to grad or not to grad

Grad students are having to, in some cases, commit 15% of their future 2.5 decades or earning to escape the debt burden. Check out this article on Bloomberg. The stories are indeed sorry tales but nonetheless they are bets taken by adults.

Supply side:

The usual argument that providers of expensive grad education tend to make is that possessing a grad education yields higher earning power over a period of time. Students must not buy into such arguments. You can't drive a car by seeing the rear-mirror.

An interesting turn to this topic could be that of regulation in graduate education. There is no discussion about regulations at the supply end of such programs as the govt allows high-cost programs to advertise. Indeed, similar to qualified investor regulations, the govt must have regulation in the grad education sector. Nonetheless, the counter-argument is that prospective students for graduate education are in a position to make their own decisions accurately.

Demand Side

The usual reasons for students to sign up for expensive Masters programs are:

• A hope that the students will have better future as against status quo
• Laziness to work their way through in the industry and resultant escapism
  
• Genuine career switch needs (Finance professionals wanting to go to sectors such as Tech or Education as those have better job prospects than Finance).
  
• Genuine thirst for knowledge and/or upgrade of skills (this population knows what they are paying for and are usually not prone to be victims)
  
• Potential to enter a Ph.D. program after the Masters. This must be usually done if there is a intense need for intellectual stimulation.
  

Prospective grad students must be cautious to:

• conduct due-diligence w.r.t. placement statistics without undue influence by family or friends
• avoid succumbing to laziness - it will be an expensive escape :)
  

What's the solution?

1. Treat it as a business endeavor: Most of the Masters programs have a very extensive business plan by the schools. These programs are treated as cash-cows or in some cases, are rainmakers for the educational institutes. So should you! Create a thorough business plan complete with range of ROI, scenario-based risk management plan, and alternate paths in case things are not working out. See if you have support system in place for worst case scenarios.
   
2. Gain experience prior to enrolling for Graduate program. This makes the candidate more employable than without experience and allows the big jump in compensation post-grad. However, this goes out for a toss if you have a substantial gain in doing a fast-track combo (undergrad and grad in 5 years instead of just undergrad in 4 years).
   
3. If the prospective candidates decide to go for full-time, try finding fast-track options, unless you are a career-switcher. However, evidence suggests your odds are stacked in your favor if you are a part-time grad student.
   
4. Search for part-time options for the grad program
   

• This helps you keep your experience clock ticking
• This helps to keep the cash-flow
• This also allows you to pace up your studies.
  
• Allows tighter stop losses. For instance, if you are vouching for that MBA in Finance and figured that Dick Bove is saying there will be 150k-200k jobloss at banks, you can either suspend or completely drop out without significant loss

biggest gift yet

A multi-faceted Mr. William Dietrich II announced a plan to provide Mellon University with the largest gift yet.

Given that most of the private higher education institutes in this country operate on the basis of endowments, such a big boost will provide significant financial flexibility to the future administrations. This gift becomes effective after Mr. Dietrich passes away. Also, this gift will bring CMU's $1 b fundraising campaign to the $950 m mark.

This puts Mr. Dietrich II in the elite category of being in top 10 largest gifts by an individual to any higher educational institute. The edited version of the event, which was held on Sep 7, 2011, can be seen below.



This is a big boon for inter-disciplinary education especially because Mr. Dietrich gave this gift to primarily support inter-disciplinary studies. He mentioned that it was inspired by the quality of faculty members and alums; in addition, he liked the global approach adopted by the institute.

I am particularly happy because these were the exact reasons why I chose to gather CMU for my graduate education. Given an opportunity, I would back to campus in a heartbeat.

rendezvous with dara birnbaum

On July 27, CMU NY Alumni Chapter organized an evening rendezvous with Dara Birnbaum, a United States Artists Fellow Award winner and a CMU Alumna.

