What is a smart hack ? Well rest assured it has nothing to do with hacking for sure. Smart Hack is that employee in your team who innovates a smarter way of doing a regular work. Smart Hacks are basically shortcuts to doing a regular routine set of tasks but achieving the same desired result. Usually it is the most lazy people in the team who find such ingenious smart hacks .
This could be something as simple as workaround that you have found to get your routine task done faster and effectively in order to achieve the same desired effect. For example trying to provide Wireframes to your client to finetune requirements is also a smart hack. Accessing mails by multiple inbox feature from your smart phone on the fly is also a smart hack.
In some cases teams practice smarter ways to handle projects by having project documents and related archives online (cloud) with authentication based access and mobile based alerts on particular work groups. Making go with minimal available resources but using them in innovative ways to accomplish work makes you a smart hack. We would love to hear from you on what is your smart hack ?
PMP Preparatory Group initiated !
Posted by syed
on Tuesday, December 14
With Dec 2010 a handful of Project Managers from Railsfactory and our partner organization have ventured forth to do a preparatory study for taking the Project Management Professional ( http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx ) (PMP) exam in 2011. These Project managers qualify more than 4500 hrs of Project Management with involvement in various levels within projects over the last 4 years. Building this capability will be a significant step for us in our effort to serve best of practice in our offerings to our customers worldwide.
The Preparatory study will be a sort of knowledge sharing exercise where project managers will seek to relate their experiences with the PMBOK Edition 4 and try to benchmark existing practice at Railsfactory with that of PMI . A certification like PMP will credit the experience of project manager on par with industry standards and their competency to successfully lead and direct projects in this competitive global economy.
To apply for the PMP, you need to have either:
A four-year degree ( Bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
OR
A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent) with at least five years of project management experience, with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
If anyone from Chennai is interested to join the prep group pls ping us here ...Good day !
The Preparatory study will be a sort of knowledge sharing exercise where project managers will seek to relate their experiences with the PMBOK Edition 4 and try to benchmark existing practice at Railsfactory with that of PMI . A certification like PMP will credit the experience of project manager on par with industry standards and their competency to successfully lead and direct projects in this competitive global economy.
To apply for the PMP, you need to have either:
A four-year degree ( Bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
OR
A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent) with at least five years of project management experience, with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.
If anyone from Chennai is interested to join the prep group pls ping us here ...Good day !
Project Schedule
Posted by syed
on Monday, November 29
Project Schedule is a planning process of creation of timelines on deliverables related to a project and the entire schedule is planned based on resource availability as well as coordinating the various events mentioned in the timeline with the resources, milestones and deliverables. During this process one needs to consider the number of working days available for the project and also the list of resources that are available within the project.
The entire process involves creation of activity list, Gantt Charts and Network diagrams to coordinate all activities within the project. This stage also is about creation of Work Breakdown structures (WBS). Complex tasks are broken down into simpler tasks and factored into the project. Once all the activities are broken into unitary tasks they are arranged in the proper sequence within .
Selection of a scheduling method. In Railsfactory we observer Critical Path of the project. A basic precept of Critical Path Method is that each activity will be finished before its successor can begin. The Critical path is identified as the sequence of steps that need be done for timely completion of the project.
The project milestones definition is also done in this activity to ensure we are able to identify deliverables clearly. This activity also involves factoring of buffer to ensure that all risks of a given activity are properly addressed in the project. Applying lag and leads before any activity will ensure better forecasting. Definition of KPI (Key Performance Indicators)and other metrics for Project management are done in this process. KPI will be in respect to project scope, time taken and cost of the project too. Covering all this a project schedule is defined.
The entire process involves creation of activity list, Gantt Charts and Network diagrams to coordinate all activities within the project. This stage also is about creation of Work Breakdown structures (WBS). Complex tasks are broken down into simpler tasks and factored into the project. Once all the activities are broken into unitary tasks they are arranged in the proper sequence within .
Selection of a scheduling method. In Railsfactory we observer Critical Path of the project. A basic precept of Critical Path Method is that each activity will be finished before its successor can begin. The Critical path is identified as the sequence of steps that need be done for timely completion of the project.
The project milestones definition is also done in this activity to ensure we are able to identify deliverables clearly. This activity also involves factoring of buffer to ensure that all risks of a given activity are properly addressed in the project. Applying lag and leads before any activity will ensure better forecasting. Definition of KPI (Key Performance Indicators)and other metrics for Project management are done in this process. KPI will be in respect to project scope, time taken and cost of the project too. Covering all this a project schedule is defined.
Commandment 3 : Project Change Management
Posted by syed
on Tuesday, November 23
We live in a extremely dynamic world where the only constant is Change . Change is inevitable and it has to be managed. One of the key factors of success in any project is the way in which we manage change. There is ever changing market forces that influence the project and as a product owner and development team, one is constantly trying their best to match these forces by factoring such change.
First of all one needs to validate whether such a change is essential . Then one needs to analyse the possible ramifications of such a change on Cost, Schedule and requirements and then classify it as minor or major (based on the impact). These three constitute the triple constraints of a project. One of the foremost factors that will be considered while accepting change will be the impact analysis of such change on an ongoing project. This exercise determines the cost overrun (increase resources) due to such change on the WBS (Work breakdown structures) within the project.Concurrently we also need to assess if such change impact the overall project strategy as well as the scope of the project. This is followed by effective coordination with product owner and team to align stakeholder expectation to the project. Care need be taken that excessive change does not lead to project failure.
