Monday, 13 December 2010
Overview of IT (Information Technology) Vertical Markets
India is among the largest markets in Asia/Pacific in terms of IT spending, and it has the highest national five-year CAGR, creating a very attractive market for IT vendors. It is forecast to grow at a 14.8 percent CAGR, exceeding $36 billion by 2009, trailing China, Australia and South Korea in terms of enterprise IT spending.
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management (KM) is a framework for designing an organization’s goals, structures, and processes so that the organization can use what it knows to learn and to create value for its customers and community.
KM fundamentals
KM fundamentals
- Understanding knowledge: What it means, how to work with it, who owns it, how it flows, finding who knows.
- Supporting knowledge: Making sharing and knowledge creation happen, applying new & useful knowledge level practices, developing & appreciating symptoms and diagnostics. Walking on a different (higher?)landscape.
- Scaling knowledge: Moving from individual insights, to group validation, to enterprise meaning, and then beyond. Overcoming the 'stickiness' at community level and the 'slipperiness' associated with professional / domain interactions.
- Speeding cultural changes: Knowledge is closely tied to people and identity, changing mindsets is more than altering process and habits. Making sure we 'listen' and empathize with discontinuous insights, killing NIH (not invented here)
- (How to) transfer learning: Making & taking new concepts to action, thinking together, collaborating and delivering to a market that will not wait. Retention, taking action and embedding not just access & experience.
Risks in Software Project Management
Risks in Software Project Management
Following are the most common Risks identified in Software Project Management:
Unlike the hazards of daily living, the dangers in the young and emerging field of software engineering must often be learned without the benefit of lifelong exposure. A more deliberate approach is required. Such an approach involves studying the experiences of successful project managers as well as keeping up with the leading writers and thinkers in the field. One such writer in the area of risk is Dr. Barry W. Boehm. In his article "Software Risk Management: Principles and Practices" he lists the following top 10 software risk items:
- Personnel Shortfalls
- Unrealistic schedules and budgets
- Developing the wrong functions and properties
- Developing the wrong user interface
- Gold-plating
- Continuing stream of requirements changes
- Shortfalls in externally furnished components
- Shortfalls in externally performed tasks
- Real-time performance shortfalls
- Straining computer-science capabilities
How to Manage
Dr. Boehm, a well known Risk Management expert, describes risk management as being comprised of the following activities:
- Risk Assessment (figuring out what the risks are and what to focus on)
- - making a list of all of the potential dangers that will affect the project
- - assessing the probability of occurrence and potential loss of each item listed
- - ranking the items (from most to least dangerous)
- Risk Control (doing something about them)
- - coming up with techniques and strategies to mitigate the highest ordered risks
- - implementing the strategies to resolve the high order risks factors
- - monitoring the effectiveness of the strategies and the changing levels of risk throughout the project
Risk Analysis Tools / Products
Following is the list of popular Risk Analysis Tools / Products:
- The Australian Standard 4360 Risk management portal
- List of Risk Analysis, Assessment and Management Tools
- @RiskAccelerator
- Risk Analysis and Management System (RAMS)
- Toolkit for RAMS from IsographDirect
- FIDUCIA - Modelling Risk in Interoperable Public Key Infrastructures
- CORA - Cost-of-Risk-Analysis System
- BayesEngineTM Technology
- Introduction to Security Risk Analysis and the COBRA Approach
- Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety Solutions from Reliability Software
- eRisk Managemet Model from mi2g
- List of Risk Analysis Books from Palisade
- Risk Analysis, Monte Carlo Simulation, Forcasting, Optimization - from Crystal Ball
- Callio Technologies offers ISO 17799 BS7799 Security Policies Software Tools and Expertise
- Tufin SecureTrack - Firewall Policy Auditing, Tracking and Compliance
Risk Analysis Methodologies
Risk Analysis Methodologies
Following are various Risk Analysis methodologies:- FMECA (Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis), MIL-STD (Procedures for Performing a FMECA), FMECA.COM
- FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis)
- FTA (Fault Tree Analysis)
- HAZOP (HAzard and Operability Analysis)
- CCA (Cause Consequence Analysis)
- MORT (Management Oversight Risk Tree)
- SMORT (Safety Management Organization Review Technique)
- Risk Analysis Bibliographies by Tan Hiap Keong
- Security/Survivability Systems Analysis (S/SSA)
- CEA - Cost Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Emergency Medicine, Computer, and more by Zui-Shen Yen, andPrimer on Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Effective Clinical Practice
- BCA - Benefit-Cost-Analysis for the use of Intelligent Transportation Technology
- RISK: Risk Assessment, Risk Communication, and Risk Management: Disaster Central
Software Risk Assessments
The Software Improvement Group can provide answers to key questions about your software by performing a Software Risk Assessment; a one-time thorough analysis of the IT system of an organization. A Software Risk Assessment is an independent, expert analysis resulting in clear implementable recommendations to improve the quality of your software.
The Challenge
A constant challenge to any IT department is to continually react to changing requirements and expectations. Important questions arise:
The Challenge
A constant challenge to any IT department is to continually react to changing requirements and expectations. Important questions arise:
- Do we rebuild or terminate the existing software system?
- What is the biggest bottleneck in this system and how can it be removed
- Can the current system be effectively adapted to handle a new change request?
The decisions made can have a big impact on the future direction of the entire company.
In order to properly answer these types of questions, a thorough understanding of the system is required. However, written documentation is either unavailable or insufficient and the programmers lack a complete overview of the entire system. A situation arises in which thorough knowledge of a software system is mandatory, but nobody can deliver this knowledge in sufficient detail.
