Afternoon Thoughts

 

Infosec is to Fintech what HSE is to Oil and Gas.

#AfternoonThoughts 

 

Just like OIl and Gas depends on security to keep its engines running, Fintech depends on Info security. One incident, and everything comes tumbling down and grinds to a halt. Coverup is a short term solution and perhaps the instinctive reaction, but as the oil and gas industry will tell you, its a poor strategy, and what's worse, doesn't work. 

The only good thing to do is to approach infosec like the Oil and Gas Industry approaches HSE - have transparent standards, invest in a clear security policy and ensure that every member of team is educated and compliant. Report transparently and periodically. Most importantly, learn from EVERY mistake. Each one of those recovered mistakes is going to save you from a larger disaster, and make no mistake, there will be larger incidents. Oh, and don't forget the Incident Management System. 

 

What are the skills a journalist needs in 2021?

 

1. A journalist needs a good memory more than ever before. I am aware of entire documents and statistics changing online. Most ppl today get their content from online sources, which, by definition, can be altered, a la 1984, much, much faster.
2. A hunger for information. A real, inborn hunger. Not a learnt one.
3. Ability to see both sides of view. Ability to start with the assumption that every story has more than one side and all sides must be heard, and reported, accurately.
4. Ability to put people at ease. Very important.
5. A journalist must remember that the word journaling means - Recording. it does not mean - interpreting, Opining, taking sides.
6. This is the hardest - to keep one’s biases out of one’s writing like one keeps one’s hair out of one’s eyes.
7. The ability to say NO when temptation is offered, because it will be offered.
8. The ability to capture a 15000 word story in under 500 words.

Why is reading newspapers the best habit for children?

 These are the top FIVE reasons why every child needs to read a children’s newspaper every day.

1. Vocabulary - Books around us do not have the vocabulary that kids need. In our paper, we are covering the SAT word list. A child who starts reading at Grade 4 will be done with SAT vocabulary by Grade 8 and they will not even realise it. All children’s papers are doing something similar.
2. GK - This is the main reason why parents want kids to read newspapers. They may not remember everything from the paper on a day to day basis, but they will need that consolidated information at some point and it WILL come back to them when they need it. Its not just current affairs, but general awareness about various topics too. most children’s papers combine current affairs with other GK too.
3. Interest in various things - The best way for a child to learn about many different domains of knowledge is the newspaper. A newspaper covers everything from puzzles to literature and science to history. The child might read some items carefully and gloss over the others, but there really is no other way to ensure that the child gets this diverse exposure on a daily basis.
4. Logic Puzzles - Indian students perform badly in the Critical Reasoning section of most aptitude tests. The reason is that logic puzzles are not a part of their growing up. It is not that Indian children cannot analyse or do critical reasoning. it is that they have never been taught how to. A children’s paper brings them bite -sized, fun puzzles and before they know it, they are ready for Critical Reasoning. This is a tried and tested formula. My aunt ensured that I do logic puzzles as a child and after growing up, when i aced CR, i understood the importance of what she had done.
5. Imagery - Imagery, or visualisation, is one of the most critical adult skills. But it can only be developed in a child’s mind. As a child consumes text input, its brain automatically converts the words to pictures. This ability is called imagery or visualisation. These are the people who, when they grow up, are able to visualise complex scenarios, do wireframing, and other critical tasks for success. Children who are only given visual inputs cannot develop this ability. A newspaper, therefore, and not news channels or online games. Chapter books and not graphic novels. Illustrated books, but not videos. Newspaper is one of the BEST ways to develop the visualisation skill in a child because it is consistent and happens EVERY DAY.

How to do good fact check online

 

1. Go straight to the source. Yesterday, while fact checking a story on new type of neurons discovered behind the retina, we read the university press release, and other articles about the discovery. Then, we clicked on the journal where the paper was published. Then, we clicked on the supplementary information submitted by the study authors. That is where we realised that the study was conducted on mice, not humans. Nowhere, not in the press release, not in the articles, nowhere was it mentioned that the study is only at the first stage (mice). That is how painful fact check is and how obfuscating even supposedly scientific articles are.
2. When reporting on indices, ranks, etc., go and check what is the methodology of the study or how is the index compiled. Don’t trust any rank or index until you understand how the number was derived.
3. When reading about a contentious issue, always read publications that give both sides of the story. For Lakshadweep, the major news channels reported that the locals are being tormented by the administration. But when I read the official records and the small publications that had dared to publish the other side of the story (and Quora), i realised that the real story was actually quite different. For Delhi’s pollution, we blame the parali or the crackers, but Delhi has as many as 3 thermal power plants within its territory and arguably Asia’s largest informal e waste recycling industry which burns the phones in open air. No one tells you that.
4. Trust nothing that is “proposed” or “will be done”. That is not news. That is fortune telling. After it is done and operational, it becomes news.

