11 Tips for Ensuring Project Success

It's a common tips but very simple and straight forward about project success. It has been said that nearly 80% of all projects either fail completely or never get to completion. This is a very big statement to make, but Sabrina John said in her article that She has found that if you stick to the 10 tips given below, you will most definitely always deliver a quality project, on time and within budget.

0. Handover. (This is Nico Story)
The project started before kick off. It is when the pre-sales activity ends. When is it end? It is ends when the winner is announced or the project executor has been appointed (from Customer point of view) and hand-over process to project team (from Internal point of view). The project team have to make sure that they understand what are the objectives of the project, the expectations and all of the things agreed in the pre-sales activity.

During my career, I have experienced 2 kind of roles. As the project team member, I have experienced not clear process of handover that make my team more struggling to fight (work) in the middle of our battlefield (project). We have to cover (fix) all the "sin" that rise in the middle of project. It was something that already expected by my customer during the pre-sales activity and translated into another sentence that was uncertain. It could be translated to several meaning and at that time it made us work harder.

The other role I had and my current roles is as pre-sales consultant. I won't tell you about all the job descriptions but only about the hand-over process that must be done. It's mandatory to do hand-over process. I always be honest with the project team member about things that showed up during the pre-sales activity whether it was good or bad. Pre-sales always try to maintain customer expectation and of course limit the scope in the agreement to eliminate uncertainty that will make loss to both party. Mostly it's happy ending, but there were some cases that challenging and made the project a bit stormy. Anyway it's very helpful and increase the success rate if the hand-over process is conducted correctly.

1. Project kick off. 
When you start your project, the most important thing is to ensure that you obtain the requirements in as much detail as possible. You will then be able to exactly understand what needs to be delivered, by when and to whom. This business case document will form the basis of your project.

2. Timeframes. 
As far as possible, keep timeframes as short and realistic as possible. Do not commit to long term deliverables, but rather split these up into mini projects or separate phases of an overall encompassing project.

3. Milestones. 
Create milestones for every phase or piece of work in your project. Add delivery dates to these and stick to them. If you are going to miss a deadline, communicate this to you client as early as possible.

4. Deliverables. 
Deliverables should not be confused with milestones. Once every deliverable has been completed, it must be formally handed over to the client, who should sign an Acceptance Form to confirm it has met their expectations as per original requirements.

5. Clients. 
Understand your client and involve them right through the entire project, from planning to implementation. Communicate to them on a regular basis to ensure you get their buy-in in the project.

6. Scope. 
Document the scope of the project up front, including what is in and what is out and have this signed off by the client. Any future scope changes must be re-evaluated and agreed by all stakeholders against the original scope. A formal change management process will go a long way to assist with this.

7. Quality. 
Quality on any project should not be a negotiable factor and must always be of the highest possible. Ensure that you implement a clear quality management process, ensuring constant review throughout the project. This should include peer reviews so that team members review each other's deliverables.

8. Risks and Issues. 
Risks and issues must be formally documented and discussed and reviewed at least every week. Ensure that these are prioritized, responsible persons assigned to each and actions have due dates.

9. The Team. 
It is very important to assemble the best team possible to deliver the project. Require the best you can afford. Your role would be to lead and motivate the team and ensure they work well together.

10. Communication. 
Make sure that a formal communication plan is drawn up, which will communicate the correct information to the correct audience at the correct intervals, from daily team meetings right up to the executive level of dashboard reporting to senior management.

Applying these ten tips to every project you manage should put you on the right track to deliver projects of high quality, on time and within budget, every time.


Source: Sabrina John via LinkedIn

Managed File Transfer (MFT) Overview & Solution

If you familiar with middleware, you will be familiar with MFT / Managed File Transfer. It is one of the middleware category. If you know FTP (File Transfer Protocol), you might be know this MFT. I have worked with this MFT for about a year. I work with several partner that provide MFT solution or product. For Indonesian Market, MFT is a right solution to help company work and collaborate with their customers and partners. So what is MFT?

