Thursday, October 4, 2012

Risk on Projects


Risk

A risk is simply something that can go wrong (and something usually does on projects), that keeps you from achieving project success.  Of course there are things that can occur that are positive, which can also be referred to as risks.  We will focus on those risks that have a potential negative impact on your project.  Risk management is a discipline that allows you to increase your chances of success by planning how to identify and reduce the likelihood of risks occurring; risk management also helps you identify how to minimize the consequences of the risk if they do occur– in spite of your planning efforts. 

How is it created? 
Risks fall into three categories on a project: scope, resource and schedule.  In the categories of scope and resource risks, innovation is a major risk factor. Any time the project team, the organization or the external stakeholder ventures into unknown terrain or looks to make a significant change to how things are currently being done, the risk factors multiply. The less experience you have with a certain type of application or technology and the more change you try to make to an organization, the likelier you are to run into trouble.

The second most likely set of risk factors is associated with complexity. Complexity introduces relationships among parts of the project, so that there are more dependencies. If something goes wrong in one area, it is more likely to affect some other area. Complexity also often increases project size, since there are more things to be done. And sheer size is a risk factor, because the difficulty of communicating among team members and with stakeholder grows geometrically. Finally, complexity is often associated with lack of experience. Just as, according to Tolstoy, all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way, so all simple systems resemble each other, but each complex system is complex in its own unique way. And lack of experience has the same consequences as innovations.

Finally, there are risks that do not vary much from project to project: a fire destroying the developers’ workspace; a key team member is injured and hospitalized; the company is taken over and the new management must be brought up to date before the project is allowed to continue; the sponsor or the organization’s management is indecisive and stakeholders keep changing their minds...  


Once you have identified and assessed the risks on your project, you can start planning how to address them. There are two things you can do to improve the situation: risk reduction, decreasing the probability of a risk materializing, and risk mitigation, decreasing its consequences, should it materialize.

Once you have identified and assessed the risks on your project, you can start planning how to address them. There are two things you can do to improve the situation: risk reduction, decreasing the probability of a risk materializing, and risk mitigation, decreasing its consequences, should it materialize.

Risk Reduction
To reduce risks, you can use several approaches:
  • Create an awareness of the risk among your team members and the project stakeholders: “forewarned is forearmed.” For example, you might point out that computers do crash and that it is prudent to save your work from time to time when you are engaged in a long-lasting task.
  • Create a specific process to reduce risk. For instance, you may have found in the past that there is a risk of system testing being incomplete (causing defects to slip through) unless you include user representatives in test planning. You would then, as a minimum, require sign-off by a user before the test plan is declared complete.
  • Invest resources in risk prevention. For instance, you could have the organization install fire extinguishers. A more relevant example is to install a good computer backup system, which will reduce the risk of losing completed work and also reduce the risks associated with system modifications.

Risk Mitigation
Risk mitigation is how you plan to minimize the impact if any of the risk factors that you have identified should materialize. You will never be able to reduce the risks to a point where it is guaranteed that nothing wrong will happen: at some time, some risk will materialize. (This is popularly known as “Murphy’s Law.”

The two main approaches to risk mitigation are early detection – finding out that an incident has happened before the consequences have had time to spread – and contingency planning. Contingency planning consists in figuring out beforehand how to handle a crisis and setting apart resources to deal with it. For example, you might have a succession plan for key personnel, so that if someone falls sick, you can quickly get a replacement (for example, from a temporary work agency). In all cases, you need to set aside a contingency in both the project budget and the schedule. The contingency does not need to cover the sum of all possible risks, since only a small number of risks are likely to materialize. The most important thing about the contingency is that it is a reserve for the entire project based on the likelihood and impact of the risks identified, not a reserve that you build into each individual activity. If you did, you would soon find that team members would treat the contingency as an addition to the estimated time to complete the task, and they would therefore gradually consume the whole contingency without any risk actually having occurred.

Of course, if the consequences of a risk happening are so minor that they won’t affect cost, schedule, scope or quality, you can remove the risk from your risk management plan.

Risk Management Plan
A risk management plan consolidates in a single document all of the work of identifying, reducing and mitigating risks. The list below was developed for our sample project and represents a typical example of risks on a fairly small project to implement a new system.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Why E-mail marketing is growing?

In today's era, E-mail Marketing is spread over the world wide. Ikhat is a marketing technology company that provides a state-of-the-art e-mail marketing platform. It is the easy, effective and affordable way to keep your subscribers coming back.