Secrets of Pixabay

As most readers might know, pixabay.com, pexels.com, unsplash.com etc are websites where photographers share their work. This work is available for free commercial reuse without attribution. 

I am a regular contributor to pixabay.com. While all my images are selected for publication, I was rather sad to note that they had 0 views and 0 downloads. I put that down to the poor quality of my photography. 

2 weeks ago, I was looking for a free image of mehndi or henna. There was NOTHING available on all 3 free websites. So, had to use a Wikimedia image. 

However, last night, on a lark, i decided to search for all images related to a label that is not very frequent and applies to a few of my submitted images. Then, scrolled to the end, and realised, much to my surprise, that though my images were tagged with those keywords, they did not come up in the search results for those keywords, even till the end. 

This means that Pixabay keeps some published images away from users even if they are approved and published. 

Pixabay calls this the differentiation between featured (in search results) and just published. There is no count of the number of images that are published but not featured, but as a user, it appears strange that a published image should not be searchable. What's the point, then? 

How does one deal with this? 

I found that if you follow an individual contributor, that might help. Look for images and when you see an interesting one, follow that contributor. That way, you can see their images in your network. 

How to Manage Client Scope Creep

This post is the result of a good conversation with Abhishek at a recent event. 

He asked how we managed to ensure that there was no scope creep. My projects have usually been on track and within budget, and as Abhishek mentioned, client scope creep is one of the major reasons why large IT projects go out of budget or schedule. 

So, if you are a budding project manager responsible for client management, here is the secret to building great client solution and even better client relationships. 

Most client scope creep comes from 2 areas: 

A. Complex Workflows, where more approval levels are added. 

B. Reports 

The first thing you have to remember when dealing with client scope creep is that they are not trying to trouble you. Their intention is not the squeeze the juice out of you. Their intention is to do the best that they can for their company at the least possible price. 

Surprise! That is your intention too! 

Most vendor PMs do not understand this intention and objective synergy. But when you do, you realise that you and the client PM are on the same side, trying to do the same thing. 

The only thing is, we are using two different approaches to do it. 

So, Step One:

Establish Commonality of Purpose 

Sit down with your client and establish commonality of purpose. Both of you are working towards the same thing: 

A. Create the best possible solution

B. In the least possible time 

C. At the least possible cost

Once it has been stated, it appears intuitive. Yet, until we say it out and put it on the table, it is not so apparent to the other party. In fact, if you wait at the water cooler long enough, you will definitely hear the Project Managers from both sides cribbing. The Client PM usually says one or more of the following: 

• The vendor does not want to do any work or wants to do shoddy work and get away with it. 
• They are not doing enough KT 
• Even for small change they give such a huge estimate, and change request for everything! 
• They just don't understand our business and requirements. I don't know how to explain. 

The Vendor PM will usually say one or more of the following: 

• The Client is really miserly. 
• They always underestimate the time it will take to do something. 
• They are paying us for a cow and want us to make an elephant. 
• They don't understand how the system works. 
• They have such weird requirements! Who works like this? 

So, the step of establishing commonality of purpose is the most important one. It establishes trust and ensures that you row on the same direction, not in opposite directions. 

Once commonality of purpose is established, the next thing is to understand where scope creep is coming from. 

Step Two: 

Diagnose and Guide 

Most scope creep comes from the two areas I have mentioned above. You do your own diagnosis on your projects and understand WHERE the scope creep is coming. And then ask yourself WHY. 

What problem is the client trying to solve by doing this extra work? 

Let's get straight to taming the beast. 

Step Three 

Managing Scope Creep and Making Great Friends 

Here is the most important tip anyone will ever share with you on managing scope creep. It is so important that I am going to write it in caps. 

