Fall of Dubai World - Who Next?

Dubai is famous for its over ambitious builders & their projects. Everyone in middle east still consider  Dubai as model and racing with others to overtake Dubai. Dubai is the most vain and resource wasting places ever built by man. More incredibly we are being asked to believe this place built on sand is not the result of wasting oil money. Lots of big housing/commercial projects in Bahrain & Abu Dhabi etc are still under development to emulate Palm Jumairah  in their own way which has already become epitome of Dubai crisis.

Dubai crisis started from 'Realty' bubble which started to bust after unrealistic prices across the board  and without thinking about the sustainability of prices, demand and supply. Every Tom, Harry and Dick (btw gulf has in abundance)  was trying to become  another Donald Trump and people got sucked in the name of owning a house. $40K  worth of house was sold around a  $200 K  and people went on to buy despite beyond their reach. Their logic- Today’s  $200 K  house would get a value of $1200 K within 5 years. People started to think an asset would always appreciate than thinking about the real value.  Realtors spent a lot of money in unproductive things to justify the prices.

Banks started to give loans to real estate companies without assessing the real value. Their aim is to mint millions in interests. But these banks have forgotten to assess real value of realtors. Banks started to concentrate on variety of activities other than banking. They ventured in Forex, and derivatives which no one understands in the world. People went on buying homes with multiple EMIs without thinking about  their financial stability & sustainability of the plan.

Greed is the only reason for this crisis. Every product and service was priced artificially and companies have been started overnight and it looted money from public. “Overnight millionaire” was the motto for most of the entrepreneur.

Companies went on to stretch beyond their capabilities and core competencies. They took too much leverage. If you don’t think big, you’re dumb. Every company becomes dumb by over expanding in new businesses that are not their core competence. They employed thousands of people and borrowed through various innovative instruments which would be subscribed by a genius called private equity.

Take ex. of India. Whole India ran at leverage and domestic growth story. If  Pantaloon enters in retail business (Big Bazar), why we should wait was the question asked by Birla group and they acquired some retail companies and started MORE which is now creating more problems for Birla group. Stock broking is another business in which everyone from Kashmir to Kanyakumari started to capture their share in India. Insurance is another. Likewise everyone started everything and they went on to demolish brands and made every service as a commodity.

Everything has been created based on domestic growth theory which has been misunderstood by corporate managers who work in air-conditioned room with their tailor made PowerPoint presentations as designed in their PMBOK which they never understood.  They went on to give amazing numbers to their bosses and as a result everyone went on to venture in a crowded business and made it un-viable for everyone who has started it without knowing ground reality about the business.Whole mess has been started by marketing managers who doesn’t know any ground reality about business but who play efficiently with numbers, statistics, case studies and PowerPoint presentations.

Now these folks are calling this crisis as a event that occur once in a lifetime and it was beyond  imagination of everyone. Mess that has been created by managers without understanding of real condition. Mess that has been created in the name of expansion and diversification. Mess that has been created by leverage. Mess that has been created by greed of creditors. Mess that has been created by fictitious value creation by banks. Its all the creditors of Dubai who should be blamed rather than its vain leader for providing it money in bucket loads.

Analysts expect Dubai to receive financial support from Abu Dhabi - a fellow member of the UAE and home to most of its oil - though it may have to abandon an economic model focused on developing swathes of desert with foreign money and labors resulting in huge no. of job losses as cost cutting & restructuring efforts in the next few months.

Project Risk Management

We often execute the risk identification process many times within an iteration's life cycle or project life cycle. I prefer to execute it at regular intervals, during the monitoring and control phase, down till the closure phase. Many would do it even during the planning phase.

Planning is a optimistic exercise, Risk Management is pessimistic. When planning, we are optimistic about what should get done, by whom, in what sequence and when it should get done. After its planned, if we run through the plan with a pessimistic mind asking many 'what if' questions, particularly with those tasks for which we are not completely confident, I think many risks will be unearthed.

That means, even before the plan is put to execution, we should execute the same in our mind -pessimistically.

Another activity which can generate value is in the way the mitigation for the risks are managed.  Mitigations are action items. These action items (i.e., the risk mitigation), most could be within the direct authority and control of the Project Manager. Those which are not should be highlighted in the reviews as items for management attention and their ownership should be assigned and tracked.

To summarize ...

