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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer on iPhone

3 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Today, I came across an iPhone/iPad app for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. It's available for free in iTunes. I decided to give it a shot on my iPhone and ended up liking it :).

It's just 1.9 MB in size and fast to launch unlike some of the other iPhone apps. It is preconfigured with three sample data sets being pulled from the SAP's demo server.



Please note that you will need an internet connection as there is no data available off-line on this app.

Now, let me take you through a series of screenshots to demonstrate how this app works.

Selecting one of the sample data sets.


A bar graph showing revenue by year.

In the above screenshot, following 5 options are available.

Option 1 - Tabular view
Option 2 - Top "n" records
Option 3 - Chart type (Vertical & horizontal bar charts, Radar chart, Pie chart, Line chart, Surface chart, Cloud chart and treemap chart.)
Option 4 - Add favorites
Option 5 - Email feature


A pie chart for revenue bye year and sending the same over an e-mail.



E-mail page.


Filtering the data only for years 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Pie chart only for years 2004, 2005 and 2006.


Drill down on year 2006 to get numbers by the quarters.


Revenue by quarter after drill down.


Search feature - Free text search on the data sets.


In addition, it can also fetch data sets/visualization from SAP BI OnDemand. I have my free Personal Edition account on http://bi.ondemand.com as mentioned in my earlier post. I pointed the app to my account and was able to download the data sets and visualization on the iPhone.


My sample data sets from BI OnDemand account.


Bar chart


Cloud chart.
The missing feature - support for portrait mode.  I think it should have been standard for BI apps. 

However, I think it's a great step by SAP towards its journey to On-Device. As iPhone is increasingly adopted in the enterprises and Sybase now in SAP's kitty, we can expect more such apps from SAP.


SAP SDN link - http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/innovation-center?rid=/webcontent/uuid/706569f0-989c-2c10-5ca4-e945dc3368e3

Hands on with SAP BI OnDemand

3 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand is a cloud based offering of BI solutions. I have mentioned about this in my earlier post. Today, just to get familiar, I tried few things.  I signed up for the BI OnDemand Personal Edition which is free.

I created data sets by uploading couple of spreadsheets viz. Customer_Data and Customers_Reservations.





Once data sets were available, I could explore the data using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. See the below screenshot.


Visualizations can be created by a single click from the Explorer window.




Finally, I put my demo visualizations on a single dashboard.



SAP buys Sybase for $5.8 billion

3 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

"With this transaction, SAP will dramatically expand its addressable market by making available its market-leading solutions to hundreds of millions of mobile users, combining the world’s best business software with the world’s most powerful mobile infrastructure platform," said Bill McDermott, Co-CEO, SAP and member of the SAP Executive Board.

This is in line with what Peter Gartenberg(MD, SAP India) shared with us yesterday(refer  my previous post). SAP wants to be on On-Device  to increase its market share.


Refer Google/Twitter/Bing results for more information that's pouring in :).


Some of the URLs for reference.


http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/confirmed-sap-to-acquire-sybase-for-5-8-billion/
http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/Feeds/2010/05/wireless-sap-buys-sybase-for-58b/

SAP RIG event takeaways - SAP BOE XIR4 (aka Aurora), BI on-demand & SAP On-Device

3 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Today, I attended SAP RIG(Regional Implementation Group) customer appreciation event held here at Mumbai. I would like to share some key takeaways from it.

Aurora is here !!  Aurora is SAP internal project code for SAP BOE(BusinessObjects Enterprise) XIR4 and will be released in q4 FY 2010. It is a next major release for BOE.

Following are some of the interesting additions/changes in BOE XIR4 release -

(1) Central auditing - Yes, it's here. Auditing of individual servers won't be required going forward.

(2) Search 
 - Searches Explorer contents in addition to BOE contents
 - Document and metadata search
 - Cluster aware indexing
 - Near real time & scheduled indexing
 - Public SDK
 - Open Search support
 - Integration with SAP Netweaver search, Google Appliance and Sharepoint

(3) Integration with Solution Manager.

