tinaarora12

Dear Participants, Firstly, it’s a pleasure to learn from so many industry experts under the BSS roof about their varied experience and diverse views on an interesting topic. Kudos to everyone for sharing such enlightening aspects. I must make a mention of some brilliant comments with regards to their views on both checksheets and BPM interventions. Mohan draws a wonderful analogy from spices preparation at home vs. outsourcing the same. Rajesh Chakrabarty lists down the advantages and disadvantages of digitization in the simplest way. Sandhya brings out the difference between a checksheet and a checklist adeptly. Additionally some great arguments by Sabyasachi, Kiran, and Arunesh. The one that I found quite intriguing and more structured argument, for and against Checksheets is by R Rajesh. He lists down the what, how of a checksheet, future state and then logically defends his argument in his conclusion. The post is here Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. Best wishes, Tina Arora

Hi Pooja, Fabulous anecdote to share. Well woven words used to explain the terminology. Cheers, Tina

Hi VK, I believe Six Sigma is an absolutely flexible subject which can be easily adopted and placed in any given situation. For eg: In my process, if I need to understand why one of my teams is not able to perform as per KRAs listed and what do I do to identify the issues and resolve it, I can easily apply six sigma. Your question on: Can we use it for strategy building for certain business goals? - My answer is absolutely 'Yes'. Every organisation has a portfolio of services to offer. The CEO / MD identifies the value maximizing / cash cows in his portfolio, and accordingly aligns program managers to direct six sigma projects to maximize profits while minimizing costs. This in turn facilitates long term strategy planning. Should we use it only when we have clear objectives for a process design or process improvement? - My answer is again 'Yes'. This only makes the task of the functional head easier when you clearly know the objectives at hand to be achieved. Given the above two scenarios six sigma has been able to prove it's tremendous application success in the last decade and I am sure it would do wonders for the forthcoming generations. Regards, Tina

Hi Ashwin, Gold Plating begins in the following situations: When the project manager sees wooing more as an option for success than work When the project manager is not able to meet one part of the project scope and tries hiding it by apple polishing the results achieved so far When the project manager genuinely wants to go out of his way to please the requesting organisation For eg: While designing a new part of the technology with pre-discussed features with the client, as a PM I decided to add an additional attractive feature without charging anything extra to the client. Of course, there are much more reasons why a PM would opt for Gold Plating but these would give you a fair idea as to what is the term. My personal view is Gold plating is not totally an untouchable concept. The prime objective of any project manager should be achieve his/her objectives listed in the project scope and then decide to leave a room for the term in the discussion. It would otherwise be a sin to follow the principle of apple polishing without a clear understanding of project's direction and objectives. Do let me know if you have any questions. Regards, Tina While I'm preparing for the PMP exam, I learned that Gold Plating should be clearly avoided.

Gold Plating / Apple Polishing means the provision of additional features/services to the project stakeholder/s outside the scope of the project plan. Many Project managers believe doing an apple polishing attempt would enhance their relationships with the stakeholder/s and project owners and will contribute towards building a long term relationship in terms of future business opportunities with the parties involved. However, there are serious consequences of this practice as well. Invite the group to share their thoughts. Cheers, Tina

For many decades fusion techniques have been experimented in many European countries. Fusion data is very efficient to recover information in many cases. It's a simple 3 step procedure: Extract a sub-sample from the large respondents data which is split in 2 halves Use these two sub-samples to produce a fusion of a third sample Run your calculations with his fusion data Then we can compare the results issued from the fusion data set and the ones coming from the observed dataset. The fusion algorithm involved is the latest available. According to Procustrean Fusion Algorithm - Sample 1 is called the donor sample and sample 2 is called the recipient sample. The Procustrean Fusion Algorithm (PFA) obeys five principles : Each recipient should receive data from a single donor. The data collected for a donor is transferred as a whole to the linked recipients. Any donor already linked should be highly discouraged to produce further links The cross-distributions between common and additional variables should be preserved unchanged by the ascription process. The similarity between two respondents should be evaluated globally. The rational underlying the first two principles is to avoid breaks of the inter-correlations between the additional variables during the ascription process. The third principle protects against a decrease of the effective sample size. The fourth principle refers to one of the basic requirements for a good fusion.. The last principle is somewhat more subtle. The idea behind is that if one considers that two donors are close (i.e. similar) they need to be so, not only on the basis of the common variables but also on the basis of the additional variables, otherwise the fusion process could distort the dependencies existing among these variables. Altogether the five previous principles are useful to protect the fused database against distortion of the relationships existing between the variables. Let me know if you have any questions. Regards, Tina