One of the twenty or so must read books mentioned in Poor Charlie’s Almanac is “Getting to Yes” - a principled approach to negotiations. It is an excellent and accessible read on getting to mutually agreeable outcome during negotiations ranging from salary to nuclear disarmament talks. For my present gig I commute between South San Francisco and San Jose on a not-so-enjoyable highway 101. Listening to books is a great way to utilize this time. In the book authors point out that one of the mistake parties make during the negotiation is just thinking about one’s own positions. Parties overlook the fact that the folks on the other side of table are humans too. Focusing on the basic human needs of security, appreciation, well being etc. would result in successful results for all parties.

While keeping the human nature in focus during negotiation is definitely fruitful, but I think this principle can be applied in general to a lot more situations. Especially while talking to people in authority. For example students can keep this in mind while talking to professors. Most of the time students would be focused on their own world and think professors are this abstract entities who are after their life giving assignments, asking them to review and re-review their assignments. Same goes for employees towards their managers etc. How many times any one thinks that professors or managers may have a life too. With loving wife and kids may be a dog too. Focusing on the human side of authorities would result in better and cordial relations.

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After many many years I have started reading a novel based on the true story of author - Shantaram. I am on the 11th page and I love it. Here is a blurb about Bombay

A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a ploding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time, into its own future.

A little be dramatic but about right for any large city in India.

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Few days back I was at Project Management training and our excellent instructor asked what is the problem executives are trying to solve by going for ERP implementation. What he said rhymed with some thing Jeff Nolan wrote today on Future of Enterprise Software

CEOs are concerned about growing their businesses in an era of increasing uncertainty and efficiency demands; business managers need real-time visibility for intra- and inter-company events, as well as the ability to reconfigure processes with increasing frequency; the CFO, meanwhile, has to ensure regulatory compliance and business integrity.

For the CIO, these challenges come at time when maintenance costs are rising and the number of trusted partners are shrinking — systems remain undiminished, yet there are fewer vendors capable of supporting large-enterprise customers. We are down to less than 200 publicly traded tech providers from over 400 in 2001.

Thanks to Jeff for penning these thoughts and Om Malik for bringing all the folks writing thoughts on future of software.

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I am reading “The Business of Software” these days. What a delightful book to read about business of software as a product and services. After starting as a developer I have been in the services for the past few years. Michael Cusumano, the author distills the business of software in few succinct words

The Software services business … is about getting enough profitable accounts to keep your consultants and developers busy close to 100 percent of the time…..

It is usually important to mix senior people with junior to maximize profits for any given client project……

economies of scope are the holy grail….. they can come from structuring knowledge such as how to do requirements, manage projects, customize applications, conduct user acceptance testing, or reuse design frameworks and even pieces of code across different projects and customers.

Do read this book if you are starting a career in software in whatever side of the business - product or services.

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As speculated on Firefox wiki Safari, the web browser from Apple has been released for Windows. It is a very interesting development as this would take away some market share from IE and Firefox. It is also important for me as my work involves accessing enterprise apps using a browser. So far most of the time folks would access these apps using a browser that is IE or Firefox. But now that Apple has unleashed its Safari on windows users it would be interesting to see if how this pans out for us.

Anyway I was following WWDC07 over the internet and it was quite close to being there, here is screenshot of the Safari Announcement

Steve jobs is a master salesman. Few things to note from his keynote are how successfully he uses “the hook” technique for presenting ideas or telling a story. Just like films or serials/sitcoms have punch lines to pique the interest notice he has “One more thing…” in the above picture. Also to note is how the core ideas or takeaways from the keynote were reinforced at the end with the following - sweet, simple and easy to remember line

“So, we’ve seen this morning Leopard, Safari for Windows, and an awesome way to write apps for the iPhone.”

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Finished another redesign of Beta Thoughts. It is hard to understand why I redesign. This redesign is probably the best I have seen on this semi-active blog. Here is how I did it

1. I have used the BloggingPro Widgets Ready theme from Blogging Pro.
2. Choice of colors comes from the latest book by Geoffery Moore - Dealing with Darwin. I am quite pleased with how it has turned up.
3. Beta Thoughts logo at the top is created by using the excellent font Delicious found here.
4. Changed the image on About page. Now it shows a photograph clicked while on our way back from Santa Barbara going towards Solvang.

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