Wikipedia.com:
Managed file transfer ("MFT") refers to software or a service that manages the secure transfer of data from one computer to another through a network (e.g., the Internet). MFT software is marketed to corporate enterprises as an alternative to using ad-hoc file transfer solutions, such as FTP, HTTP and others.

Typically, MFT offers a higher level of security and control than FTP. Features include reporting (e.g., notification of successful file transfers), non-repudiation, auditability, global visibility, automation of file transfer-related activities and processes, end-to-end security, and performance metrics/monitoring. ensure secure, reliable and auditable data transfer to enhance various type of business process.

WhatIs.com

Managed file transfer (MFT) is a type of software used to provide secure internal, external and ad-hoc data transfers through a network. MFT products are built using the FTP network protocol. However, because federal regulations require that MFT products meet strict regulatory compliance standards, they include mechanisms to ensure a higher level of security and help keep information private.

MFT applications offer business automation, along with reporting and non-repudiation. An MFT solution should simplify management and ensure regulatory compliance while supporting all current security standards and methodology, including SSLencryption, X.509 encryption and proxy certificates.

Ipswitchft.com

MFT is a category of middleware software that ensures reliable, secure and auditable file transfer to enable critical business process. 

...

My Definition: Managed File Transfer (MFT) is a middleware software that ensure secure, reliable and auditable data transfer to enhance various type of business process.

Problem we are facing nowadays related with MFT:

1. Low service level because of many disruption to the document exchanged and data transfer, such as unstable and narrowband network 
2. Low visibility because of lacking or minimal operational status
3. Not meet complication related data security best practices
4. High operational costs because too many complex manual processes, manual errors and exception drive up costs and lengthen time to value 
5. Continued growth in the amount of data, size of files and volumes of transactions  mandates highly scalable solutions to support expansion of business that demand simplicity and rapid response 

There are many solution related with this MFT. They offer several additional features to support the operational like Web Access, Mobile, etc... Some of them offer analytics functionality like dashboard too. Basically it is just an additional for the security, reliability and audibility data transfer. Just for your information too, some of the big brands also offer collaboration with another middleware like B2B (Business 2 Business) Integration. If MFT talk about file transfer, B2B talk about real time integration, and more automation. You have to decide based on your objective you want to achieve and of course your budget. Thank you for reading.

Invest More For Your Future

“Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” – Warren Buffett

Like the quote above, most people including me choose the wrong life choice. I always spend the money first, buy things, hang out and after all of them have been satisfied finally I put some money for saving. This become my habit since in high school. At that time, my parents always give weekly "salary". Not the real salary, but pocket money.

At the college, it was getting worst because my parents gave me monthly pocket money like regular working people got transferred every month. The only different thing was mine was transferred at the early of month, not like the regular worker. Although it was getting worst, indeed I could save more money because I had another income at the time.

When I started to work few years ago, my bad habit was not changed. Spending first, save later. Save what is left after I satisfied spend it by bought new gadget, hang out, etc... Lately I start to change my habit. I start to follow my girlfriend advice to save the money at the moment I receive the money, exactly like the quote from Warren Buffett.

I cannot tell you what are the results for now. But 1 thing for sure, I am start to spend the money left in my account carefully. I become more wise and discipline. So, the next question? What are savings for? Of course, what I mean here is not the real saving but more like what Warren Buffett do, more investment. Invest more for your future. Below is more quotes from Warren Buffet. Cheers :)

Optical Character Recognition - Overview

Wikipedia:
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used as a form of data entry from printed paper data records, whether passport documents, invoices, bank statements, computerized receipts, business cards, mail, printouts of static-data, or any suitable documentation. It is a common method of digitizing printed texts so that it can be electronically edited, searched, stored more compactly, displayed on-line, and used in machine processes such as machine translation, text-to-speech, key data and text mining. OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and computer vision.

Google:
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets you convert images with text into text documents using automated computer algorithms. Images can be processed individually (.jpg, .png, and .gif files) or in multi-page PDF documents (.pdf). These are some of the types of files suitable for OCR:

• Image or PDF files obtained using flatbed scanners
• Photos taken with digital cameras or mobile phones

Abbyy:
Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that enables you to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data.

