whites. A small story that was the beginning of a major "Ahimsa (non-violent) " struggle in the history of the world. Today world over Ahimsa is a powerful phenomenon. Good or Bad, Stories by itself have been a powerful vehicle to boost communication of the message that we intend to pass to our listeners. And the power of story telling is a key enabler in effective communications.

Corporate world particularly IT has taken a great affinity for Storytelling. Right from building requirements based on user stories to playing real life scenarios to comply with business perspectives, stories are used to make a point across to listeners and as stories it becomes easier to remember and has lasting impact on listeners compared to abstract points. Today there are a lot of project management models where user stories form a key input to building solutions.

A lot of startups and entrepreneurs have a powerful and compelling story behind its formation. Be it the infamous Steve Jobs Speech at Stanford or Randy Paush's " The Last Lecture " at the Carnegie Mellon or stories behind formation of Facebook, Reliance or Infosys, there is always a real life story that relates emotionally with the entrepreneur that led to the formation of the enterprise. Such stories tap into human emotions and connects a strong bond between the story teller and the listener. Stories tend to make it meaningful for people who build upon it. Organizations need to have compelling stories to align with their vision and collective purpose for achieving the larger goals. As leaders we need to be great story tellers and always lookout for that compelling story that can further our purpose and goals.

Project Managers / Product Managers need to acquire story telling skills to capture market opportunity , user requirements and how solutions seem to address market pain points effectively. Today's agile development models are shaped on user stories as vital input not just for writing requirements but also to talk about users and for building effective solutions. User Stories tend to shift the focus from writing about features to talking about them.

Every organization works towards vision with evolved mission. We build goals that are aligned with the shared vision of the company . We adopt strategies to work towards this collective ambition . Organizational culture is the more powerful force in an organization. It is the common thread that binds all employees to works towards a common goal. We align our teams to targets based on this. Organizational culture is effective when we put "people first " approach to it. Here are a few steps on how this can be achieved ...

1. Communicate Shared vision across the length and breadth of the organization ! Team leaders, Projects heads, Delivery managers are key to communicate shared vision to your team. They are the key drivers of the organizational culture in your team.

2. Try to invite as many people to come and join you on the shared purpose . Some might not join you in the pursuit but please don't take it personal. As a leader you need to keep your focus on the overall vision and people who passionately believe in it will invariably join you.

3. Translate collective ambitions into positive energy ! Set milestones that you can achieve at your own pace and don't compare progress with others. Have a small rewarding mechanism as you achieve target milestones in the longer journey. Build a sense of integrity around the leaders who power the journey.

4. Dont allow energy vampires in your team sap all positive energy away ! (ie.. Energy Vampires are those that provide negative comments and beat you down ) People are always hungry for positive change and a fresh sense of purpose and passion. Lead the change with this in mind.

5. As you progress make it a point to have fun . The entire purpose of the journey is not just reaching the destination but having fun in the process that makes it worthwhile and memorable.

The net result of all this would be to create an atmosphere where members can thrive and execute their job effectively ! If this is achieved then organizational culture will automatically find its way.

As we gaze through the Technology and Mobile landscape for trends that are emerging we find some patterns in the services that are getting launched and the Mobile apps that are gaining vast popularity. Doing a drill down of what exactly as features that seems to attract a lot of eyeballs we have found a few specific features that have application.

Here are a few a features that bring relevance.

1. Retail market is an emerging industry where mobile and tablet devices seem to be making silent penetration. Within this domain solutions and mobile apps are being built on tracking Real-time Inventory Management and Reporting . Use of QR Codes, Bardcodes enables mobile devices to acts as data capturing devices

2. Cashless Payment delivery mechanisms NFC as a concept and NFC enable mobile devices are increasing in the market . Digital wallets are becoming a market differentiator among product developers.

3. Gone are the days when people used to wait to get to office or home to check their information or reports . Today the corporate yuppies are always mobile, more and more Access to information is on mobile one of the key indicators of this trend is rising share of smartphones in the market that is being used for accessing productivity applications like Email, twitter, facebook so on

4. Accurate incident management What stated as a gaming passion of checking into places has become an integral part of most of our daily activity. Pinning to location information brings larger insight to data in newer ways . Sice most of the devices today have GPS capabilities as well as mobile signal triangulation features this kind of locational information sharing is possible at all levels.

5. As more and more apps and business applications get deployed for thin devices developers see an emergent need to provide intuitive and Consistent User Experience within their systems

6. ECommerce and MCommerce is on a boom and we are likely to see more robust models for Virtualisation of shopping experience .