(4) WebI is renamed to Interactive Analysis. Infoview with improved UI is now called BI LaunchPad. Import wizard is replaced with Java based utility called Upgrade Manager.


In addition, they talked about their SaaS offering BI on-demand. SAP has hosted(i.e. in cloud) all BusinessObjects BI solutions on their servers in US. All these solutions are offered on demand and follow SaaS model. They are planning to come up with BI on-demand servers in Japan as well.

BI on-demand can be integrated with other SaaS platforms like Salesforce.com. Data is extracted from Salesforce and stored in BI on-demand for reporting/dashboarding purpose.

I signed up for the Personal Edition which is free. UI looks neat. Refer the screenshot below.



 I plan to try it out soon to see how it works :).


Also, SAP India MD Peter Gartenberg introduced their new focus area On-Device. Like On-Premise and On-Demand, On-Device is SAP's one of the most important focus areas. Idea is to make all SAP solutions compatible with the mobile devices like BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, Android, etc.


Finally, the event was held at Sun-n-Sand hotel.



It is located right next to the Juhu beach :).

Developing the skills you need to succeed as an international leader

4 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I just completed this article from April 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review(pg 109). It was a good read and highlights the importance of what they call a global mind-set in order to succeed as an international leader.

Global mind-set has three components -
  • Intellectual Capital - General knowledge and capacity to learn.
  • Psychological Capital - Openness to differences and capacity for change.
  • Social Capital - Ability to build trusting relationships with and among people who are different from you.
These components are each defined by three specific attributes. One can assess their readiness for an overseas leadership role.

  • Intellectual Capital attributes - Global business savvy, Cognitive complexity, Cosmopolitan outlook
  • Psychological Capital attributes - Passion for diversity, Thirst for adventure, Self assurance
  • Social Capital attributes - Intercultural empathy, Interpersonal impact, Diplomacy
Authors also recommend ways to improve global mind-set which I think are quite useful.

Couple of my favorite lines from the article -

"The world may be flat in terms of technology and interconnection. But it is still quite bumpy in the sense that employees from different part of the globe may work in very different ways."

"The fact that I know more about you does not mean that I like you or I want to work with you."


Definitely a recommended read.

Change Management - Being at the epicenter

4 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Currently, I can say that my team is going through a very important organizational change. I do not wish to write specifics of the change here. But I want to share my first hand experience, observations and conclusions on the Change Management process.

According to me communication and people management, before/during/after the change, are two of the most important CSF(critical success factors).

Communication
A clear communication across the organization about the change is extremely important.
Communication should clearly convey -

1) Change - Primary change and other supporting changes.
2) Benefits to the organization
3) Impact on the teams/individuals - Positive or negative. It can be communicated in separate targeted communications.

People Management
During the change management process, people are -

1) Super curious
2) Over anxious

Ever since the change has been declared, I have been receiving many calls/e-mails with queries, speculation, rumors and so on. Good communication would help in setting the expectations but in-person workshops/floor meeting would be very very effective.


In addition, execution approach for change management is one thing that requires the most of the thinking and planning. There can be two below mentioned approaches for Change Management.

(1) Think of all the possible problems that can arise and incorporate them while designing the change(roles, responsibilities, etc.). For example, prepare a comprehensive RACI(Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) matrix well in advance.

(2) Start with the bare minimum structure in place and then build on top of it. More of an "agile" way of working.


After this first hand experience, I hope to handle changes better going forward.

Internal knowledge discovery through Analyst Relations

4 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I have been involved in Analyst Relations activities at my company for two years now. Establishing and managing relationships with various analysts firms(Investor/Research/Third party) is very important specially in the IT industry.

Analyst firms usually come up with their surveys/questionnaires/waves on an annual basis. These waves are either specific to solution area (ERP, CRM, BI, etc.) or geography (APAC, North America, Europe, etc.). They reach out to major players in the industry and invite them in this annual exercise. Participating companies need to provide their capabilities and credentials relevant to the specific wave/area. Survey generally contains questions which are both, qualitative and quantitative. Answers to these questions help Analysts firms to evaluate the participants.