We at Railsfactory imbibe the Best of PM practices in the IT Industry that combines both conventional Project Management Techniques as well as Agile practices to ensure that the product owner has the flexibility to introduce any change on the feature that are to be developed in future sprints. In this practice change is proactive and therefore it strives best to meet stakeholder expectation. One thing that is a definite no is to introduce a change creep in the features of an existing Sprint. The brighter side of all this is that effective Change management leads to increase in stakeholder satisfaction thereby project success in evincing greater value for the Product owner.
First of all one needs to validate whether such a change is essential . Then one needs to analyse the possible ramifications of such a change on Cost, Schedule and requirements and then classify it as minor or major (based on the impact). These three constitute the triple constraints of a project. One of the foremost factors that will be considered while accepting change will be the impact analysis of such change on an ongoing project. This exercise determines the cost overrun (increase resources) due to such change on the WBS (Work breakdown structures) within the project.Concurrently we also need to assess if such change impact the overall project strategy as well as the scope of the project. This is followed by effective coordination with product owner and team to align stakeholder expectation to the project. Care need be taken that excessive change does not lead to project failure.
We at Railsfactory imbibe the Best of PM practices in the IT Industry that combines both conventional Project Management Techniques as well as Agile practices to ensure that the product owner has the flexibility to introduce any change on the feature that are to be developed in future sprints. In this practice change is proactive and therefore it strives best to meet stakeholder expectation. One thing that is a definite no is to introduce a change creep in the features of an existing Sprint. The brighter side of all this is that effective Change management leads to increase in stakeholder satisfaction thereby project success in evincing greater value for the Product owner.
Web Usability
Posted by syed
on Wednesday, October 27
As mobile devices are getting faster processors and mobile connectivity is becoming much robust, the medium of Internet is getting extended to wider audiences. Usability and UX are becoming an area of focus. Apparently websites and webapps are being accessed from mobile devices increasingly. Customers insists on building interfaces for mobile devices too. At this stage it is vital that compatibility across devices is necessary . Web developers today look towards focused end user groups that can give answers to the following questions.
Do you like this site ? If yes why ?
What are the elements that you like best / least in the site ?
Who do you think should use this site ?
Are you able to find the relevant information with navigational ease ?
User experience validation today using Agile methods like SCRUM will involve the customer and the focus groups much early into a project. This involves watching what users do rather than just limit to what they say. We at Railsfactory create story boards for developers that focus on Usability and Interaction design features . This is part of the product backlog that gets executed on the early sprint cycles. Earlier cross browser compatibility was tested before the product was staged on the staging server but nowadays checks are being made for mobile compatibilty as well .
RailsFactory is 2 years old
Posted by senthil
on Wednesday, August 06
There was never a great idea or big plan when we started RailsFactory, it was some beliefs we had and more people(clients and team) believed in us and joined us, hope we become a phenomenon in coming years.
now we have good plans and a great team to execute it
watch this space for some great announcements in coming weeks
now we have good plans and a great team to execute it
watch this space for some great announcements in coming weeks
railsfactory-public project on github 4
Posted by senthil
on Tuesday, April 15
We have joined the GIT band wagon
and have hosted our first public repository on github.
Codes would be in form of snippets, libraries, plugins, and full implementations. All these code are licensed as MIT license, unless until explicitly mentioned.
http://github.com/railsfactory/railsfactory-public/
git clone git://github.com/railsfactory/railsfactory-public.git
update: 20th April 2008
I am commiting myself to opensouring more code from our project and ensure one useful commit per day, for atleast next 100 days
support my efforts by donating if you feel the code is useful for you and your projects
codes which have been commited
a) grouped
converting array data to hash, like with group by with count(*) in sql
b) ActionController logger
logging in following format for processing by linux commands
#method|URL|session_id | timestamp | IP | Status | Controller | action | id |parameters | 0.00075 (1338 reqs/sec)| Rendering: 1.62710 (99%) | DB: 0.00000 (0%) |
c) file joiner
merging files of same file extension for script based processing, to know the usage of a code like a css class, a helper method, code duplication finding for refactoring,
d) find
ruby based grep style searching for source code files
e) filelisting
syntax checking of ruby and embedded ruby(erb/ rhtml) files
f) od2
inspired from linux od command
displays the file and line number and the octal character representation of the non-ASCII characters
g) typo generator
typo generation for use with search engines
and have hosted our first public repository on github.
Codes would be in form of snippets, libraries, plugins, and full implementations. All these code are licensed as MIT license, unless until explicitly mentioned.
http://github.com/railsfactory/railsfactory-public/
git clone git://github.com/railsfactory/railsfactory-public.git
update: 20th April 2008
I am commiting myself to opensouring more code from our project and ensure one useful commit per day, for atleast next 100 days
support my efforts by donating if you feel the code is useful for you and your projects
codes which have been commited
a) grouped
converting array data to hash, like with group by with count(*) in sql
b) ActionController logger
logging in following format for processing by linux commands
#method|URL|session_id | timestamp | IP | Status | Controller | action | id |parameters | 0.00075 (1338 reqs/sec)| Rendering: 1.62710 (99%) | DB: 0.00000 (0%) |
c) file joiner
merging files of same file extension for script based processing, to know the usage of a code like a css class, a helper method, code duplication finding for refactoring,
d) find
ruby based grep style searching for source code files
e) filelisting
syntax checking of ruby and embedded ruby(erb/ rhtml) files
f) od2
inspired from linux od command
displays the file and line number and the octal character representation of the non-ASCII characters
g) typo generator
typo generation for use with search engines