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Simple Document Imaging & Workflow Management
Imagine being able to “google” any document in your organization based on a keyword or number reference. With OCR recognition software, you are able to search for your scanned documents by any name or number reference.

3 Components of a Simple Document Management / Digital Archiving Solution

1. Scanning and Imaging: Documents are scanned into Searchable PDF format (Optical Character Recognition indexes all text, keyword and number references contained in the document).
2. Storage: Very simply and easily route documents into existing folders on a local network or create new folders directly from the scanning device / MFP.
3. Retrieval: Use Index search to locate any of your documents by name, keyword or number reference.

Key Benefits

• Security & Disaster Recovery: Easy backup & storage offsite.
• Productivity Gains: You are no longer manually digging through file cabinets when trying to locate a document.
• Accessibility: Documents can be viewed by many people within your office or from remote off-site locations.
• Organization: Documents don’t become lost since there is no need to re-file.
• Space Efficiency: Save office and cabinet space in your office / workplace.
• Cost Savings: Employee and company resources are free from the manual handling, filing and re-filing of paper documents.
• Environmental Sustainability: Documents are printed and copied at less of a frequency due to access by staff across the network.

Source : 4 Office Automation

Load Balancing & NLB - Overview

Load Balancing

Wikipedia:
In computing, load balancing distributes workloads across multiple computing resources, such as computers, a computer cluster, network links, central processing units or disk drives. Load balancing aims to optimize resource use, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload of any single resource. Using multiple components with load balancing instead of a single component may increase reliability and availability through redundancy. Load balancing usually involves dedicated software or hardware, such as a multilayer switch or a Domain Name System server process.

Citrix:
Load balancing is a core networking solution responsible for distributing incoming traffic among servers hosting the same application content. By balancing application requests across multiple servers, a load balancer prevents any application server from becoming a single point of failure, thus improving overall application availability and responsiveness. For example, when one application server becomes unavailable, the load balancer simply directs all new application requests to other available servers in the pool.

Load balancers also improve server utilization and maximize availability. Load balancing is the most straightforward method of scaling out an application server infrastructure. As application demand increases, new servers can be easily added to the resource pool, and the load balancer will immediately begin sending traffic to the new server.

Network Load Balancing

Microsoft:
Network Load Balancing, a clustering technology included in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server operating systems, enhances the scalability and availability of mission-critical, TCP/IP-based services, such as Web, Terminal Services, virtual private networking, and streaming media servers. This component runs within cluster hosts as part of the Windows 2000 operating system and requires no dedicated hardware support. To scale performance, Network Load Balancing distributes IP traffic across multiple cluster hosts. It also ensures high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic to the surviving hosts. Network Load Balancing provides remote controllability and supports rolling upgrades from the Windows NT 4.0 operating system.

The unique and fully distributed architecture of Network Load Balancing enables it to deliver very high performance and failover protection, especially in comparison with dispatcher-based load balancers. This white paper describes the key features of this technology and explores its internal architecture and performance characteristics in detail.


Webopedia:
Network Load Balancing (NLB) is a clustering technology offered by Microsoft as part of all Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 family operating systems. NLB uses a distributed algorithm to load balance network traffic across a number of hosts, helping to enhance the scalability and availability of mission critical, IP-based services, such as Web, Virtual Private Networking, streaming media, terminal services, proxy and so on. It also provides high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic to operational hosts.

6 Rules to Make Your Dashboards Stunningly Functional - by MicroStrategy

So far in this series, we’ve covered the basic principles that determine how we visually perceive information. Now it’s time to apply them to designing information-driven apps. Over years of working with dashboards and information presentation tools, I’ve identified 6 guiding principles that every information-driven app should strive to be:

1. Informative
2. Intuitive
3. Interactive
4. Stylish
5. Deductive
6. Actionable

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1: Informative
One of the most common design mistakes people make is forgetting the difference between ‘data’ and ‘information’. Simply providing access to data or displaying any available data on a subject does not make for a well-designed dashboard. Data needs to be presented in a format which transforms it into information that can be readily consumed. It is important to remember to design around the business process and not around data. Also, information in an application should flow in a way that reflects a business user’s train of thought.