START WITH YES. 

Whenever the client asks you whether something can be done, NEVER start the conversation with No. if you know that it can be done, start with, "Yes". If you are not sure, start with "We will try to find a way to do this." 

Managing Workflow Complications

Most clients who try to add additional approval and exception workflows are basically trying to tame one beast - Compliance. 

That is the core objective. 

Start the conversation by saying - My work ends with doing the coding. Your work starts after that and goes on forever. So, my work is the shorter one. Let's talk about how this will work after go live in your business. Let's discuss a few scenarios and understand how much additional work it will add for your users, and what you are doing about it now. 

After that, listen. Let them explain all their use cases and exceptions. Understand their compliance needs thoroughly and most importantly, understand how users manage exceptions now. A system that can be excepted by the user in an emergency will eventually be excepted as a matter of course. The user's onboarding learning curve is slow, but their bypassing learning curve for any system is amazingly steep. So, if you make it necessary for users to bypass the system for one thing, they will be bypassing it for most things sooner than you realise. 

After the client has finished putting their requirements on the table, don your product specialist hat (or get your product specialists on board) and design a solution that meets their needs without being overly complicated. I can assure you that most workflows can be simplified. 

Pro Tip: For each workflow step, ask your client: 

• How will this step increase the transaction load of the user? 

Let's understand this with a real life example: 

Let's say that the client wants all travel to go to the department head. The questions we ask then are: 

A. How many travel requests will the DH have to approve in a day? Week? Month? How much time will it take them to approve each (assume reading time). If we go with 5 a week and 5 minutes per TR, that's 25 minutes of extra work per week. For an already stretched executive. 

Next, ask them how they plan to manage situations that are definitely going to arise - the executive on leave, too busy, traveling himself, etc. 

Usually, in such cases, a thing called Delegation of Authority is used. 

Let the client think about that. And then help them understand how to balance compliance with minimum transaction load on the users. 

• What value is this step adding to your process? 

The most frequent response to this is "It gives us better control" or "Compliance." 

Do not resist. After the client says this, sit back in silence and let them think. 

If they do not appear to be making headway, ask gently, "Are you creating a better process, or are you helping someone do CYA? Think about that. If the system can be hacked, it will neither lead to better compliance nor control. Every new control element you put in there is also a hacking opportunity. Think about the real business value of every step. And its real objective." 

Always be mindful of the client's imperatives. 99% of the times, clients see the difference between business value and CYA. But some cultures are necessarily CYA cultures. In those cultures, you can only help the client by perpetuating the CYA culture. Do that. 

And most importantly, NEVER disrespect the client - neither in public with your team, nor in private in your head. A Lot of delivery managers and PMs get together to laugh at clients in private. The client does not know tech as well as you do, and you don't know business as well as they do. Further, respect cannot be faked. Come from a place of real understanding, and you will create synergy. Come from a place of negotiation, and you will create a tug of war. I am still in touch with client PMs who worked with me 15 years ago, and more. 

Managing Reports 

Report requirements are the biggest headache for most PMs. The client wants to extract every element of data being put (or not put) into the system in about 15 reports on average (that's a joke, not a statistic). 

So, how does one tame the report monster? 

There are, once again, 2 simple questions that one asks the client. 

Since I have dealt with dashboard design and report management in another post, will just quickly state the 2 questions here: 

A. Who will enter this data? 

Request the client to go through their entire data flow process (you can use a proprietary methodology I have listed elsewhere on this blog - the Data River Diagram) and have them understand how the data will flow into the system in the first place. 

Is there enough reliability of that data for us to use it in reporting? 

B. What decision will it aid / How will you use it? 

Every pixel on an executive dashboard is important. Every second of executive time is important. If a data element is making it to reporting, it must help the user do one of the following: 

A. Monitor and control 

B. Diagnose and Correct 

C. Predict and Decide 

If the report is not fulfilling one of these 3 objectives, it should not be there. 

Your clients will truly appreciate your trying to create reports and dashboards that are relevant for the long term. 

In fact, invest some time in creating a report library that you know helps other organisations create effective dashboard and reporting interfaces, then proactively share it with clients. Will significantly shorten the cycle time and will also help the client see value in your work. 

So, are there any best practices that have helped you deliver better business value to your clients? Do share! 

Meme I made today