The press release for the Marian Goodman gallery can be found here. Her prime piece of Arabesque was very thoughtfully done. We got to meet with her Editor as well. The one video work missing a mention in the article but present in the South Gallery is 'Addendum: Autism', which is interesting and it caught my particular interest. I did get a chance to discuss it with her in person and she presented an interesting perspective to it.

She epitomizes the inter-disciplinary interests, which CMU alumni carry. She studied Architecture at CMU and later, moved to Arts and became a dignified personality in it.

Her seminal well-known work is:

• Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979
• Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978/79 (video) and

At the meet, there was a guest (with someone) who has a NYC foodie blog and he performed some instant magic tricks with people's business cards (such as floating them between his two palms).

Overall, it was a nice evening which was followed by a dinner at Brasserie 81/2.

US recession is a boon for service providers well-entrenched in India

Recession in US puts Indian firm on a good footing for leveraging the relatively inexpensive image of their services ! The economies of scale established by leading firms entrenched in India is remarkable.

The usual principal-agent issues impede these firms from making off-shoring decisions. Indian service providers have demonstrated good capabilities around the same in the past. After initial doubt, outsourcing had gained ground in last 5 years. Further, the contracts are up for renewals. We will see large bout of negotiations for the renewal of contracts and further large proportions of sourcing.

eSCM - Sourcing Capability Model encompasses all the sourcing issues and the Indian service providers are rapidly climbing the ladders of the eSCM capability levels. You must check out on the eSCM website for the list of the Indian firms.

Currently, the leading Indian service providers are making offers that are hard to refuse. No wonder - when the doom-gloom about the R-word started, progressive companies such as Infosys started booking the 30-seconds-slots on CNBC in the US.

From the vantage point that I am looking at, this recession is a boon for the Indian Services, in general, and software services, in particular.

architecture patterns and IT service management

While researching for patterns mentioned in v3, I stumbled upon this book titled "Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children " over here.

v3's Service strategy discusses about patterns in services' resources' requirements. This puts architecture patterns in the driving seat.

Surprisingly enough, Prof Krishnan (CMU fame) and myself were planning to work on something in this direction with Mellon Bank for Sourcing services. Having such patterns back from the service providers can help clients to retain the knowledge and to a certain degree, control on their architecture.

Personally, I think that based on industry, definition of IT service management may blur or become accentuated. For instance, in the financial services space, it is less efficient if one differentiates between a business service and IT service. I feel that the whole part is a business service and IT service is so embedded in it that the IT folks cannot live in isolation in most of the cases. Of course, there are certain functions in which they can be siloed out and made to function. For instance, infrastructure. However, in case of other IT services - they are all integrated to the business services tightly. This puts another most debated question in front of us - shouldn't ITIL name be expanded to have IT Service Management rather than having the term Infrastructure in it? Shanon Taylor, architect of v3, is working in that direction.

Finally, IT Service Management will evolve to become a subset of Business Service Management - which has been around since a while now. I am not trying to nominalize the value that ITIL v3 brings - I am just expressing that it is an old wine in a new bottle :P

why MISMers should focus on Google APM?

Consulting is a hot favorite for the MISMers (MISM students) as they want to utilize and deploy their newly gained knowledge about business-enabling via technology and running technology as a business immediately.

However, Google APM is a profile that helps you achieve that as well. Check out this set of 18 globe-trotting Google APMs. Of course, this is also a publicity stunt run by Google recruitment to attract the best talent at cheaper rates (yea, Google's cheap in their payscale - but what the heck, they give awesome stock-grants - about 200 shares per APM and on top of that, such perks). Check out this take on Google's APM program.

Unlike the consulting firms, Google maintains the entrepreneurial spirit of these young bright minds by providing them opportunity to spin their own projects, enabling them to be successful, and finally, bringing those to the market for the greater good of humanity. Much credit goes to initial founders and global product development chief such as Marissa Myers. Ms. Myers is young, energetic, and understands that the new generation folks would get put off if they are restrained from doing certain other things at work. How to channelize this huge burst of energy for the company's benefit is something that the Google leadership has mastered. Of course, it may appear that everyone's running amuck with any idea - however, that's not true. There is method to the madness and I wont divulge more details given to me by an ex-Product Manager during my interview for Product Management position earlier this year.

