The Halo Effect

I recently came across the phrase "the halo effect" and did not know what it meant. So, I googled it and found this wiki page - Halo Effect which was quite informative.

The theory really struck me as so very true and I had never thought about it before. This happens in our everyday life, don't you think? Perception of one trait influenced by perception of other trait i.e the normal human tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression about something/somebody. Attractive people are often judged as having a more desirable personality and more skills than someone of average appearance. Thus, we see that celebrities are used to endorse products that they have no actual expertise in evaluating, and with which they may not even have any prior affiliation - Harold Kelley. When I come to think of it, YES, I have seen this happen and in fact I have also done this subconciously when I meet someone.

Why do we do this?
May be because some of the questions like how good/lovable is the person?, is he/she helpful? etc are not tangible or concrete. We cannot associate a number with such things.

On further research, I came across a group performance experiment done by Prof. Barry Staw (UC Berkeley) . The experiment showed that members attribute one set of characteristics to groups they believe are high performers, and a very different characteristics to groups they believe are low performers. When told their group had performed well, members described it as having been more cohesive, with better communication, and more open to change. When the same group was told that it had performed poorly, they remembered the opposite. In fact, their performance was just about the same but the only difference was what the professor told them.

This is true even in the business world. when a company is doing well with high sales, profits and stock price, analysts describe the company as having a smart strategy, the CEO as a visionary, the employees as motivated. However, when the sales are low and the stock prices fall, they quickly conclude that the company's strategy went wrong. In fact, nothing much has changed!!!!!!!!!!! Our perceptions of them are based on other things that are concrete and un-ambiguous, like their financial performance. We cannot measure how smart the company strategy is or how visionary their CEO is or how motivated their employees are.

Now I understand why my professor asks for "hard numbers" when I give my opinion in class discussions to support my point of view.

Please share if you have some similar experiences or any examples you have come across.

Cost cutting !!!

I have started to apply for internships for the summer and I am trying to contact as many people as possible to inquire about the possible opportunities available in their company. Many of them have got back to me saying that there is a hiring freeze and some companies are also in the process of laying-off employees.

Companies are taking some drastic steps to cut immediate costs in order to survive this bad patch. How can they cut costs? Here are some things they can do:

1. Hire Interns - I am not saying this because I am searching for one. I understand that companies have to lay-off some non-performing resources to cut costs. Hiring interns would be the best option to get the work done at low cost.
Interns(esp. college graduates) would be looking to impress the company and work hard to get the job done. They would also want to add some valuable experience in their resume as they have started to understand how competitive the job market is. By hiring them, an organization need not worry about extra compnsation, health insurance etc and the risk of liability is very less as compared to permanent employees.

2. Go Open Source - One of the best ways now to reduce significant IT cists is to go open source. I cant believe how much licensing costs IT can save by moving to open source products. Although it sounds easy, it is very difficult to implement throughout the organization. Employees who are used to the products will not like the sudden change and they also should be trained to use the open source products. Training costs is much less compared to what a company can save licensing costs.

3. Save on Real Estate - Do you know how much it costs to buy an office at a prime location (say Manhattan or Boston downtown..)???? I dont know, but i bet an acre in manhattan would cost around 100million(just a wild guess). Can companies ask their employees to work from home? Sure they can. People already "work from home" during snow or bad weather conditions. Technology available these days that can help this transition. There is internet, videoconferencing etc to help with this.
A mid-sized company can easily save a huge sum by asking most of the employees to work from home. In cases like client visits, important meetings, they can surely rent an office space on the 40th floor of a nice building for one day and impress their clients.

4. Go Green - Recycle and reuse is one of the best options to save money and this also helps the environment. Its like hitting two bullseye with one arrow.:)

5. Negotiate and Re-negotiate - Everyone wants to sell their products and they will sell it even if it is at a very less profit. So make sure that you negotiate effectively. Shop around to find a better deal.

There are many more ways to cut small costs like reducing magazine/newspaper subscriptions etc. Reviewing your financials will also help you come up with many more things to do, TO CUT COSTS !!!

£243 Million for Kaka !!!!!!!