Scientists are coming up with new ways to diagnose...
Scientists are coming up with new ways to diagnose patients before the symptoms show; research could help in early detection of cancer, heart disease and other disorders…
Researchers in the US have established a technique that provides a new approach for detecting a number of genetic disorders found in infants and young children. Daniel Raftery, a professor of analytical and physical chemistry at Purdue University, and his collaborators used a simple chemical reaction to improve the ability to detect important molecules in complex fluids like blood and urine.
The technique makes the markers for some genetically caused metabolic disorders up to 100 times more visible, Raftery said. “This technique allows us to profile a class of biomarkers – molecules that indicate disease – that would otherwise be very difficult to detect,” he said. “The increased sensitivity could allow doctors to diagnose a range of diseases at very early stages.”
This method of analysis, called metabolomics, involves the simultaneous analysis of multiple small molecules, or metabolites, which occur in fluids and tissues in the body. These can indicate a response to biological stress or a specific disease state. “The metabolic profile found in biofluids, such as blood and urine, provides a snapshot of ongoing biological processes in the human body,” Raftery said. “This type of analysis could be a key to earlier detection of diseases.”
Just like an MRI
Researchers use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – a cousin of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – to detect hydrogen or carbon atoms to provide insight into the metabolites present. However, this standard approach has its disadvantages, Raftery said. The signals from carbon atoms are very weak and are difficult to detect, while the signals from hydrogen atoms often overlap. In particular, metabolites present in high concentrations overlap those present in low concentrations. Raftery and his team revolutionised this by enhancing the visibility of a certain type of metabolites – amino acids, by chemically tagging the molecules of interest so that they are more easily visible.
Faster and reproducible
In addition to its increased sensitivity, the new testing method requires little pretreatment of the sample and roughly 0.5 millilitres of blood to perform the test. The entire test can be performed in about half an hour, providing a quick turnaround for results and treatment decisions for patients, Raftery said.
“It is a very simple process and would not require much training to perform the tests,” he said. “It is an easily reproducible test that can be done over and over again, which is important to ensure accurate diagnosis. “This approach is applicable to a variety of molecule types and other fluids, and has the potential for additional applications,” he added. “We plan to test more samples and to determine if this methodology proves to be sensitive to cancer and heart disease, as it is for metabolic disorders.”
A blood test for cancer
In another study, British scientists claimed to have developed a blood test that offers the possibility of spotting cancer long before the symptoms appear.
The test successfully detected early signs of breast cancer in some women, and the scientists hope the vital clues will help them to revolutionise cancer prevention by offering cheaper and less invasive screening techniques in the next ten years. The University of Southampton research team studied blood samples collected from 11,000 women over the last 30 years, some of whom later developed cancer. The researchers looked for and spotted significant biomarkers of breast cancer in the samples. An all-purpose cancer blood test could be quicker, cheaper, more accurate and less invasive than other tests.
Researchers in the US have established a technique that provides a new approach for detecting a number of genetic disorders found in infants and young children. Daniel Raftery, a professor of analytical and physical chemistry at Purdue University, and his collaborators used a simple chemical reaction to improve the ability to detect important molecules in complex fluids like blood and urine.
The technique makes the markers for some genetically caused metabolic disorders up to 100 times more visible, Raftery said. “This technique allows us to profile a class of biomarkers – molecules that indicate disease – that would otherwise be very difficult to detect,” he said. “The increased sensitivity could allow doctors to diagnose a range of diseases at very early stages.”
This method of analysis, called metabolomics, involves the simultaneous analysis of multiple small molecules, or metabolites, which occur in fluids and tissues in the body. These can indicate a response to biological stress or a specific disease state. “The metabolic profile found in biofluids, such as blood and urine, provides a snapshot of ongoing biological processes in the human body,” Raftery said. “This type of analysis could be a key to earlier detection of diseases.”
Just like an MRI
Researchers use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – a cousin of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – to detect hydrogen or carbon atoms to provide insight into the metabolites present. However, this standard approach has its disadvantages, Raftery said. The signals from carbon atoms are very weak and are difficult to detect, while the signals from hydrogen atoms often overlap. In particular, metabolites present in high concentrations overlap those present in low concentrations. Raftery and his team revolutionised this by enhancing the visibility of a certain type of metabolites – amino acids, by chemically tagging the molecules of interest so that they are more easily visible.
Faster and reproducible
In addition to its increased sensitivity, the new testing method requires little pretreatment of the sample and roughly 0.5 millilitres of blood to perform the test. The entire test can be performed in about half an hour, providing a quick turnaround for results and treatment decisions for patients, Raftery said.
“It is a very simple process and would not require much training to perform the tests,” he said. “It is an easily reproducible test that can be done over and over again, which is important to ensure accurate diagnosis. “This approach is applicable to a variety of molecule types and other fluids, and has the potential for additional applications,” he added. “We plan to test more samples and to determine if this methodology proves to be sensitive to cancer and heart disease, as it is for metabolic disorders.”
A blood test for cancer
In another study, British scientists claimed to have developed a blood test that offers the possibility of spotting cancer long before the symptoms appear.
The test successfully detected early signs of breast cancer in some women, and the scientists hope the vital clues will help them to revolutionise cancer prevention by offering cheaper and less invasive screening techniques in the next ten years. The University of Southampton research team studied blood samples collected from 11,000 women over the last 30 years, some of whom later developed cancer. The researchers looked for and spotted significant biomarkers of breast cancer in the samples. An all-purpose cancer blood test could be quicker, cheaper, more accurate and less invasive than other tests.
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