I would strongly recommend Google Product Management for those MISM students who yearn for the blaze of glory via entrepreneurial pursuits. I was oblivious about this opportunity till half-way into my program. When I discovered about it, I was obsessed with it. Google didnt' move fast and after 5 months of waiting I had to sign up my papers with my current employer, as Google was dragging the recruitment decision.

Google has been sharp enough to identify MISM as a program to source their PMs and APMs. Last year, they started having CMU on their radar for the same. Earlier, they saw CMU as a location for Devs, etc. However, the perception has changed and they intend to hire APMs and PMs as well. I hope this relation builds over a period of time and gets formalized making Google as a formal recruiter for the MISM program, similar to the consulting firms such as Deloitte, Diamond, McKinsey, etc.

does ITIL v3 marginalize value of CMU's MISM program?

As I read ITIL v3 since summer this year, I realised that most of the techniques mentioned in the books (primarily Service Strategy and in general, all the five books) are taught in MISM and more. Also, based on one's interests, one can shape program to become an operations expert for IT operations or services' operations. I had a doubt whether this was all the information/knowledge I paid for at MISM? Does the release of ITIL v3 appreciate value for one of the alums at the cost of rest of the current students?

Well, ITIL v3 does not marginalize MISM program. In fact, it enhances the value of the program - by highlighting that one of the alumni (Majid Iqbal) from the program was one of the authors for the ITIL v3 set of best practices. This highlights that CMU MISM program's students are thought leaders.

The pure inter-disciplinary approach that the school promotes and adopts creates a rich culture which leads to innovations. As Bill Gates mentioned on the Charlie Rose show, the world is far more inter-dependent today and we have multi-lateral alliances everywhere. In such a world, it is essential to create these linkages between various disciplines.

In future, plenty of new problems will emerge with newer dimensions. Whoever solves them will have certain set of best practices - those can get recorded into ITIL v4, v5, v6, etc. What CMU teaches you is how to approach a problem from different dimensions and solving problems with effective and enduring solutions.

I don't intend to spark a huge debate here by assuming superiority. There are a lot of aspects that can be changed in the program dynamics. However, it is clearly a program that's unmatched. If you want people who bring business solution by leveraging technology then currently, MISM is the place to hunt such people from.

deck creation and consulting

CMU MISM instilled certain slides' deck-creation qualities in me which cannot be emphasized any more. My success at deck-creation and logical structuring have helped me quite a bit at my consulting job. Creating decks instantly with MECE, Mynto's pyramid principle, etc comes naturally to me - thanks to CMU MISM. These were directly or indirectly learnt in the CMU environment.

Also, the creation of POVs were inspired from the Telecom Management class of Dr. Sakir Yucel and the Managing Services Organizations by Majid Iqbal. This training has helped me develop some provocative POVs at the firm.

Ramayya Krishnan, the chief architect of the program, has well said in this video - how IT/IS interact with policies, how they interact with the business processes, etc is very important to leverage IT's capabilities. Business technology and IT Management are forte for CMU MISM students. Andy Wasser summarizes well in this video by saying "... the students who want to see a business opportunity and intelligently know how to apply technology !" CMU MISM is a business technology program.

Currently, only progressive consulting firms have realised this aspect. Sooner or later, the rest of the IT world will realize that and source their talent from this program.

network nyc

Network NYC is at 3 West Club this year - will look forward to meeting other CMU folks there. Thereafter, the event's organized to go to Connolly's for an after party. I plan to swing folks to Tonic (nearby) after that. However, let us see what will be the mood be like. We may end up going some other hipper place - Tonic's kindda lame for me.