7. As Egovernance models seems to be rapidly evolving with agenda for digital inclusion there is a large volume of work that goes towards Digitisation of data

This was a part of presentation deck that was delivered to new employees on the Best practices of Social media as a Policy followed by the employees in Railsfactory. As a part of their orientation program they are made aware of the do's and don'ts at Social Media during the tenure here. Training for newly joined employees is being conducted at the new HQ of Railsfactory at Chennai. We will post pictures of the same once we complete the shifting process. As for now all of us are excited as we go to a higher trajectory putting the company at a aggressive growth curve. Day by day the office is becoming an exciting place to be with smaller tweaks and improvements that make employees comfortable. More about this soon !

In our forthcoming Post we might write a dedicated post on how Railsfactory adopted Agile for execution of shifting its operations to the Corporate Headquarters at Chennai. Right from aligning strategic vision (our requirement of growing 3X), building a priority list to being agile to change this has been a very interesting transformation for us. More in details soon.

As the world is moving towards the Internet of Things there is lot of emerging technologies that are being used to empower the internet of things. First there were barcodes followed by QR Codes, Then RFID tags and now NFC Tags. NFC (Near Field Communication) as the name suggest is about communication at close spaces (working in the ranges between 4cm. and 20cm. ) For a successful communication to take place there needs to be two devices at proximity of which one is a ' Reader ' and the other is a ' tag ' . One is used to store the data while the other reads the data. Nowadays mobile phones have capability to act as "reader" for NFC and in some cases also acts as Tags. After the initial handshake between two devices there is a protocol by which encoding of data happens and transfer of communication takes place.

Coming to the commercial applications of this technology , there are various fields where NFC can be put to use. It can be widely used to power applications on contact less payments in mobile commerce, by this way the mobile phone acts as a digital wallet. ( http://www.infochoice.com.au/banking/credit-card/news/tap-and-go-or-wave-and-pay/38532/2/18 ) . No longer do you need to carry a wallet or your credit card for doing transactions on the Super market. All you need to do is wave and pay using your NFC enabled mobile phones.

Similarly it is used to gather information from various products say a Mobile Phone can be used to extract information from a "smart poster" . Recently the transport department of the Singapore government has launched a lot of Smart posters that facilitate commuters to avail train timings and offers from "smart posters" ( http://www.nfcrumors.com/10-19-2011/smrt-deploys-nfc-smartposters/ ) . Another fun application of this technology would be a "peer to peer data transfer " to facilitate digital exchange of business cards while networking.

In the domain of Healthcare there is a lot of research going on to power healthcare personal devices to exchange information with mobile apps and digital dashboards using NFC technology. Care givers are planning to use mobile NFC enabled devices to collect information from personal health devices on vital signs of the patient. There are far reaching development happening in this domain to address NFC capability across the network.

RFID usually complies to with ECMA and AES standards to address data security and data communication. NFC has standards similar to RFID that get addressed at different levels. A typical transaction will have a "Active" device that acts as a reader and there will be a "passive" device that will act as a "tag" . At a given time data transfer is in one single direction only thereby ensuring that data loss can be minimized.

Last Month ( 19 October 2011 ) Google announced the launch of its Google Nexus Prime phone at Hongkong with the lastest upgrade to Android . Ice cream sandwich is a latest version of Android operating system. It offers a massive feature improvements. The Google Nexus phone is due to hit the market on 19 November 2011 with ICS .



Some of the features powered by ICS version include:

* Near Field Communication capability to beam Android application
* Voice typing, capable of recognizing speech and converting it into text
* Easier-to-create folders, with a drag-and-drop style
* No more need for Physical buttons
* Roboto font interface
* Face Unlock, a facial recognition service
* New tabbed web browser, allowing up to 16 tabs
* Camera app: zero shutter lag, time lapse settings, zoom while recording
* Built-in photo editor

Since the inception of Railsfactory one of our goals in corporate social responsibility has been to empower thought leaders and domain experts from our company to evangelize their work and spread knowledge in events by external participation in delivering presentations, discussions and blogging. On the other hand we also actively encourage volunteerism in building communities that help in building resource pools that largely help creating active knowledge base on different domains.

Senthil's indomitable presence in Barcamp's, MoMo and 50Hr Startup has been testimonial enough for the kindred spirit. Recently we had Ganapathi present an thought provoking presentation at the maiden launch of TouchTour 2011 at the IITM Research Park. ( https://www.facebook.com/TouchTour ). Touch Tour is a engaging platform for Mobile UI / UX designers, Mobile app developers, Mobile testers, Students, Touch device manufacturers and service providers. TouchTour is hosted by The Society for Rich Internet Application and Rich User Interface (RIA RUI) .