Apart from being a very important branding exercise for the participants, it gives an excellent opportunity to dig deeper in their own companies and have the visibility of the kind of work is being done at the ground level. The slices/dices of data points that needs to provided during this exercise is such that it requires connecting with all on going projects(across the board) individually. According to me, such interactions with the projects, is extremely enriching due to following two reasons.

1) Such interactions are rare in a year.
2) Information is as accurate as possible.

I am sure people from large organizations would appreciate this :). It's not that companies do not engage in periodic reporting of activities from bottom to top. But in a company with 150k+ employees, complete information often do not reach the corporate teams.

I think for companies, this internal knowledge discovery helps immensely for pursuing new opportunities.

Completed Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010 !!

7 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Today, I completed my first Marathon :). It was a great run of 21 kms covering the new Bandra-Worli sea link. Here is the route map.

Attended BusinessObjects Information Management Services Academy, Oct 5-8 2009

11 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

This week, I attended a workshop organized by BusinessObjects Information Management Servicess Academy. It was a four days hands-on workshop with BusinessObjects consultants flying in from Australia and Singapore. There were professionals from other System Integrators as well.


The agenda for the workshop was -
  • Connecting to sources
  • Data Assessment
  • Data Validation
  • Implementing Change Data Detection
  • Implementing Delta Loading
  • Implementing Slowly Changing Dimension
  • Working with Global Address Cleanse
  • Working with Data Cleanse
  • Universal Data Cleanse: Creating a Custom Parser (for custom Data Cleansing)
  • Using Match
  • Implementing Consolidation
  • Working with Candidate Select
  • Implementing Real-time (Global Cleanse and Candidate Select)
We copied a 50 GB VMware image of Windows 2003 server on our laptops. It had all the necessary software and data. So setup was not complicated but copying 50 GB image took good amount of time.

I liked the data quality transforms that Data Services offers specially GlobalAddressCleanse transform. It basically cleans the incoming addresses are per the inbuilt address dictionary. Currently, they have address dictionaries for US, EMEA, New Zealand and Japan. Soon they are going to come up with a similar dictionary for Indian addresses.

Overall, I would say it was a good experience :) .

How To Use BusinessObjects Data Services in SAP BI staging process

11 months ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Some time back I had published a wiki page on SAP SDN on how BusinessObjects Data Services platform can be used with SAP BI. The same page has been published on SAPTechnical.com. The direct links can be found below -

SDN Wiki Page

SAPTechnical.com

Social Network Analyser from SAP

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I was browsing the Business Objects contents on SAP Community Network and came across a cool prototype that SAP is building. It is called as Social Network Analyser Prototype.


The good thing here is that it uses the enterprise data to build a social networking place. It helps by making the corporate relationships quickly visible/available and provides information about your colleagues.

SAP says - 
The purpose of this technology is to deliver an environment where people can easily and quickly analyze corporate network relationships and find the information they are looking for in their daily jobs. The social network analyzer prototype lets you import and aggregate all the business network relationships between people that are already recorded in your business applications, such as:
    • Management hierarchies from your human resources system
    • Data on who worked on which deals, from your sales force automation system
    • Partner, customer, and partner supplier contacts along your supply chain system
    • People who work on similar transactions or projects within your operational systems

I could think of two benefits of having such a tool for an organization

1) I have experienced, being a PMO, sometimes it is very difficult to find out whether we have anyone with a particular skill in our organization, does anyone have prior experience on some problem, etc. Such information is very critical and can affect the way we deliver to our end clients. It is also frustrating that even if there are people in the organization who can help you out, you are simply not able to track them.

Having a Social Network Analyser or similar tool, can help you identify the right person and save a lot of time. Data is always reliable as it is fetched directly from the Business Applications.

2) Wouldn't it be of help if you know your team before you actually begin to work with them ? I think it is a great thing. More the team knows about itself, more productive it would be. It is fun for me to know hobbies, past work experiences, skills of my colleagues which i think improves the team dynamics :).

SAP has made available demo version of the prototype with a preconfigured dataset. Check it out.