However, I must have energy left. Too many assignments.
I have an early morning-long meeting till noon in midtown with an investment bank and a hospitality major. Later, I have to continue to work on the point-of-views that I've been working on. It's provocative and will be out soon on the firm's site. In the evening, there is a media sector special event on Branded Entertainment at the HBO office at Times Square. The prime part is that I have to present it later to the organization at the Quarterly event. Though I am an FSI major, I am a TMT minor. I guess that explains my choice for NYC - lol !

My cousin's coming - so, he will be my responsibility from tomorrow evening till Sunday morning. It will be great to meet him after almost 2.5 years.

I look forward to the coming days!

kalam @ cmu?

Check out this piece of news - Dr. Kalam getting an honorary Ph.D. from CMU !
He left the president's tenure this July.

I wish I could've been there to meet him ! This brings me back to the initial argument of whether I should go back to CMU or continue working at my workplace ? If I were smart I would go back eventually. The odds are stacked in my favor for my correct utilization. Here, the odds are not exactly stacked in my favor to make the best use of my knowledge - however, it aint a low probability - hence, still hanging around.

value added by ivys!

Donald Asher has come out with yet another interesting writeup for schooling !
Check this out: http://teacherweb.com/CA/PacificaHighSchoolOxnard/MrsGillett/Is-the-Ivy-League-Worth-It_.pdf

Does Ivy League matter (beyond finance)?

Also, another advice of having least debt when one gets out is very important. Developing social skills and technically skills is an equally important advice. Thus, getting into an environment where there is a good balance between to the two makes more sense.

This is what I was thinking when I used to see the undergrad students at CMU. CMU is too expensive when it comes to learning undergrad education. Then, why invest so much when a person from some other school is also going to join the same job? Also, these days recruiters and companies have smartened up. With good training programs, they would hire folks from lesser known univs and then train them in order to drive down the prices of the labor from these highly known univs.

So, candidates who are applying need to think if they are getting a good value-added when they join CMU or are similar returns possible elsewhere (say Kelly, or the likes). Returns will vary from person to person based on which skill is valued how much by the individual who is evaluating it! For instance, developing social skills may be valued highly by someone lacking it but may be valued less by someone already possessing it.

Graduate !

The last week at CMU was fairly eventful. Here's the account for pre-graduation, graduation, and post-graduation.

Pre-graduation:
The semester got over and I was partying non-stop ! Two parties in one evening on Thursday - first, at Prof Steve Roehrig's place and then later at Firehouse with Turkish Students Association (TASA-Pgh). The initial one was sober and a good opportunity to meet the faculty members in a social setting. TASA party was fairly nice as I met a new dance partner Ashley ! Next Friday, we went to Matrix for another night out with her friends.

Graduation: This was a memorable event for me - not because I was graduate but for reasons as follows:

First, the graduation dinner was a cool plan by Val - this one was at Le Mont ! As CMU represents, it was a fairly international dinner - ppl from origins of US, Iran, China, Bosnia, and India !

After the dinner, myself and Gorana went to Firehouse as she wanted to check out the place.

Second, Val's mom was present for cheering me up at the diploma handing over ceremony for MISMs. My parents didn't make it to the US but I had someone from my American family to cheer me up !

Third, Bal & Val gave me the exact gift that I wanted :) Val's mom gave me a graduation gift too. Her actual gift was being there for cheering me!

Graduation day was a day to cheer an effort and the sacrifices that went into getting the degree. Clearly, I was not ready to leave school once I was there until April. In April, something happened and I was so ready to graduate - I feel the emptiness without the school even now !

When I came to CMU, I had a situation similar to the one Odysseus had in Homer's Odyssey. On one hand, he had the beautiful Calypso and on the other, he had his kingdom Ithaca. Odysseus went for Ithaca and I went for Carnegie Mellon U. I wish that alike him, I will be able to get what I want.