Objectives of Touch Tour

1. Introduce the leading design & development platforms for touch devices.
2. Introduce the leading platforms for monetizing Mobile applications.
3. Provide a hands-on session for developing apps for touch devices.
4. Provide a hands-on experience on touch devices.
5. Bring like-minded people together once in a month


Ganapathi's presentation covered on significance of the Usability Testing for the Mobile Applications. As we all know Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users. The mobile penetration has grown exponentially in last 5 years. Lots of Touch devices are replacing the low end QWERTY mobiles of late. Depending upon lots of external factors like environment, physical structure, age, ethnicity etc the way the same device being used could be varied across the extremes of the same band. Same Touch devices can give unique feel for different set of users. So Usability Testing plays major role in mobile touch devices and applications. The entire presentation followed by a Panel discussion was to relate our learning's and experience in developing Mobile applications in the last 2 years.

We foresee that as the world goes mobile with slimmer and more powerful devices, we as developers need to focus of delivering seamless experiences across platform and devices. For doing this it is mandatory that we have a systemic process in place to ensure quality and enhanced user experience in the products that we deliver.

The growth of smartphone market is undergoing exponential surge in the last 18 months as data traffic on smart phones 1600 % . Apart from mails, collaborations suites and social media, retail commerce and ecatalogs form a critical chunk of applications accessed by smartphones. With falling data rates and rising smartphone user volume mobile commerce is all set to grow as a trend that is here to stay. One of the indications of this emerging trend is the onslaught of Tablet and mid size devices in the market. Consumers no longer have to wait till they get to office or home to log in and access stores to make a purchase. Smart devices and tablets make this experience available to buyers on the go. The future of ecommerce is about aligning Retail towards the increasing growth of Mobile Commerce ! Here is some industry data stats from BBC site that show the rise of smartphone users in China (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14679595 )

• China’s online shopping had turnover of $80bn, and grew 87% year-on-year
• China’s 420 million internet users spend a billion hours each day on-line
• China had 288 million mobile internet users by the end of 2010, up 18.5% year to year
• Mobile Internet sales is in its infancy but has already started to generate significant revenue reaching USD261 million in the second quarter of 2011
• Last year, 185 million Chinese made at least one online purchase
• This volume is expected to increase 4X by 2015

We as providers of ecommerce solutions need to anticipate this rising demand and optimise our existing ecommerce platforms for this form, design and functionality. Our objective has to be about implementing a seamless, unified cross-channel platform experience across users that enables a mobile optimized website accessible through Smart phones and Tablets anytime, anywhere by anyone. We need to push the user experience as one that is highly personalized and beyond geographic barriers.

Here is a list of offering / features that have to be geared up for mobilecommerce:

1. ECatalogs, rich mobile optimised images
2. Mobile Website - HTML5 powered
3. Product pages on Social Media
4. Mobile based promotional flyers
5. Loyalty Programs for mobile checkins
6. Mobile based product search capability
7. Barcode and QR Code scanning capability
8. Maps and Geolocation capability for locating a Store

So as product aggregators we need to gear up our online offering to plan for the increasing user demand to enable better and personalised user experience .

Augmented reality narrows the divide between the virtual world and the real world at the level of interactivity that an user can experience in AR Trends . With Augmented Reality users can add graphics, sounds and smell to the virtual world as it exists . Developers across multiple domains like gaming, mobile applications and web tours are using AR to deliver greater user experience .

Both video games and cell phones are driving the development of augmented reality. In fact developers today are providing a larger than life experience to users at the confines of their application. You can redefine your experience of a Virtual Tour of your favorite Museum or Art gallery with better interactivity and fun. You can even virtually walkthrough a library and see their collections of books and pick a book and access contents. Exploring geography will be so interesting that you get to tag places, integrate GPS data with pictures taken there and share with your friends online ! Think of applying such viral capabilities to commercial applications in Realty domain or on Logistics so on !



Architecture is no longer about painstakingly building miniatures because the entire miniature can be simulated online and tweaked layer by layer. You can apply innumerable textures and color to your home walls and floor and test the look and feel before deciding on the actual . Rearrange your indoor furniture and furnishings to individual taste and try them online .

Similarly Story Telling will never be the same again with holographic characters literally jumping out of your book and performing certain actions that might be described ! These are just a sample of scenarios and domains where AR can be put to good use.

We are thinking of going a notch higher in delivering niche domains E Learning and corporate training. Imagine that you want to provide simulator experiences to learners on handling of a complicated machine tool. AR can be one another medium to deliver such experience.

Continuing the post:

5. Basics of Testing in Mobile Domain:-

When we talk about Apps testing in Mobile domain, it is not only restricted to Mobile Apps, but also covers up mobile handset and mobile website testing.

Native Mobile Application Testing: –

When we buy Mobile some of the application would come as preinstalled package. We could dowload more applications for app stores too (Apple App store, Android Market, Getjar, Nokia Ovi Store, Blackberry App world etc.). To make up a good coverage we need to test application on various submission guidelines of the app stores. These guidelines are covering up major recommendation of the app store, but also many limitation of mobile handsets too.