1. Execute the Plan even before executing it
2. Execute Risk Management processes (identification, prioritization, mitigation etc.) periodically
3. Maintain a centralized Action Items log and add the mitigation to this log
4. Highlight risk mitigation items that need management attention during Project Reviews
5. Assign ownership to each Action Item and track them to closure

GIS Data Quality & Concept of Six Sigma

A lot of different procedures for identification and improving business processes have been developed and tried by businesses with varying degrees of success. Some of the most notable earlier procedures include  Value Chain and Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Re-engineering, Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), and Six Sigma methodology etc.

If we go as per the definition, to achieve Six Sigma, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. A Six Sigma defect is defined as anything outside of customer specifications. A Six Sigma opportunity is then the total quantity of chances for a defect.

Why is Six Sigma so important in the improvement process? We talk of Six Sigma level implementations having an accuracy of 99.99966 percent. Well, after reading the following statistics compiled by the American Society for Quality, you will agree that it definitely is not!
Being 99 percent accurate means that:

• There is no electric power for nearly 7 hours every month in USA cities.
• Every hour, at least 20,000 letters are lost in the mail.
• Over 200,000 errors are made in medical prescriptions on an annual basis.
• Every week, doctors botch up 5,000 surgeries.
• Major airports report 2 incorrect landings every day.

Six Sigma is completely different from the traditional quality model of process capability. Traditional quality model was applied only to manufacturing processes, while Six Sigma is applied to all important business processes. Traditional quality model was known as Three Sigma.Three Sigma had a process standard deviation of less than one-sixth of the total allowable spread. Six Sigma requires the process standard deviation at less than one-twelfth of the total allowable spread.

There are several steps for the implementation of Six Sigma in an organization. These steps include:

• Understanding the commitment of top leadership

• Access to current information on customer requirements

• A process management system to measure current performance and identify where you need to make improvements

• Employing Black Belts and Green Belts to design and improve processes and to assist process owners

• Allowing management involvement and review to reinforce process management, improvement and design

• Adopting effective communication strategy to ensure that Six Sigma methods are implemented throughout the organization. Some famous organizations who have implemented the highest level of quality control are NASA, Boeing, AirBus etc.

Why not in GIS?

Lack of defined accuracy standards, data acceptance criteria and standardization of data preparation processes make it difficult to implement  any uniform quality standards in GIS projects.  GIS data is not a  finished product  in true sense as its  currency & completeness is dependent on  type of uses and many external ever changing factors that may affect  data quality during the QC stage itself. Multiple stake holders of different skills and requirements also hamper standardization. There is not a single GIS co. in the world that has implemented six sigma maturity model for data quality control. That means either  concept of 99.999966 % accuracy is not applicable to GIS or its not worth consideration because of its huge implications on cost and operations.

For promoting quality culture in the organization, one must first have quality people. People who understand the importance of Quality. The very first thing to have is quality leaders. If the organization can boost of quality leaders, they can easily achieve the quality service, quality product. It's not a one time affair or one persons job so in ever changing scenario one must always look into the opportunity to surpass there earlier best enabling them to produce quality products on constant basis. Three factors are important, quality resources, recognizing the importance of quality in work, investment with encouragement on continuous basis.

So, what to say to  those naive people who demand 100% quality of data every time without having quality people. Either they don't know the basics of GIS or just use quality issues as staletactic to delay the vendor payments and misguide the stake holders on their own side. Quality is everyone's responsibility at all level no matter you are on vendor side or client.

Talking - A poem by Khalil Gibran

And then a scholar said, "Speak of Talking."
And he answered, saying:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words many indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the color is forgotten and the vessel is no more............

Dealing with less than effective managers

I found this article very interesting. Follow the link below for complete discussion and comments.

Working for an Idiot Boss: How to Handle a Lousy Boss?
http://www.resumark.com/blog/author/katia/

Main points are given here. ------------------------

If you’ve never had an idiot boss, consider yourself very lucky.

The rest of us sometimes have to deal with bosses who are control-freaks, intrusive, micro-managing, rude, and even obnoxious.

So what makes a lousy boss?
A lousy boss loves to take credit for your work and never gives you praise or positive feedback for any of your achievements. A lousy boss fails to support you in accomplishing your work, unnecessary interfere due to his lack of understanding and insecurities and leaves you hanging when you actually need their help. He likes recruiting cheap resources but demands best quality and quick delivery (off course with invoice) within deadlines- any PMs worst nightmare. He is usually very poor in cash management which is his main job and to hide that he wants to put blame on others. His obsession with "client is god" assumption also makes him paranoid and anti to his own employees. All the “support” that you get is annoying and results in counter-productive micro-management when you actually don’t need any help and they are just interfering in your and your teams work.

