Posts

Showing posts from January, 2011

Configuring iPhone to work with Cellular Data Network (Reliance)

I will give you 6 easy steps to configure your iPhone 3GS to work on cellular data. I have a Reliance connection. On Main menu screen, click on Settings. Click on General. Click on Network. Turn “Cellular Data” ON . Click on Cellular Data Network. Click on APN. Enter “ rcomnet ” in small letters. You are good to surf on Cellular data network. Enjoy !!!

Customer Care – Easiest way to distinguish between different players

Image
Scene 1: On 23rd Jan I registered on Tata Docomo website for mobile number portability. I got a confirmatory SMS that a representative will get back in touch for the paper formality and with a new SIM to be given to me in 4 days time. Till now I was feeling nice. I was thinking that the secret behind good consumer facing product is great Customer Service/Care. How much you value a customer? After 5 days of patience, I called up on the Toll Free Number 1800-266-0000. To my surprise they have no idea of this. After speaking for around 5 minutes I asked them how do I cancel my request? Simple solution: Send a mail to listen@tatadocomo.com detailing that you want to cancel the request. I got an automated response that my request will be served. Thanks a lot ! See the response below from them: I was surprised to see the awards they have received for their service. Amazing !!! Scene 2: Out on Indiranagar 100 Ft Road, Airtel Office, Vodafone Office, TataDocomo Office all in close p

Retrospective Meetings

What we did well ? What we didn’t ? How we can ? I always use to think that Retrospective meeting is all about taking some time out of busy delivery schedule to reflect back on the work we did. I somehow feel it’s an important practice in agile methodology. The goal of the meeting  should be to continue the momentum of continuous delivery by effectively continuing some process, amending some process to suit the team best and then dropping off some. Retrospective Meeting also allows us to review our practices; practices that worked well, practices that didn’t work so well and practices that should be picked up or implemented. Another thing which I wanted to point out is: most of the Retrospective Meetings results in bunch of action items. Some of them are forgotten the very moment we step out of the room (post Retrospective) and then they got picked up once again right before the next Retrospective meeting (just to give update). What’s the point in having such action items? Also

Releasing too often !

One of the principles behind Agile manifesto says “ Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software ”. I have underlined the word “Continuous Delivery” and “valuable software”. If the software being delivered is of not much value then there is no point in releasing it. Delivering a software is a strenuous task. It includes activities starting from verifying the functionality getting released, regressing the functionality which is already implemented, preparing release notes and doing installer testing. These things form a part of the Test plan. Apart from Test plan, we also need to prepare a Rollout plan which will take care of how the build will be rolled out to potential users. This may include disabling it for some users and enabling it to only a smaller segment of users for a quicker feedback coming in a controlled manner. Also the rollout plan take care of way of distributing software. Another planning item which is