Certified Scrum Master

I just became Certified Scrum Master (CSM) after attending the required 16 hours training by Pete Deemer. I attended the training at Mumbai on 23,24 February.

Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Wrapping existing engineering practices, including Extreme Programming and RUP, Scrum generates the benefits of agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. Scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time to benefits while facilitating adaptive, empirical systems development. Learn more...

Those looking to get Scrum Training in India can visit - http://www.goodagile.com/

Spotlight at www.itvidya.com

Hi friends,

Please check out spotlight on me at www.itvidya.com, direct link is at: http://www.itvidya.com/spotlight/sachinpalewar

Please leave your comments.

Regards,

Sachin

Talking flash characters for your website

SitePal is an Internet-based subscription service that allows you to create a wide-array of animated speaking characters, which can be added to your website for a variety of professional and personal applications.

SitePal provides a rich, easy-to-use to interface that makes the process of designing, managing and publishing your characters a breeze!

Absolutely no programming knowledge is required to use SitePal. However, SitePal does interface with various programming languages for those who are technically inclined.

I think this is also a real cool idea. You can now really give that personal touch when user visit your website. An almost live character will be actually talking about your products and services so user can just sit back and hear what he/she has to say instead of reading.

Also these characters are highly animated and responsive to mouse movements and almost look like they are following your every move. Check them out at - http://www.sitepal.com/

Snap to take on Google

Snap a new search engine which allows you to see the previews of the search results aims to take on Google and other search engines and take the war to next level. It also allows user to rate the search results and interact with the searched site without opening it.

It also provides a neat widget which anybody can add to their site/blog to provide the preview functionality to visitors. Widget is called Snap Preview Anywhere (SNAP) - See Demo

I think its a cool web 2.0 tool. What do you guys feel?

The Goal

I just finished reading a book called 'The Goal' by Eli Goldratt.

http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Eliyahu-M-Goldratt/dp/0884271781/sr=8-1/qid=1169654572/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-8768742-2188469?ie=UTF8&s=books

Its a novel but has become best selling management book. Its a story about one Alex Rogo, who is a plant manger for a manufacturing company. His plant is making losses and going to be closed down if he does not turn it around within 3 months. Needless to say he turns it around into a profit making plant. But it was not simple. He thought, made changes in the plant and did troubleshooting with the help of his teacher cum friend Jonah.

This is simply one of the best books I have read. I learned following things from the book:

1. Many times solutions to problems are plain common sense but we are too tied up with what's called common practices that we either ignore them or don't dare to implement them.

2. We should not treat any organisation as something which you can improve by improving efficiencies of each individual of the organisation. Local optimus theory simply does not work. We need to ensure that individuals work well in syncronisation. Sometime it even helps a company if certain people are sittling ideal than trying to ensure that everybody works full time.

3. The book really gives a very good idea about how a company boardroom functions. How managers interact with their employees and how they manage a big company.

4. Also worth learning is how patiently Alex Rogo handles the family pressures and tries to bring her wife back when she leaves him as he could not give any attention to her.

Whoever among you runs some kind of business should read this book and if you run a manufacturing company or part of such company you must read this book. You can take my words for that.Please let me know your thoughts about the book if you read it or have read it already.