Lousy bosses think their subordinates have no feelings, interests or personal lives outside work and only he cares about the organizations welfare. Fact is he is the biggest threat to the co.s future. They take their employees for granted and think they'll do anything for the salary and contract extension esp he happens to be an expat. They think employees are robots designed for carrying out their orders. They make employees stay late after work for no reasons, attend stupid meetings and perform tasks that make no sense or have little purpose. He has no faith on anyone except few slave types, non-performing psycophants because he lacks self esteem and faith in himself.

The worst type of a boss gives you way too many tasks to handle, with unclear directions, wrong type of untrained resources, and impossible deadlines, while constantly changing their mind and directions, and having no clue about what they want or how they want it done. At the end, when you are late or the work is not done to their satisfaction – it becomes your fault with all the resulting consequences.

Boss's energies are directed towards a whole day drama where he wants to show others that he is the best man for his job. Fact is that he is there because of someone's mistake not due to his capabilities and he is the biggest threat to the co.. He is poor in cash management due to overemphasis on cost cutting to maximize his bonus & commission.

Any of this sounds familiar? Try these four ways to deal with an idiot boss before deciding to quit your job.

So how do you deal with a lousy boss?

1. Be smart and adapt to their style of work. Find the buttons to press. Dealing with less than effective managers (let’s just call them idiot bosses), is a challenge that too many employees don’t know how to approach correctly. One way to prevent problems is to study and understand your boss’s personality, their style of work and their expectations regarding your work. You can then adjust your approach and your style to please your boss, while guarantying yourself peace of mind. For example, if your boss is an annoying micro-manager, ask them about their preferred ways of you reporting to them, and report back on a regular basis and make sure ask for feedback every time. Chances are you boss will love this and will soon leave you alone after seeing that things are done “their way” and that they are “in control”. They may also get tired of “too much control” having to give you feedback all the time and will eventually give you more freedom (as some bosses will put it – “because they trust you will do a good job”. The bottom line – you will make your boss happy and will earn your freedom while keeping your boss off your back.
2. Manage your boss. If it is at all possible, try resolving problems by talking to your boss – it is the quickest and the least painful way. If something concerns you, makes you uncomfortable or offends you – tell them about it right away. For example, if a boss is constantly yelling at you, simply tell them that you understand their frustration but them raising their voice makes you uncomfortable or even threatened. This especially works well if you are a female and you boss is a male – mostly will back down right away.If that doesn’t work, document the facts of all incidents and how that impacted your performance – as well as other employees in the company. This process may be enough to relieve you of the stress so that you can cope. If everything fails – ignore him and take your case to the senior management.
3. Do not take things personally. Try focusing on work. Try to perform well, while ignoring all these distractions and focus on your work to see if that changes anything. Let your boss know that you are doing job to the best of your abilities.
4. Find a mentor or a mediator in the office. If you and your boss don’t connect well, you should consider finding someone else in the office who may be able to help you. A more experienced, seasoned or an elder employee may be more respected by the boss and may have already found “a recipe” to handling them. They can put in a word for you as well as provide you with valuable support and advice in coping with the boss. However, be very careful about your choice of words when talking to other employees – you never know who else they might tell. Tell them you have a problem – don’t bad mouth your boss.
5. Don't be part of money-laundering project – If you are in this situation then you have no escape because you have been hired as per a plan where you have to take blame for all the misdeeds and inefficiency of the people who are sharing the booty. There are few countries where 90% projects are of this type and everyone in client is interested in making a project fail so they can float a new tender for another similar project with new vendor.
   
6. Don’t sacrifice your nerves or self-esteem – it is not worth it! Doing nothing and hoping that the problems will resolve themselves is the worst idea. No one (especially your idiot boss) is worth impacting your mental and physical health, self respect, self-esteem or sanity over them. If there is no way to resolve these issues you should start looking for another job. If you want to stay in your company, a good mentor can help you transfer to a different department provided co. is big enough and he is not the only boss around. If you do decide to quit – do it wisely: don’t burn bridges and have a backup plan if anything changes.

Remember nothing will work (among 4 ways suggested above) with a persons who is trying too hard to masquerade as an effective manager. He is trying to keep an eye on everything though he is blind like a bat. He is a control freak but no control on himself. He doesnt respect his employees and vendors except his own reporting manager. Then its sure, you boarded a sinking ship with too many holes where you have been hired as a scapegoat from the day you signed the contract.

BHUVAN: Indian Earth Observation Visualization

With Best Wishes to you all on our 63rd Independence day, I am putting this information to celebrate the success of Indian Space Programme in last 4 decades.