Basics - Google's AdWords auction

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

A good video on how Google's AdWords works. It is a very clever business model without compromising on user experience.

Have a look.

Offline Gmail !!

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Recently I came across this cool new feature from Google Labs about having your Gmail offline !


I tried it out over the weekend and it is really impressive. It asks users to install Google Gears. Gears is a plug-in that extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications. Once installed, it starts the synchronization. It instantly makes the most recent mails available offline. You can stop the sync anytime and resume later. 

When you lose the internet connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode. You can also compose e-mail while offline and Gears will store it in the outbox. Once connected, it will send out the e-mails automatically. So you can write mails without worrying about the internet connectivity.

I had used Gears briefly last year while working on an interesting prototype of making web apps available offline and over Blackberry devices. We were able to get our Web 2.0 application working over Blackberry but could not complete getting it offline using Gears.

Now that I'll have my Gmail offline, I am looking forward to how this will change the way I use Gmail :)

Delivering software as a service (SaaS)

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

SaaS has always been very interesting topic for me. I have been learning a lot about this model by browsing various sites over the internet. It all started when I heard of salesforce.com for the first time.


I am a subscriber of The McKinsey Quarterly and recently I came across an article Delivering software as a service. I liked the way authors have analysed this model in the article. Below are some highlights :-
  • Software as a service offers a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • Providers can now share one application cost effectively across hundreds of companies—a vast improvement on the old client-server model. 
  • Bandwidth costs continue to drop, making it affordable for companies to purchase the level of connectivity that allows online applications to perform gracefully. 
  • Many customers are eager for the shift, as they’re frustrated by the traditional cycle of buying a software license, paying for a maintenance contract, and then having to go through time-consuming and expensive upgrades.
  • Although software-as-a-service vendors are less profitable than some traditional software vendors today, this gap is primarily caused by a lack of scale. Change in the economics of online delivery is expected as the model gains wider acceptance.
  • Probable trends for migrating various categories of applications to SaaS model have been categorized into what they call three waves.
  • SaaS is a threat to BPO vendors
I feel SaaS is the way to go forward for Enterprise Applications. I hope that the SaaS model would systematically address the reliability and security risks to make CIO and IT managers feel more comfortable with it.

Delivering software as a service (SaaS)

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

SaaS has always been very interesting topic for me. I have been learning a lot about this model by browsing various sites over the internet. It all started when I heard of salesforce.com for the first time.

I am a subscriber of The McKinsey Quarterly and recently I came across an article Delivering software as a service. I liked the way authors have analysed this model in the article. Below are some highlights :-
  • Software as a service offers a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • Providers can now share one application cost effectively across hundreds of companies - a vast improvement on the old client-server model. 
  • Bandwidth costs continue to drop, making it affordable for companies to purchase the level of connectivity that allows online applications to perform gracefully. 
  • Many customers are eager for the shift, as they’re frustrated by the traditional cycle of buying a software license, paying for a maintenance contract, and then having to go through time-consuming and expensive upgrades.
  • Although software-as-a-service vendors are less profitable than some traditional software vendors today, this gap is primarily caused by a lack of scale. Change in the economics of online delivery is expected as the model gains wider acceptance.
  • Probable trends for migrating various categories of applications to SaaS model have been categorized into what they call three waves.
  • SaaS is a threat to BPO vendors
I feel SaaS is the way to go forward for Enterprise Applications. I hope that the SaaS model would systematically address the reliability and security risks to make CIO and IT managers feel more comfortable with it.

SAP PMO Lead - My new role

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Project Management Office(PMO) is a new experience for me. This is managerial role. It deals with the consolidated and corporate view of "SAP as a platform" across my organization.

My respsonsibilites are

  1. Managing corporate level SAP initiatives
  2. Help/guide different verticals with their SAP related needs
  3. Interact and co-ordinate with the SAP India/SAP AG.
There are some benefits associated with this role:
  1. I get to interact with lots of people across the organization. This results in the increased visibility
  2. Involvment in the pre-sales and proposals stage
  3. Management experience in the field of IT

SAP TechEd 2008 at Bangalore

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I along with my team, attended the SAP TechEd at Bangalore. It was a 3 day technical event attended by many SAP folks from various IT companies. The theme was Connect, Collaborate and Co-Innovate!!

