All posts by Neil Harwani

Interested in movies, music, history, computer science, software, engineering, management and technology
Culture, Innovation

Race to be leaner, lighter, faster – limits will hit us

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Whether jet engines, aircrafts, IT outsourcing, manufacturing or services there is a race to be leaner, faster, better, higher quality, etc with lesser resources – humans or machines or steel or fibre. In itself its an oxymoron or irony though not always. It actually stops innovation at times.

Let us look how:
Innovation and peak performance happens when a system/entity (human or machine) works at optimum load. Pressure equals force divided by area. If you decrease the area, pressure increases. It causes more stress per unit area. Whether new entity can tolerate it now due to advances is a different stream of research but definitely stress per unit area is increasing. For aircrafts its pressure or stress per unit weight, for humans its stress per person as its assumed people will work with higher efficiency in lean/agile mode.

A fundamental rule which we ignore here is that systems/entities/people will work optimally within evolutionary biology/theoretical physics limits only. We can’t change them. Like if you want to occupy an area you need specific number of people/police/army/robots, this rule doesn’t change. You can augment this by technology but can’t change rules 100%. Extrapolate to innovation/optimum peak performance, its not possible always to be more and more lean, lighter, faster and get better quality and innovation. We need to follow nature’s limits, nothing goes faster than light in this universe.

Disaster relief, IoT, Mobility, Sensors

Software innovation around physical profile of a person

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With so many IoT, mobile, computer, industrial, etc. sensors around us and the number only increasing on daily basis there could be innovative things we could do to solve some of the big problems we face today. There are law and order problems around missing people, criminals, fugitives, finding people and their current condition during disasters, etc. where at times it’s very difficult to get information about people.

Using software to process information from the fused array of sensors available from IoT, mobiles, GPS, etc. we could build profiles of targeted suspects in terms of various attributes like:
1. Physical appearance using mobile networks – CDMA/GSM to scan them
2. Mobile usage related attributes
3. Surfing patterns
4. Preferences around shopping, etc.

This fused profile from various sensors does present challenges around privacy but it also has huge scope in terms of law and order, security, disaster and risk management, etc. which can also do lot of public good.

Imagine during an earthquake, flood, etc. as soon as the networks start coming up we are able to find our friends and relatives along with their present location and condition. Won’t that be great? 🙂 🙂 We could simply have a mobile app which lights up people on our screen in our network who need help.

Continuous interaction, Disconnect fix, Innovation, Onsite Offshore Delivery, Software Delivery

Continuous interaction and collaboration rather than fixed time and schedule meetings

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Working over the years in the Information Technology industry I have learned that face to face interactions lead to success in delivery and innovation which are the important areas in this industry.

But this is the result of imperfect interactions from a distance. For this let us analyze what is a successful interaction:

  1. Successful interactions for good delivery and innovation are continuous in nature and not just fixed hours per week/day/month
  2. If we restrict ourselves to a very fixed schedule say every week or month we come with a very specific preset agenda and miss out on human emotions, behaviors, motivations and so on which also have a big role in success for delivery and innovation
  3. Face to face meetings add on top of the set agenda an aura of informal interactions around friendship, relationship, behaviors, emotions, motivation, what we like / dislike, etc.

To augment this from offshore for countries like USA & Europe and remove the disconnect better way would be to have continuous interaction.

Connect boardrooms, developer areas, testing team rooms, agile rooms, finance rooms, operations room via video conferencing and audio with a view of full team and area on live and continuous basis. Once you do that you remove the fixed agendas and schedules of meetings which cut out the soft side of human behavior, etc. which is only visible in a face to face conversation. This disconnect of fixed schedules and fixed time meetings can be overcome by continuous interactions. We already have continuous integration for delivery teams and AGILE as a model for delivery. Taking it to the next level would be continuous interaction between offshore and onsite.

Information processing, Internet, Universe, Visualization

Visualization

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Visualization in the digital world is an important area often ignored by techies. Visualization in traditional sense of user interface / user experience / mobility for systems and applications has now long been considered an important area.

But another interesting area to look at in visualization would be internet and understanding universe both – yes I am linking both. With petabytes of data/information now on internet and machines with GBs of RAMs and Octa-core CPUs now common place there is an information overload. If you compare the information being generated every year by internet and computers it’s not something that probably a human being could go through in his/her life. Same is the case with the universe, every year we are finding new areas of unexplored universe with new galaxies, stars, planets, etc. An example: The Great Attractor

To understand and process so much information for a normal human brain at current capability does not seem possible (debatable but that’s my view point).

What we need is a little help from visualization and using something like a dimensional / visualization helmet of virtual reality type. Fighter pilots have helmet mounted displays and we need something similar that processes lot of information from internet and universe which could come from multiple dimensions say 5/6+ (more than four dimensions is difficult for us to understand: time, x, y and z axis, etc.)  and parses through petabytes / zetabytes of information and presents it based on normalization for  our senses.

Culture, Excellence, Innovation

Formula for Successful Innovation Driven Companies in IT industry

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There are many formulas to build a successful company:
1. Passion
2. Great investors and board with good mentors
3. Great product
4. Niche skills and services
5. Great legacy
6. Recruit the best, train them, mentor them, give them good career growth, etc.
And so on

But one that I have observed and learnt is another one. We won’t go into the discussion about the earlier ones given above but let’s look at another way to build excellence.

Excellence and innovation is driven by freedom, creativity, knowledge, skill and right intervention by management with positive re-enforcement, promotion of good attitude and removing the bad apples at the right time.

One of the primary enablers for this is less internal friction and a culture to deliver excellence, promotion of passion to perform and learn without unnecessary hindrance.