At Ikhat, we help our clients engage better with their customers. We believe that with the right tools any marketing campaign or project can get the desired results and be a success. So, IKhat offers capable software, customized technological solutions to fit all your needs. We don’t however, believe in customer alienation and therefore are strong believers of best practices like opt-in lists. Our services and technologies help companies interactively communicate with their audiences online, without ever needing to spam them.

For more info, Log into www.ikhat.com

Importance of Templates


Templates surround us during our everyday life. We base on them our knowledge about the world and they help us in fixing many everyday arrangements. Without them we would have many problems when we would like to make our statement about something or do anything. We can multiply the examples. Even in business templates are important.

Let’s take email newsletter templates. With them the email marketers have not so many works to do as they base the prepared materials on the given stuff. It is prepared in such a way that it has to interest people the most, in a way that seem to be the most attractive option from their point of view and their interest. This is why people working in companies decide to use such samples and newsletters. Without them they need to try something new which not always can occur to be successful. And this involves not only money, time and effort but as well some level of risk.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Production Management

Production Management is one of the most significant functions in any of the manufacturing enterprise. Our solution will be catering to your requirement of production management and operations as per your business process. You need to have cost advantage and achieve price leadership in order to have competitive advantage. 

We can design and implement some of the main tools like Material Requirement Planning (MRP), Bill of Material (BOM), Production Planning and Costing, Production Scheduling, Process Definition, Program Definition, Process and Program Execution, Machines Handling, Job Worker Handling etc., to achieve competitive advantage. Production Department of your enterprise could be tailored made as per your requirements so that the System works as per your business process and not otherwise.

Our Solutions

Planned use of Information Technology is the platform where successful businesses are created. 

In the era of technology, successful organizations are built through clear understanding of emerging technology and how the business can benefit from the use of it. 

·         Keeping the above in mind, Odyssey provides innovative solutions to complex problems through intelligent management of technology.

·         There is no one size fits all solution when it come to Technology.

·         Your requirements need to be tailored to give you the best fit so that it works in real business situations. We provide solutions that make your business process efficient and give edge over your competitors.

·         We at Odyssey recognize the intricacies of different business and aim to provide simple and user-friendly solutions.

For more information visit us at: http://www.odysseyin.com

Software Development


Odyssey specializes in customized software development for all your business needs.

A number of software development methodologies are in use. Our project management identifies the specific nature of the project at hand and then selects the best application development methodology.

We pride ourselves on delivering projects on time, encouraging collaboration, promoting technical excellence and being continuously adaptable. Our projects use commonly accepted plan-driven software development methods that are, however, sufficiently flexible and adaptable to allow the developers to make late changes in the project specifications.

Odysseyin.com specializes in customized Software Development for all your business needs. A number of software development methodologies are in use. Our project management identifies the specific nature of the project at hand and then selects the best applicable development methodology.

At Odyssey, the relationship and cooperation between our developers and our clients is given due recognition. The negotiation process itself is viewed as a means of achieving and maintaining a viable relationship. We are a reputed IT solution provider and believe in putting our main strength of application development to optimum use. Our philosophy promotes recognition of people as the primary drivers of project success coupled with effectiveness and adaptability in our work methods.

About Odyssey


Odyssey is a Software Development company serving the Indian market for more than 22 years. It was founded in 1988 with the idea to provide high quality software development solutions for both local and international markets at very competitive rates.

Odyssey applies modern software development processes and practices specifically tailored to the offshore services model where communication and process visibility for customer are two critical success factors. Based on the experience of number of successfully completed projects the company established a defined and repeatable development process methodologies.

Based on this process Odyssey created superior quality software using a wide range of modern technologies, including web, 2- and 3-tier, desktop applications that are now used in the retail, Insurance, Manufacturing, Distribution networks and other industries.

Product Design Development
Odyssey creates innovative, market-leading software products for our customers.We partner at any phase of the software product life cycle from concept to production launch and support. We provide a number of support services including prototype development, user documentation, quality assurance, customer support, and pre- and post-sales support and training.

Web Design Development
At odyssey, we have experts in Design, HTML and Flash that have worked at some of the reputed clients all over India. 


Our contact details : 
ODYSSEY
Website : www.odysseyin.com
Mob : +919810486464 
For Enquiry : info@odysseyin.com 
For Sales : sales@odysseyin.com