Things that can make your dashboard informative:

• KPIs: Present up-to-date information on critical business metrics and put the most relevant information first.
• Trends: Show performance over time to add context.
• Comparisons: Show these based on time, geography, or other natural hierarchies relevant to the business process.
• Alerts or exceptions: Quickly communicate whether something is excellent, horribly wrong, below or above a threshold—anything that should spark an immediate action.
• Relative performance: Present information in relation to other business metrics/functions, internal competition-fostering metrics (ranks), and competitor information, if available.

2: Intuitive
If applications and reporting suites are difficult to use, users won’t want to use these tools, and critical information will go unused. There is nothing more frustrating to a business user than interfaces or workflows that disrupt the ability to get the job done. Rather, applications should be intuitive enough to drive user adoption while encouraging people to make decisions based on timely data.

Things that can make your information-driven app easy to use are:

• Keep it simple! Follow the basic guidelines of design discussed in the previous blogs of this series.
• Arrange the information in a way that makes sense to a business user. Use data subject areas, time granularity changes, ‘Cause and Effect’ relationships, etc. Group metrics or information that goes together to paint a story. Always provide a link to a FAQ page that explains the metric definitions.
• Avoid folder navigation. Use dashboard linking to create a workflow. Always provide a way back to the previous screen.
• Minimize the number of clicks to find answers.
• Make the app mirror a business workflow.

3: Interactive
People naturally want to interact with an application to explore information. They want to slice and dice, drill to, drill across, etc. In MicroStrategy, elements that provide interactivity include: selectors, panels, interactive features of a widget, layouts, info-windows, drill downs, navigation, and more. With so many choices to make an app interactive, it’s easier to point out what to avoid in order to keep your application interactive, intuitive, and easy to use.

Guidelines to keep it simple, yet interactive:

• Too much of anything is a bad idea! Focus on what’s important.
• Make everything navigable within 3 clicks.
• Don’t use more than 3 selectors. If you have more than 3 selectors, use the Filter panel so that the interface is not overcrowded with selection options.
• Only use info windows on certain elements. If you think that the user will always click/tap on an info window, then that information should be presented upfront.
• If there is a drill down enabled, the users should always have a way to get back to their previous screen.

4: Stylish
It’s all about form AND function today. Invoking one without the other can be a detriment to user adoption. To achieve this goal for dashboards and apps, I have always found it useful to work with a graphic designer. Remember to keep in mind the basic principles we have already discussed in the earlier blogs!

More tips to make your app look better and function great:

• Create a sense of pride and ownership by using corporate logos, corporate color palette, etc.
• Use updated icons, sleeker buttons, etc. Revisit older dashboards to update them for modern UI/UX looks.
• Use Icons in place of words. Let the Information be the most of the “wordy” content on the dashboard.
• Avoid using a lot of darker colors together; use contrast to increase text visibility.
• Use gradients of the same color instead of contrasting colors.

5&6: Deductive and Actionable
In the very first blog of this series, we established that visual dashboard design is successful if the user can identify a problem, determine why it occurred, and quickly decide what to do about it. So our dashboards should ultimately support this by being deductive and actionable. There are different ways to deliver “deductive” quality, depending on the user. Some users like to be presented with the final inference from data (high level executives, senior leadership, etc.) while other users, like functional analysts, may need access to a wider swath of data to be able to ask ad-hoc questions. Thus, you will have to adopt different tactics tailored for each audience. For analysts, consider integrating Visual Insight into the dashboard suite (more to come on this topic in the later blogs).

MicroStrategy Transaction Services provides the “actionable” function for a dashboard. Integrating in the ability to take action within the app makes it a true workflow-based app. A user can now see the data, figure out the next steps, and actually do it all in one place.