Does this make a business sense??? shelling out such money for one player?? I definitely don't believe so and here are my reasons:

1. Football(soccer) is a team game and no one player dominates the opposite team. I agree that he can inspire his teammates to raise their game to a certain extent. We have seen what Roy Keane was for Manchester United (a great captain who brought out 150% from his team).
   Kaka is a fantastic midfielder, versatile, comfortable with both his feet, good passer-plamaker, chips in with the goals consistently, big-game player, no nonsense guy...etc... But if strikers like Benjani, Darius Vassel cannot take advantage of Kaka's vision, what is the point?


2. What about the ROI?
   Mancity is not a HUGE club and does not have a fan following like ManUtd, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Real Madrid or Barcelona. So, they sure will not be able to get sufficient returns from club mercandise. Remember what happened when Beckham moved to Madrid? Real Madrid claimed a return on their investment in their first season itself after their pre-season tours to Asia, where Beckham is hugely popular and has a tremedous fan following. Now thats a business decision! Although Kaka is popular, he is unlike beckham in a global scene.


3. He is 26 and is at the peak of his career. He has around 4-5 seasons left in him to be realistic. 243m for 5 seasons?? Is it worth it? And in a game like football, players are bound to get injured. What happens then?

I think Mancity can use this money in buying a quality GK, one defender, two midfielders and two strikers. Someone like Riquelme, david villa, Juninho, benzema etc. Now wouldn't this make a better business sense?

SOA dead??? I don't think so !!!

I was going through ZDNet the other day and was startled to see this article by Joe McKendrick which read - 'SOA' dead as of January 1st, analyst says and it made me think: (You might want to read this post first before reading further).

1. 1. How can it be DEAD?? It is an architecture !!
   
3. 2. What happened to all those companies who were moving away from the traditional method of development to SOA?

3. What happened to the vendor companies who were building their products based on SOA?

4. What happened to all the hype surrounding SOA?

DEAD !!!...... How can it be????

Argument 1: The analyst(Anne Thomas Manes) says that SOA hasn't been delivering ROI and the current economic downturn made the matters worse.

I agree that the current economic condition did not help and organizations had to cut short their IT budget and stall some of the projects (SOA projects being one). However, the Enterprise Architects/Tech gurus of organizations should have known that the initial cost of migration from traditional monolitic methods to SOA was huge (a Gartner report suggests that the initial cost of developing an SOA based application costs 80% of the total cost of the project. 80% !!!!). Once the project is past this stage, it will deliver the expected ROI. The ROI being that the company is flexible enough to change their business processes quickly and easily as required, thus making them more agile and competitive.

Argument 2: "Anne says companies have been fiddling with SOA for some time now, and to little or no avail. SOA “turned into a great failed experiment—at least for most organizations. SOA was supposed to reduce costs and increase agility on a massive scale,” she explains. “Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits. After investing millions, IT systems are no better than before. In many organizations, things are worse: costs are higher, projects take longer, and systems are more fragile than ever." (from the article)

The basic principle and the motto of an IT shop should be to help the business/organization. Some technology, however easy or great it may be, should not be used unless there is a valid business case behind it. There is no point using a technology only because it is easy to implement or the IT manager promotes it, and if it does not improve the way the company does business.
For most of the failed projects, I bet they were not very well planned and designed and the organizations were not ready for such change.

Although the current economic condition might drive the maagement to stop SOA initiatives, I believe it is the right way to go forward. Management can always excercise the option of 'Abandon' and 'Differ' and start the initiative when the economy is back to normal.

Towards the end, I agree with what Joe McKendrick has to say about SOA being a philosophy, methodology, and set of best practices or patterns that shapes the way enterprises address problems through IT and hence, it cannot be dead!!!

My First Blog !!

It has been a long time since I have been thinking about starting my own blog-site, again. I had started one last year, but stopped after writing 3 articles. Looking back, there are some things I did not do right.

1. It was my new year resolution. (my first mistake...[wink])
2. No clear focus. I did not think of anything to write about.
3. Poor choice of a NAME. I couldnt think of a good name.

This time, I made sure I do not repeat the same mistakes again.

This is not my new year resolution.

I know what I will be writing about, at least initially. I would start with my views on the current situation in the Information Technology industry, technologies of the future, how IT can help business (whats the point of a technology if business cannot use it to their advantage??), sports incidents and day-to-day happenings, which means there is some focus.

I believe I have a good name for my site. "sports and IT" - my passion and my career. Since this is just the start, I thought of starting one on blogspot. But I guess after a year or two, I will get my own domain name and create a website of my own.

Feel free to leave a comment if you agree or disagree with my views! and have a great new year 2009 !!!