Post graduation:

After graduation, I left my townhouse in Sq. Hill. Believe me, I was happy to leave it - lol !

I went to meet Bal and Val for this one last dinner at IL Pizzaiolo (Bal said that I must have Pizza out there before I leave Pgh). They used wood heated ovens to churn out some delicious and sizzling pizzas. The cheese was unmatchable. They beat the Giordano's (Chicago fame) hands down. However, I got some information due to which my stay in Pgh got extended. In a way, it was a fortunate accident as I got to have some family time. :)

Next day, Val bhabhi made some tasty Chinese dinner and we watched another movie. Yea, she fed me just like my Bhabhi would ! Later that evening, we watched Da Vinci Code (yea, this was a movie on my pending-list). Finally, on Saturday evening ,we went to horse racing at Meadow Lands. That was a fun evening and then we watched Notes on a Scandal.

Last day in Pgh morning, I checked out Pandolfo's with Bal and Val. It was a sumptuous meal. While leaving, I was sobby and almost cried while I sat in the car. I have decided that if I am unable to settle down in NYC, I shall go back to Pgh !

what area of strategy to specialize in ?

Another common question by prospective management students:
What area of strategy to specialize in?

Answer:
What area depends on what you want to do and your skillsets.

Option 1:
If you have good project management skills then you might want to do implementation of strategy. This is important because it is often found that the implementation of a strategy fails to match with the original vision and goal of the project (I consider an entire business as one large project here)

Option 2:
If you do not have good project management skills but have good analytical skills w.r.t. market research, economics (both macro and micro), design skills, etc then you might consider designing the strategy as your option.

For best results, a firm is well-off giving the design work to someone who has these skills as well as possesses the experience mentioned in the earlier option. Experience is important in order to make the design "pragmatic". Often, the companies cannot procure such folks and do a trade-off on either experience or design skills due to shortage of time.

Bottomline: Get a better grip of fundamental concepts for the field before thinking of strategy area. It is a buffet dinner out there - you yourself need to figure out what suits your palate, appetite, and digestive system.

graduation

This is a follow-up post to an earlier post here. Comtemplating on my journey of MISM - naaaah, there's plenty of time for that later.

Graduation's in the air and there are celebrations all around. One full week of parties and catching up with friends, et al.

Last Sat night, we went clubbing to Firehouse to celebrate this one last party with colleagues before everyone disperses for their internships and full time positions.

Yday evening, there was a welcome event at Six Penn Kitchen for the newcomers (the event became slightly unpleasant because there was barely any food after 5.30pm and party was scheduled from 5pm to 7pm- I must say that the organizers did a dismal show in the party estimation! The choice of place was good though.

Tonight, some of the existing students have a dinner at Anisha's place - her parents have come down to visit her and her brother for 3 weeks. She's invited everyone for a dinner made by her mom :)

Tomorrow night, there's another party at Prof Steve Roehrig's house !

Friday night, I plan to go clubbing - but Pgh night life is not as active on Fri nights - unless there are $1 drinks - lol ! Letsee - I missed Diesel lounge last Friday night when Anisha visited it - I might go there this Fri night.

Thereafter, on Saturday evening, a graduation dinner with my Indo-American family (Bal, Val, Val's mom and some other guests) at LeMont ! This is right after MISM/MSIT ceremonies in the evening.

Catching up with friends over coffee, lunches, dinners is the routine for this week prior to the graduation. I have to make a list of who all are left to be met.

I've to get my gown and cap in the meanwhile. Also, packing for the move from Pgh to NYC is going on. That's the only painful part these days.

where do MISMs go?

Prospectives frequently ask this question to me in order to judge RoI of MISM program: "Where do MISMs go (after they graduate)?"

I decided to blog on this as it is really easy for them to check.