One of the best ways to do this is to find people in your core teams to go into the non core functions over time willingly and on their own. These people can build a culture that appreciates the problems of the majority core function employees.

An example, if you over time promote in any Information Technology company your core development/product team members via training, education, etc. into Finance, HR, Project Management, Support, PMO, Legal, Sales and other departments you will build a company that appreciates the problems that the core function faces and they will help/enable them which in turn results in innovation and culture of synergy with excellence.

This is not the only formula out their to build a great company but one of the many ways. Only when we perform as one unit do we succeed most of the times, don’t we?

Architecture

Architecture design

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One mistake many make while building architecture for any application / system is to build the architecture using best/latest technology in isolation.

Architecture design has to be mapped to the use case and requirements.

Areas listed below and more should be considered while making design for the architecture:
1. NFR (Non functional requirements)
2. Security
3. Groups/roles/etc.
4. Integration
5. Use case
6. Information processing, etc.

All of the above and more should be considered upfront and consideration should not just be given for the best/latest technologies. Unless for example we consider how many users will use the system, which type of information exists, what are it’s updation rates, etc. who will access the system with what rights, what scalability is needed, how fast will the system change, what are the uptime requirements, etc. we can’t build the right system.

All of the above should be covered right from design and appropriately data should be partitioned, security design should be built, scalability should be thought of and issues like groups/roles/users, identity and access management should be mapped to the use case or the requirement.

Disaster relief, IoT, Mobility, Sensors

Mobile & Sensors in IoT world

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In this world of IOT, iBeacons, Eddystone, Mobiles with 3+ GB RAM, light/gesture control sensors, GPS, accelerometer, compass and quad/octa core processors with cameras an upgrade for all of this would be to have sensors like:
1. Temperature,
2. Movement/motion,
3. Smell,
4. Pollution, etc. onto the mobiles and then fuse them with IoT/sensor networks. This fusion is simple and easy using Mobile APPs.

Imagine we being stuck in a natural calamity like fire, earthquake, flood, etc. and if we have these sensors fused onto the mobile along with IoT and mobile networks + WiFi there could be a huge combination of information that can be provided to each person to and fro.

They could be part of a sensor network (ad-hoc over WiFi or 2G/3G/CDMA/4G and so on) and could participate in finding better outcomes in any troubling situation. Why I mention ad-hoc/WiFi network is incase of emergency if 2G/3G/4G/CDMA network goes down we can use ad-hoc/WiFi to build a small network which can fuse with IoT sensors and maybe get a temporary VSAT or other internet uplink which are now available on mobile vehicles as well (broadcasters, news channels, etc.).

World of mobility is just opening up for all of us. Information sharing would reach a new level with aim of saving lives. All this can be enabled at the end point via mobile APPs using Android SDK or Apple based APPs.

Social Media, Software

Social Media Solutions

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Social media is an evolving beast. From few sites and systems few years back to plethora of different sites and systems across the internet accessed from laptop/desktop/mobile – this domain is exploding currently.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Google+, Yelp and so on. List is endless.

Everybody is talking of social media sentiment analysis and analytics over customer information, yes that’s an evolving and interesting field.

But something that is going to create a problem and will require innovation would be areas like:
1. How do you sync your information across various social media sites:
1-a. LIKES
1-b. COMMENTS
1-c. NEWSFEEDS
1-d. Etc.
2. What is your unique public and private unified profile across social media?
3. What is your network of connects across the various sites?
4. How are you perceived across these sites – a unified view?
5. How do you sync your contacts and network across various social media systems?
6. How do you enable similar privacy settings, access control, etc. across all social media sites?
7. Evolving threat management across social media for individuals

Many such questions will come up as social media matures. Lot of innovation, building of standards/protocols, tools and products would be needed in this new exploding social media sites/systems.

There was a phase where database access/import/export/features across various RDBMSes were standardized, operating systems related standards came out, ECM, integration, etc. came out with standards.

A similar phenomenon should and most likely will occur once social media expansion stabilizes and matures. It will be one level above technology and will be at functional/domain/social media feature level backed by unique new ways of implementing technologies. To give an example: if you export your contact from one phone, if you export CSV/EXCEL from one system you are able to import and sync it at other place, such solutions for problems listed above and many more upcoming areas would be needed.

Open Source, Security, Software

Open source security platform for security of physical installations

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I hope to publish my thoughts on innovation around software on this blog. Starting off with my first post.

We live in a world where security has now evolved from physical to cyber to multiple levels and context. Open source software has been a revolution which now is reaching us at all levels: Mobile (Android), Enterprise software (Liferay, Alfresco, Hadoop, MongoDB, etc.) and it caters to security in a holistic way by allowing people/groups to pick holes in the systems and thus, giving opportunity to authorities to fix them in the background and allow improvements.

Similarly we can device a system based on open source principles for security of physical / real world installations via an open source and collaborative platform

We could create an open source platform on one of the open source support sites like SourceForge

Pillars of platforms around which it should be built (these also give the high level classification of collaboration):

1. Assets
2. Threats
3. Defenses
4. Strategy

Assets: 1. Threat level based classification based on location, work done by asset, importance

Threats: 1. Physical, 2. Cyber 3. Design 4. Evolving and future

Defenses: 1. Explicit, 2. Implicit 3. Mixed

Strategy: 1. Offensive, 2. Defensive, 3. Mixed

People can come and post installations (Assets), then debate/discuss issues (Threats), find and suggest solutions (Defenses) and based on these three suggest overall Strategy to mitigate risks

See you later with another innovation thought in few days