Being a green field in an SAP world, I had the first experience of the SAP community at the TechEd. Communities always helps its members, products and technologies. I had always associated communites with only open-source technologies. But I was wrong. May be due to my lack of knowledge :(. Even a company like SAP is promoting and focussing on the SAP community development.

It was an informative TechEd for me.

The Google Story

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Today, I completed the book "The Google Story". The book is really good and gives an insight how amazing the Google is. Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have authoritatively demonstrated the power of innovation and technology.


They just wanted to solve the problem of searching the web. They really solved it and how!!

I particulary liked their motto "Don't be evil". I think this "Don't be evil" attitude helped Google to gain the popularity merely by word of mouth. It is hard to believe that Google-the most powerful brand in the world has not spend much in advertising as compared to others.

Check it out

SAP and Ruby

about 1 year ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I switched to SAP.


Yes, that is true. I am posting after a long time and that too with a sudden change in the technology for me. I was not expecting this change but it was inevitable. I could not get a Ruby on Rails project from my client so I had to look outside for the Ruby projects.

I realized that there are not many good opportunities in Ruby and Rails domain. SAP and JAVA are the technologies in demand and that is where the most of the work is done. I chose SAP as I have always regarded it as the one of the most innovative product the world has ever seen.

On the first day, I found that there is a Ruby library allowing access to SAP via the tried-and-true RFC technology. This was exciting that though in SAP world, I can still work with Ruby !!! I plan to try this out and post it on my blog soon.

RSpec Stories and WATIR (Web Application Testing In Ruby) - Part 1

over 2 years ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I used WATIR in my last project for automation testing. I started writing tests in RSpec framework. But then I came across the RSpec Story framework which convinced me as the appropriate way to write readable automation test scripts.

I wrote tests from top to bottom. I wrote story and its scenarios first and then its implementation. Since the stories were written in pure English, my product owner could contribute towards writing the stories. According to me, following are the advantages of using story framework:


  1. Executable tests in pure English

  2. BAs and Product Owners can write test scenarios

  3. Tests are written in DSL (Domain Specific Language)

  4. Tests are maintainable

Since I work in a onsite-offshore model, a lot of time is spent on daily calls between the two groups. Out of the 250 people at offshore, not many get a chance to evaluate and work on new technologies. On top of that, people are always resistant to change. I am working towards adopting WATIR and story framework in other projects in my organization. I find promotion of WATIR and changing the mindset of people a bigger challenge than learning WATIR.

Check out my recommendation for WATIR and stories on OpenQA

I have created a screencast demonstrating WATIR scripting and story framework. I will post it soon.

Adopting scrum is subjective

over 2 years ago | Bhargav Gandhi: AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

I have experienced that "scrum is subjective to the teams" in my current project. I am working on an existing legacy java application. I am part of a scrum team of 10 people. We are termed as one of the high performing scrum teams at my company. Our client is so pleased that they want to retain the same for another project :).

But when I tried to analyse our success, I realised that we never followed scrum 100%! Following are the things that make me believe so:-


  • Sprint backlogs did change during the sprints. Team was able to accomodate new stories and deliver value addition. There were many sprints where we could deliver extra credit stories.
  • Team used to skip standup calls on days when team(onsite+offshore) didn't have much updates/risks to share.
  • Since we were working on a legacy application, the team's estimates were high during the release planning due the less acquaintance with the application. But as we spent more and more time on the application, we were able to revise and reduce the estimates. Once, we changed the estimates during the sprint!!

Following are some of the things that we didn't do and saved time.

  • Never created a release burndown chart
  • Never created a sprint burndown chart
  • Never tracked individuals' hours spent on the tasks

So I feel team should be empowered to decide what works for them and what not. They should alter the scrum in a way that works best for them. I have seen teams with 100% adherence to scrum but performing poorly in terms of the development and delivery.

Any thoughts??