How to keep it simple:

• Design simple transactions.
• Preferably, keep the number of actions on a dashboard limited to avoid overload and confusion.
• Keep the transaction option very relevant to the problem at hand, and the information presented should allow them to complete the transaction

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Source: Mamta Chirmade - MicroStrategy Blog

...

I have been working with MicroStrategy in many opportunity. The differentiate or special things about MicroStrategy is no 6. MicroStrategy offer something that isn't owned by any vendor right now. It is transaction services. It allow user to do some action and create "simple" apps on the top of the Analytics, right beside their dashboard.

MicroStrategy offer very custom dashboard that can be built with your style and creativity. Although the development is not as simple as other vendors, the functionality and customization is very rich. There is also an offline capability where you can set up at the development so the users can enjoy the dashboard and transaction without being worry of the internet access. You can enjoy MicroStrategy on iOS and Android. MicroStrategy offer native mobile application, so you can access your data and information on the go.

How To Convert a CD Audio Track into an MP3?

1. Open Windows Media Player, maximize the window and click on the Switch to Library icon. 
2. Right click in the area immediately above the Search box until you get a drop down menu.
3. Go to Tools/Options/Rip Music. 
4. In the Rip Music to this Location, choose where you want your music to be copied to. 
5. In Rip Settings, click MP3. 
6. Click on Learn About Copy Protection and read warning. 
7. Click on Eject CD after ripping. 
8. Select the Audio quality you would like (I recommend highest quality, it sounds way better!). 
9. Click OK. 
10. Insert the CD you want to copy. 
11. Select the audio track or tracks you want to copy. If all audio tracks are selected, uncheck the box for all files and just select the ones you want. 
12. Click Rip CD. 
13. After your audio track has been copied to your computer, the CD will eject automatically. 
14. Search for your new mp3 in the file location you selected in step 4. 
15. Once you find it you may have to rename it with the artist name and song title if it was not copied from an original CD. 

Source : Yahoo

Plan Do Check Act / PDCA - Overview

PDCA is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.

PLAN : Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals). 
Plan : Identifying and analyzing the problem.

DO : Implement the plan, execute the process, make the product. Collect data for charting and analysis in the following "CHECK" and "ACT" steps.
Do : Developing and testing a potential solution.

CHECK : Study the actual results (measured and collected in "DO" above) and compare against the expected results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. Charting data can make this much easier to see trends over several PDCA cycles and in order to convert the collected data into information. Information is what you need for the next step "ACT".

Check : Measuring how effective the test solution was, and analyzing whether it could be improved in any way.

ACT : If the CHECK shows that the PLAN that was implemented in DO is an improvement to the prior standard (baseline), then that becomes the new standard (baseline) for how the organization should ACT going forward (new standards are enACTed). If the CHECK shows that the PLAN that was implemented in DO is not an improvement, then the existing standard (baseline) will remain in place. In either case, if the CHECK showed something different than expected (whether better or worse), then there is some more learning to be done... and that will suggest potential future PDCA cycles.

Act : Implementing the improved solution fully.

...

Source 1 : Wikipedia

Source 2 : Mindtools

SWOT Analysis Overview

Definition

A SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT matrix) is a structured planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a project or in a business venture. (Wikipedia)

A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or person.

Composition:

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others.
• Weaknesses: characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others.
• Opportunities: elements that the project could exploit to its advantage.
• Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.

Corporate Planning

As part of the development of strategies and plans to enable the organization to achieve its objectives, that organization will use a systematic/rigorous process known as corporate planning. SWOT alongside PEST/PESTLE can be used as a basis for the analysis of business and environmental factors.

• Set objectives – defining what the organization is going to do
• Environmental scanning – Internal appraisals of the organization's SWOT, this needs to include an assessment of the present situation as well as a portfolio of products/services and an analysis of the product/service life cycle
• Analysis of existing strategies, this should determine relevance from the results of an internal/external appraisal. This may include gap analysis which will look at environmental factors
• Strategic Issues defined – key factors in the development of a corporate plan which needs to be addressed by the organization
• Develop new/revised strategies – revised analysis of strategic issues may mean the objectives need to change
• Establish critical success factors – the achievement of objectives and strategy implementation
• Preparation of operational, resource, projects plans for strategy implementation
• Monitoring results – mapping against plans, taking corrective action which may mean amending objectives/strategies.