Device Testing:-

Numerous players are there too manufactures handset now-days. Starting for well equipped, quality controlled branded manufactures, till homemade handsets from Thailand/Korea/China are available in the market. These varieties of handset need to be tested against the app compatibility along with various basic mobile functions like SMS, MMS, Voice dialing etc.

Website Testing (WAP Sites):-

Unlike downloadable mobile applications, mobile websites can be accessed via browser. No download involved. Testing of Mobile WAP sites has its own challenges. Proper navigation, good user interfaces (design), security, performance and mobile browser compatibility are important areas.

6. Types of Mobile Apps Testing:-

Similar to general Software Testing, Mobile Software Testing also includes:-

User Interface Testing (Color scheme, Menu styles, Consistency of UI over various Devices and screens of smart phones)

Functional Testing (Testing core functionality of Mobile App as per specification of the cleints/business) Performance & Stress Testing

Usability Testing (Testing of usability aspects of Mobile Apps)

Compatibility Testing:-

Testing the compatibility of your application with native device features (i.e. To make sure your application is not hampering native device functionality)

Monkey Testing: –

Continual key pad entries via tools to test application stability with various key press events.

Low Network/No Network case Testing: –

Application behavior when there is no network coverage or Low network strength.

Pursue your dreams ! Try something extraordinary ! Have belief in yourself and dont pursue whats reasonable !

I am just back from the AGM of the PMI Chennai Chapter where we were discussing about the changing global business scenario and how project leaders need to build not just core project management skills but also certain specialised management skills to execute their job functions successfully. As we were deliberating on the finer points of what is required each of us were highlighting on different tenets. And thus the blog post .....

Ambidextrous Leaders believe " Change is the only constant " and to " leave footprints in all areas that you work with passion " . Being ambidextrous is about being agile to change . Successful leaders are not just adaptive, innovative, proactive they are also great in bringing efficiency into day to day operations. Today's global scenario necessitates that one must be geared ready to change course at any point in time . As we dig deeper on traits that leaders need to follow to ensure ambidextrous leadership is by following these points

1. Focus Focus Focus !
It is always better to prepare a checklist of things that need be done and keep irresolute focus on that needs to be done. Always remembers that "Out of sight ...out of mind"

2. Always try to create business value through your work !
Every step that you take one needs to envision the BIG PICTURE ! Ensure that you create discrete business value in each initiative that you take. At a later point in time when you look at things collectively you will be able to see measurable value accomplished.

3. Make time to build strong relationship !
This is with relation to you and your team and your customers. Take time to build a personal rapport with your team and your customer. Building a strong relationship helps you endure tough times. It helps build trust between two entities.

4. Devote your work to the pursuit of Excellence !
Always go the extra mile to pursue better ways of doing things. Experiential learning helps in achieving Excellence . Discuss with people who have gone there and done that ! Similarly Share Lessons learned with others ! Instill passion in your team to drive change and improvement until completion

5. Hard work yields best results !
Be determined and optimistic in your approach . It greatly reflects on the overall confidence of the team and their pursuit to work hard. I remember someone said " If you are on the lead , step on the gas ! That how you got there in the first place "

6. Never stop to innovate !
Always keep a lookout for ways to innovate and do things better !

7. Be a successful Time manager !
In today's world Time is the most valuable commodity and as leaders we need to be good manager of time. A project meeting that get unduly extended by an hour is not just waste of 1 hr but a multiple of 1 hr of each of your team member. So to be successful leaders need to be good at planning and keeping things simple.

As we start the week energised after a laid back weekend one of the things on priority list is to do a quick retrospective on the strategy behind the whale of changes we are trying to effect within the organization ! Basically its our path of continuous endless pursuit for perfection. The last 2 quarters we have focused our energies on creating competency centers on Mobile application development, Testing domain and our SaaS offering on HCM " Empwise " .

We have created clear career path for domain experts in various areas with one of the KRA 's (Key Result Area) being Quality as uncompromising goal. Since most of our projects follow Scrum Methodology it becomes very easy to measure quality within teams. One of the tenets that Project Leaders drive within project is defect density on KLOC (per 1000 lines of code).

We believe in project collaboration across distributed teams and effective information sharing is critical on today scenario. So we engage the customer / customer representative from day 1 to be part of the project team to ensure that customer requirements are clearly translated as code after clear validation and documentation. We Look out for project dependencies and define them well in advance. We follow resource and capacity planning in the right time throughout the entire project. We continuously look out for resource crunch areas and bottlenecks in the entire process. We conduct Regular Project Health Review for key stakeholders / management to gain project visibility (Earned value calculation) at various project milestones. We have proper work flows and accountability on the projects that keep the stakeholders informed of the same. Finally we retrospect on lessons learnt and take efforts to benchmark our project experience across the team so that best of practices can be evolved at the specific domain.