Professional social networking group such as linkedin are open and can be easily checked out by searching on keyword "MISM". They are everywhere - consulting firms such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc....product firms such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc financial services firms such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays, UBS,etc , and on linked in there are atleast 156 users (while I am posting this ..) who are returned as a search result to MISM.

After knowing this and the avg base from career services page on MISM website, they can judge alum's sals from salary.com or something. Stop harassing existing students or alums about what salaries folks in their batches got - it is not only impolite (politically) but also indicates immaturity of the candidate to discuss salaries with an alum. Salaries vary widely. As a thumb rule, ppl with experience tend to get higher salaries than those without. However, along with experience, relevance is often important. If your earlier experience is not relevant to the job offer you are getting there is a high probability of having lesser salary. Besides, the progressions will be smoother.

I like to give an analogy of a buffet dinner to those who ask me such questions. It's a dinner table out there - you must pick or get prepared to pick what suits you. For instance, some ppl may not like consulting and hence, there's no point for them to go towards that. Some other set may like coding and they should go for that. Its a soul-searching process which one must undergo and not just get a job for a "paycheck".

There are ppl in the current and previous batches who have turned down higher paying offers (and I am talking large differences - to the order of US$35k) in order to choose the work which they want to do. This is a sign of maturity!

I often say that you dont have to be a MISM to get a huge sal - that you can get by doing coding on Wall St (lol !) . The reasons for joining the program must be right or else at the end you will be left unsatisfied.

Define what you want to do and search in that direction. The result may even indicate that MISM is not what you want. In that case, do not invest in it just for the sake of doing a Masters.

Frankly speaking, CMU's inter-disciplinary approach is awesome and based on one's readiness to slog, one can achieve their objectives if worked well. Of course, CMU is Computer U. and hence, one has to keep in mind that one should not crib about not making it for some trading position after MISM (though there are ppl in the past who have made it). For achieving that, there are different programs (may be different schools) which one must consider.

Bottomline: Do your research well, before asking questions to an alum or an existing student. Then, ask crisp, concise, and precise questions while presenting context as well.

bomb scare at hamburg hall, CMU

Here's the article from Post Gazette. Hamburg Hall, a historic landmark (1900), is the place where my program(MISM) has its lounge.

I will not comment anything as this was a routine alarm for a suspicious liquid and cannot be correlated to heightened security post VTech's unfortunate incident - CMU security was always fairly vigil.

Citi slashes IT

Here's an article on Citi's current strategy for cost-cutting. The cuts would be mostly on cost-center of Citi - IT. This was bound to happen - the firms were just getting their feet wet (or maturing the relationship with the service providers) in the last 3 or 4 years. This is backed by evidence from a previous article pointing to a Deloitte survey in 2003.

While helping students think through their offers (at MISM), I had always asked them to assess profiles based on nature of job, what they want, etc other than just the pay. When it came to financial firms, one of the dimensions I asked them to consider was whether they were a part of the revenue drivers for the firm or the cost centers for the firm. If they were the cost-centers then there is a possibility that they will have to face one of these days (where they face the axe) !

I get some pleasure in seeing that my thought process was in the right direction. However, I feel sorry for those who will be under the axe because of this step by Citi.

The article highlights on them using offshore services providers ! Election year has come and we will see increasing backlash against outsourcing. However, for global firms such as Citi - it doesn't make sense to run operations from here if they can be done cheaper in some other location on the globe and is able to do so with reasonable SLA adherence.

However, outsourcing need not be the only option. Use of ITIL concepts and other best practices can help reduce costs and make IT more agile and competitive as well. Besides, mindset of converting these cost centers to revenue centers with the existing staff will help achieve the golden middle path - however, that would take more time than Wall St. can wait before next quarter or year ! Also, that would involve significant re-training of existing folks.

Outsourcing, if undertaken, must adhere to eSCM-CL principles developed at ITsqc by an inter-disciplinary set of researchers led by Bill Hefley ! It is a near-complete model w.r.t. dimensions to think about when it comes to Sourcing initiatives.