Bhuvan is a geoportal that provides medium to high resolution satellite imagery of virtually the entire India over the internet. You can "fly" around using mouse and keyboard on a simple desktop computer with virtual globe in front draped with IRS images over Indian region. Many other features are built in, including 3D terrain and information on many thematic data.

Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain. Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe. It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment. The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content, Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain viewing capabilities.

Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors generated from varieties of geospatial information. Bhuvan will also attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will serve as a general awareness on our changing planet. There are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural resources through public participation. We are sure the common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data services in days to come.

Basic features of Bhuvan:

Access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.

Visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data
Superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required

• Visualisation of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice
• Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)
• Heads-Up Display ( HUD) navigation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)
• Navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)
• 3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard)
• Drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse)
• Drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes)
• Snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)
• Measurement tools (Horizontal distance, aerial distance, vertical distance, measure area)
• Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)

Particular interest of ISRO/DOS would be to provide such functionalities to common man so that he/she adopts participatory approach with scientists to solve simple problems easily and interactively.

• Advanced functionalities to be provided in future versions
• Urban Design Tools (to build roads, junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting)
• Contour map ( Displays a colorized terrain map and contour lines)
• Terrain profile ( Displays the terrain elevation profile along a path)
• Draw tools (Creates simples markers, free hand lines, urban designs)
• Navigation map (to jump to and view locations in the 3D India)

You will be able to see the following data on Bhuvan

• Satellite imagery (LISS III , LISS IV along with metadata and Multi- temporal Data from OCM & AWiFS)
• Value added information (NADAMS “ National Agricultural Drought Monitoring System), Output of flood studies for certain areas,
• Thematic information (Wastelands, Soils, watershed,water resources related maps)
• Base layers ( administrative boundaries, transport layers, water bodies, etc)
• Census information
• Metadata

For more details visit: http://bhuvan. nrsc.gov. in/index. html

Do you Enjoy Being A PM?

One of the things that makes me wonder is when people introduce themselves as a project manager and you start talking to them about project management and then you realise they are not real project managers.

In fact the title of PM is very clearly defined.

1. The project must be controlled using a recognised project management methodology which varies by nature of Project, Country & Industry.

2. A PM does not define a project, only controls it. The PM controls only three aspects, time, cost & quality. The project is defined by the project board or consultant. If your project has no board, you are not a PM in the industry definition of the term. You are just a care taker.

For those that mange projects, it has to be one of the best jobs; every day is different, the achievement when a project goes well is fantastic (if not rare) and the way you have to deal with so many different people with different agenda makes it one of the most challenging. Change is a VERY difficult thing to accomplish - particularly on large organizations. Sometimes these projects don't go the way the owners wanted and get negative feedback. Thus PM become the scapegoats, though its not his creation and the (wrong) RFP was written by a "so-called" expert. However this is part of risk management and should be used accordingly. It is one of the few jobs that if done well goes unnoticed; the project was delivered on time and within budget that is expected and its not due to him. Projects get noticed when they go wrong and PM gets the credit for the failure. As non-technical (MBA) lobby is tirelessly trying to establish the notion - The secret to success is knowing who to blame. They are still not ready to take any lessons from this recession which happend because of this ostrich like approach of managers and decision makers.

I have also found Project manager to be a abused and misused term. I’ve been a project manager, technical specialist, QA/QC expert. I found that 90% of people don’t want change in their workplace, usually because it will adversely affect them. Situation becomes very alarming if there are people on client side who themselves don't want project to succeed as it may make them redundant (common in gov. projects). Contrary to that a failed/delayed project is good for their blame game approach. A project always creates change and rarely for the good for the people who are having it done to them by changing the status quo and throwing new challenges.

The term “project manager” is deliberately misconstrued by people who overestimate the earning potential of project managers. They wish to have associated with the term & include it on their CV as they think that this will a. get them a better paid job & b. give them some kudos by telling others they are a PM. I personally know many persons who following a project management awareness course or certificate course (few classes of powerpoint “this is a project” etc and online tests) added PM to their CV and started applying for PM jobs.

A project manager needs to be very good at pleasing everyone; they are blamed from all sides ehen the project is late/ over budget. Most of the times scope of work (SoW), time frames and budgets are unrealistic. Then there is the SoW and methods that the resources ( just hired in hurry) don’t understand and the sponsor (guy with the money) keeps changing because he started to understand SoW only when first delivery was made and invoice sent. You as the project manager have to deliver it to the same time frames and budget. Now who wants to be a Project Manager? Answer is obvious and thats the reason we see so many troubled projects and consequently co.s also?