...

#Strengths

• What advantages does your organization have?
• What do you do better than anyone else?
• What unique or lowest-cost resources can you draw upon that others can't?
• What do people in your market see as your strengths?
• What factors mean that you "get the sale"?
• What is your organization's Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

Consider your strengths from both an internal perspective, and from the point of view of your customers and people in your market.

Also, if you're having any difficulty identifying strengths, try writing down a list of your organization's characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

When looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to your competitors. For example, if all of your competitors provide high quality products, then a high quality production process is not a strength in your organization's market, it's a necessity.

#Weaknesses

• What could you improve?
• What should you avoid?
• What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses?
• What factors lose you sales?

Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem to perceive weaknesses that you don't see? Are your competitors doing any better than you?

It's best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

#Opportunities

• What good opportunities can you spot?
• What interesting trends are you aware of?

Useful opportunities can come from such things as:

• Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale.
• Changes in government policy related to your field.
• Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, and so on.
• Local events.

A useful approach when looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities. Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them.

#Threats

• What obstacles do you face?
• What are your competitors doing?
• Are quality standards or specifications for your job, products or services changing?
• Is changing technology threatening your position?
• Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
• Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?

When looking at opportunities and threats, PEST Analysis can help to ensure that you don't overlook external factors, such as new government regulations, or technological changes in your industry.

Source : Mindtools

Competitor / Competitive Analysis Overview

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. (Wikipedia)

Identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to those of your own product or service. (Entrepreneur)

A competitive analysis is a critical part of your company marketing plan. With this evaluation, you can establish what makes your product or service unique--and therefore what attributes you play up in order to attract your target market.

Evaluate your competitors by placing them in strategic groups according to how directly they compete for a share of the customer's dollar. For each competitor or strategic group, list their product or service, its profitability, growth pattern, marketing objectives and assumptions, current and past strategies, organizational and cost structure, strengths and weaknesses, and size (in sales) of the competitor's business. Answer questions such as:

• Who are your competitors?
• What products or services do they sell?
• What is each competitor's market share?
• What are their past strategies?
• What are their current strategies?
• What type of media are used to market their products or services?
• How many hours per week do they purchase to advertise through the media used in this market?
• What are each competitor's strengths and weaknesses?
• What potential threats do your competitors pose?
• What potential opportunities do they make available for you?

A quick and easy way to compare your product or service with similar ones on the market is to make a competition grid. Down the left side of a piece of paper, write the names of four or five products or services that compete with yours. To help you generate this list, think of what your customers would buy if they didn't buy your product or service.

Across the top of the paper, list the main features and characteristics of each product or service. Include such things as target market, price, size, method of distribution, and extent of customer service for a product. For a service, list prospective buyers, where the service is available, price, website, toll-free phone number, and other features that are relevant. A glance at the competition grid will help you see where your product fits in the overall market.

Source : Entrepreneur

Marketing Mix Overview

The marketing mix is a business tool used in marketing and by marketers. (Wikipedia)

A planned mix of the controllable elements of a product's marketing plan commonly termed as 4Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. (Business Dictionary)

Source : Smartdraw

Product = A product is seen as an item that satisfies what a consumer demands. It is a tangible good or an intangible service. Tangible products are those that have an independent physical existence. 

Price = The amount a customer pays for the product.

Promotion = All of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to provide information to different parties about the product.

Place = Refers to providing the product at a place which is convenient for consumers to access.

Physical Evidence = The environment / evidence which shows that a service was performed, such as the delivery packaging for the item delivered by a delivery service, or a scar left by a surgeon. 

People = The employees that execute the service, chiefly concerning the manner and skill in which they do so.

Process = The processes and systems within the organization that affect the execution of its service, such as job queuing or query handling.

What is Cohort Analysis? - Overview

What is Cohort Analysis?