On an arbitrarily tangential note, a good choice to go long on would be Indian services stocks - which heavily serve these folks. Long live Indian service providers !

usability and free products: google, yahoo, microsoft

Can you imagine having a service provider (having no monopolistic advantages) trying to give you, a user, a hard time with their interface for your interaction. What do you do if you have other options? Switch !

Ease of use, and relevance are of prime importance. There is a reason that there exists a graduate program named "Human Computer Interaction" in some of the leading universities. There is a reason why these students get hired by most of the leading companies quickly. Ease of use does matter.

Check out why Google made it's way much ahead of its competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft. Google has about 55%+ market of the search market. Yahoo is about 25% and Microsoft, a pithy 5-8%. There are many reasons and HCI is one of the prime ones. Larry Page, one of the Google founders, was a HCI grad student ! Their products beat Yahoo hands down. Microsoft was busy with anti-trust trial and totally lost track.

Microsoft has now started having good HCI products in their portfolio. Also, Yahoo has a similar ideology. They still don't have as much user-inclusion in their product developments. An acquaintance from Microsoft program management team for their search product explained me their process and I believe that they still need to allocate more time for the usability piece. However, to be fair - they are getting better!

Ray Ozzie has discovered that Google is way ahead and MSFT was left behind. However, he also respects them. At the same time, he is pushing his product dev team to get their act right with Live search product. He wants Microsoft back in this game. This market is going to double from USD 40b to USD 80b in 3 years. Microsoft cannot afford to stay back with a mere 5-8% market share.

One way to get back in the game is consolidating the smaller players. I foresee this consolidation happening. How - I dont know....! Let us say, what if the software giant makes a kill and buys out Yahoo? Picture this -

At today's price of 30-32 and outstanding shares of 1.34b, we get about 40b market-cap. If MSFT makes a bid of 20% higher, it will be about USD 48-50 b. MSFT can afford this purchase without any leverage - given their warchest of cash they've built up on their books. Besides, they needn't buy the whole pie; they can just buy a 51% stake at about USD 24 to 25 b. If they wait a bit, they can get it for cheaper as the stock market capitulates due to economic outlook - lol !

MSFT-Facebook romance is going on anyways. (Is this due to the Harvard connection???) So, MSFT will have a good usability team at hand and will be back in the game to take head on with GOOG. This wont be a serious threat to Google because the merger will be disruptive for both the companies from a talent perspective. However, this move will still strengthen Microsoft's position vis-a-vis Google and this move is the only way for Microsoft to get into this search arena, if they are serious about it.

Going back to the usability game, it is interesting to note that Govt of America has considered this seriously and has guidelines at usability.gov.

global sourcing

Mellon bank's senior officials visited CMU for a presentation on Global Sourcing. They wanted insights into what incremental innovations they can make in order to add productivity, security, performance, and nurture further relationships with their vendors, namely, CTS and INFY. The representatives from both CTS and Infy were present there. I had a talk with Ajay Bhandari, Sr. Engagement Manager from Infy thereafter on some other dimensions.

I could think of application of ATAM from SEI for architectural evaluation by Mellon and Octave from Cylab. Besides, all my productivity tips will go straight to their wiki and cannot be discussed any further. Its interesting to know that this was part of curriculum for a grad education program. Besides, the crowd also provide some other strategic insights for certain cultural aspects. I must appreciate the step forward from Mellon to place a Mellon personnel at offshore DC to be their eyes and ears for the sourcing initiative to be successful.

eSCM certifications are now happening both for service providers as well as clients. These are conducted by ITSqc or IT Services Qualifications Center. Global Sourcing is maturing to the next level. More on the topic later...

which company is your favorite company?

Usually, many of my colleagues ask me this question: Which is your dream company?
My reply: my own company :D

They ask: Besides that?
My reply: From what perspective?

They ask: to work for...duh!
My reply: None