Wikipedia.com

Cohort analysis is a subset of behavioral analytics that takes the data from a given eCommerce platform, web application, or online game and rather than looking at all users as one unit, it breaks them into related groups for analysis. These related groups, or cohorts, usually share common characteristics or experiences within a defined timespan. Cohort analysis allows a company to “see patterns clearly across the lifecycle of a customer (or user), rather than slicing across all customers blindly without accounting for the natural cycle that a customer undergoes.”

CohortAnalysis.com

A cohort is a group of people who share a common characteristic over a certain period of time.

Yoast.com

A cohort is any group of people sharing a characteristic. 

...

Example from CohortAnalysis.com

Perhaps the most popular cohort analysis is one that groups customers based on their "join date," or the date when they made their first purchase. Studying the spending trends of cohorts from different periods in time can indicate if the quality of the average customer being acquired is increasing or decreasing in over time.

Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics by Yoast

So a cohort analysis is basically the analysis of a group of people, in this case people who interacted with your website at the same date or date range. When clicking Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics, it’ll look something like this:

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t really immediately clear to me, so let me walk you through how to look at it. The chart at the top is a visualization of the average user retention (percentage of returning visitors) for the date range, which is 7 days by default.

The most interesting, however, is the table below the chart. This actually gives us insight in what percentage of people returned to your site within 7 days of visiting it for the first time. Day 0 corresponds with the date in the first column. Day 1 is the first day after someone visited your website for the first time. So the 4.32% at Day 1 in the March 10th row means that 4.32% of the people who visited yoast.com for the first time on March 10th, visited yoast.com again on the next day (March 11th). Day 2 is the second day (March 12th) and so on.

Note: this is a breakdown of New Users, so although it says “All Sessions”, this only includes people having visited your site for the first time.

#What can I do with this?

This is a question that I immediately asked myself. It wasn’t completely clear to me right away, so I might be a bit slow, or it’s just not that obvious. I’ll let you be the judge of that ;)

Let me give you an example (not yoast.com, by the way):

So what happened on March 14th or 15th that made people who visited this website for the first time on March 14th visit again the next day? The retention rate is about 2% higher there, and even on day 2 the retention rate is higher. Maybe they wrote a nice post? This can be a great way of figuring out whether what you’re trying (new content, new campaigns, etc.) is actually working.

Breaking down the cohort

If you need a more specific look on what’s happening, either because you don’t know why the retention rate was lower/higher, or because you’re just a data geek, you’re in luck. You can actually ‘break down’ your cohort analysis by using segments. For instance, if I were to use the Mobile and Tablet Traffic segment on the data above:

Google Analytics will give me this cohort report:

This shows the data for people who not only visited your website for the first time in the set timeframe, but were also on a smartphone or tablet when viewing the site. You can have up to 4 of such segments active at the same time. This way you can see whether the (expected) effect happened for all sorts of people, such as people on mobile phones, people from search engines or direct visitors, etc.

Other metrics

You can actually select quite a few metrics that will make the cohort analysis useful for a lot more than returning visitors:

Although the Cohort Type has a dropdown, it actually just has the one option. The Cohort Size can be set to ‘by day’, ‘by week’ or ‘by month’ and the Date Range will change accordingly. The most interesting though, is the Metric dropdown. You can select a lot of per user metrics (revenue, pageviews, transactions, etc.) or total metrics (again revenue, pageviews, etc.) apart from the Retention metric I used in the examples above.

This means you can actually see a lot of effects, such as whether your overall revenue or revenue per user has increased after a post or campaign. Of course, you can normally see your sales or revenue increase if you have a successful campaign, but this data is different.

You can now see how much revenue you got from people that visited your website for the first time on a specific date and see if these new visitors bought something on that date or in the days to follow. And since you can see this for an entire date range, you’ll also be able to see if that’s a higher or lower revenue than was to be expected.

Let me give you an example. Say you changed your landing page recently, which is tailored to just convincing new visitors of your site to buy a product. You could just be looking at the revenue from new visitors and see if it increases. However, if a visitor were to visit your website for the first time, only to return the next day to buy your product, Google Analytics wouldn’t show it as a new visitor anymore. And that’s why these cohorts actually work: the visitor was new at the set date, so even if they buy the product a day (or 2, or more) later, they’ll still show up in the cohort analysis. So you’re not just measuring direct effect anymore, you’re measuring delayed effects as well!

By the way, to be sure you have just the visitors that visited that specific landing page, you should create a segment for visitors who visited that page.

#The downsides

While looking at the cohort analysis for yoast.com, I noticed that the Retention metric is quite difficult for our domain. Our traffic, even from the new visitors, is just too stable. The pattern was just the same all the time, no matter what date range I selected. This is probably because we have such a steady flow of new visitors, mainly from Google, that any lift here would only be a small change in percentage.

So, the changes in the percentages are too small; if everything between 3.5% and 4.5% is the same color, it’s pretty hard to distinguish any real differences. Of course, I could just look at the percentages, but that’s just not as convenient.

More importantly, though, we can only create cohorts based on Acquisition Date at the moment, which is a nice start, but I do really hope they’ll start adding more Cohort Types. Just the Acquisition Date is really not enough, for me at least. I’d love to see cohorts of people buying a specific product (category), for instance.

#Summing up

The cohort analysis can definitely give you some insights that weren’t readily available before. However, it does still require more than just basic knowledge of Google Analytics and might be a little confusing in the beginning. So I’m not completely sold on this feature yet, but to be fair; it is still in beta, so who knows how much better it will get right?

Source : Yoast

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Other Useful Links : Use this spreadsheet for churn, MRR, and cohort analysis

Source : AndrewChen.co

50 Most Common Interview Questions - By Glassdoor

When it comes to the interview process, research and preparation for the interview can often times determine your chances of making it to the next step. One of the best ways to get ready for a job interview is to practice your responses to any and all interview questions – even the downright weird.

To help you get started, Glassdoor sifted through tens of thousands of interview reviews to find out some of the most common interview questions candidates get asked during recent interviews. So, if you have a job interview lined up, practice in front of a mirror or ask a friend or family member to listen to your answers to the following questions so you’ll be ready to put your best foot forward.

Most Common Interview Questions

1. What are your strengths?
2. What are your weaknesses?
3. Why are you interested in working for [insert company name here]?
4. Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years?
5. Why do you want to leave your current company?
6. Why was there a gap in your employment between [insert date] and [insert date]?
7. What can you offer us that someone else can not?
8. What are three things your former manager would like you to improve on?
9. Are you willing to relocate?
10. Are you willing to travel?
11. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
12. Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
13. What is your dream job?
14. How did you hear about this position?
15. What would you look to accomplish in the first 30 days/60 days/90 days on the job?
16. Discuss your resume.
17. Discuss your educational background.
18. Describe yourself.
19. Tell me how you handled a difficult situation.
20. Why should we hire you?
21. Why are you looking for a new job?
22. Would you work holidays/weekends?
23. How would you deal with an angry or irate customer?
24. What are your salary requirements? (Hint: if you’re not sure what’s a fair salary range and compensation package, research the job title and/or company on Glassdoor.)
25. Give a time when you went above and beyond the requirements for a project.
26. Who are our competitors?
27. What was your biggest failure?
28. What motivates you?
29. What’s your availability?
30. Who’s your mentor?
31. Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss.
32. How do you handle pressure?
33. What is the name of our CEO?
34. What are your career goals?
35. What gets you up in the morning?
36. What would your direct reports say about you?
37. What were your bosses’ strengths/weaknesses?
38. If I called your boss right now and asked him what is an area that you could improve on, what would he say?
39. Are you a leader or a follower?
40. What was the last book you’ve read for fun?
41. What are your co-worker pet peeves?
42. What are your hobbies?
43. What is your favorite website?
44. What makes you uncomfortable?
45. What are some of your leadership experiences?
46. How would you fire someone?
47. What do you like the most and least about working in this industry?
48. Would you work 40+ hours a week?
49. What questions haven’t I asked you?
50. What questions do you have for me?

Source : Glassdoor