Android 4 new improved

Just before few days ago Google released the software developer kit for its newest version of the Android OS, code-named "Ice Cream Sandwich." This is the newest version of Google's mobile OS will start hitting tablets and smartphones in November. In the meantime, developers can start geting their hands on the SDK, which features a new UI framework. I have also provided the link to download the SDK below. This blog is for the developer community to head start what’s new in Android 4.

A key highlight for developers in the newest Android OS version is the improved application programming interface (API) for calendar and contact information, which, this will make it easier to add calendar services and social media features to created apps. This new API, including a comprehensive set of Intents, to manage calendar data in ICS. Now anyone can code against these new APIs and know that Android is committed to supporting them, and that partners have to support these APIs as part of CTS.

To incorporate the improved API features, the UI framework also includes a widget called ShareActionProvider, which allows developers to embed action bars and share functionality into apps. Ice Cream Sandwich also includes a new feature called Android Beam, which will let developers design ways in which apps can interact with multiple users based on proximity. Users can share information, initiate multiplayer gaming and share media by touching two Android Beam-compatible devices.

On the display end, Android 4.0 will feature a grid-like layout that "improves the performance of Android applications by supporting flatter view hierarchies that are faster to layout and render." It also supports OpenGL ES texture views, making it easier to insert decided videos, embedded camera previews and OpenGL game assets into a desired app. Android 4.0 have an efficient multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity -- and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing. You can download Android 4.0 SDK http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Let's try & collect different advantages & good stuff in Android 4 Starting with simple, beautiful, smart, etc. Android 4.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.

Refined, evolved UI :Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets users navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.

Virtual buttons in the System Bar let users navigate instantly to Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. Users can access each application's contextual options in the Action Bar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets users jump instantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The list pops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping a thumbnail switches to the app.

Rich and interactive notifications let users keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at the top of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the System Bar.

Improved Home screen folders and favorites(drag & drop support): New home screen folders offer a new way for users to group their apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, in All Apps launcher, users can now simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app. On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. Users can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites tray for instant access from any home screen.

Resizable widgets: Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. Users can do much more than add shortcuts. They can embed live application content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let users check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.

Lock screen new options: The lock screens now let users do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, users can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.

Better responses for incoming calls :When an incoming call arrives, users can now quickly respond by text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, users simply slide a control to see a list of text responses and then tap to send and end the call. Users can add their own responses and manage the list from the Settings app.

Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. Users can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs.

Improved text input and spell-checking: The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 will make text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.

To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With one tap, users can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. Users can even tap to see replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features or additional languages, users can now download and install third-party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.

Improved voice input engine: Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets users dictate the text they want, for as long as they want, using the language they want. Users can speak continuously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, users can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

Control over network data: Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.

In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on their data plans, users can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. Users can also manage the background data used by individual applications as needed.

Designed for accessibility: A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets users navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, users can also increase the default font size used across the system.

The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.

Communication and sharing: Designed for the way people live, Android 4.0 integrates rich social communication and sharing touch points across the system, making it easy to talk, email, text, and share.

People and profiles: Throughout the system, a user’s social groups, profiles, and contacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including a large profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates, events, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.

The user's own contact information is stored in a new "Me" profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of the user's integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over which contacts are shown from any integrated account or social network. Wherever the user navigates across the system, tapping a profile photo displays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers, text messaging, and more.

Unified calendar, visual voicemail: To help organize appointments and events, an updated Calendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. With user permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar and manage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. The app is redesigned to let users manage events more easily. Calendars are color-coded and users can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom in or out agendas.

In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integrates incoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or more providers. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to add their own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemail inbox.

Rich and versatile camera capabilities: The Camera app includes many new features that let users capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, they can edit and share them easily with friends. When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets users compose photos and video in the way they want, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, users can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record. To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, users can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.

For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motion panorama mode. In this mode, the user starts an exposure and then slowly turns the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Camera assembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.

After taking a picture or video, users can quickly share it by email, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping the thumbnail in the camera controls.

Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor: The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways to sort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor. Users can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more. After retouching, users can select one or multiple pictures or videos to share instantly over email, text messaging, Bluetooth, social networks, or other apps.

An improved Picture Gallery widget lets users look at pictures directly on their home screen. The widget can display pictures from a selected album, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. After adding the widget to the home screen, users can flick through the photo stacks to locate the image they want, then tap to load it in Gallery.

Live Effects for transforming video: Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, users can change the background behind them to any stock or custom image, for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is Silly Faces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art face recognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you can use effects such as small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more. Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.

Sharing with screenshots: Users can now share what's on their screens more easily by taking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store it locally. Afterward, they can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery or a similar app.

Cloud-connected experience: Android has always been cloud-connected, letting users browse the web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever they are and across all of their devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let users take even more with them and keep communication organized.

Improved web browsing: The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich and convenient as a desktop browser. It lets users instantly sync and manage Google Chrome bookmarks from all of their accounts, jump to their favorite content faster, and even save it for reading later in case there's no network available. To get the most out of web content, users can now request full desktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. Users can set their preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longer content, users can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open saved pages, users can browse a visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks and history. For better readability and accessibility, users can increase the browser’s zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.

Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improved page rendering performance through updated versions of the WebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. In benchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed an improvement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 Benchmark Suite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run on a Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly 550% in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.

Improved email: In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage. For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text, users can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a message, users can now toggle the message to Reply All and Forward without changing screens.

For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds an integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help users locate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. Users can also search across folders on the server, for faster results.

For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supports EAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode, and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can also limit attachment size or disable attachments.

For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizable Email widget lets users flick through recent email right from the home screen, then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.

Innovation: Android is continously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.

Android Beam : Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app's details page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.

Face Unlock: Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets users unlock their devices with their faces. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Users just hold their devices in front of their faces to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.

Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP: Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets users connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, users can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices. Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, users can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere. In addition, for connecting to higher quality Bluetooth audio devices, Android 4.0 adds support for Bluetooth Hands Free Profile (HFP) 1.6.

Let's wait for more I will come back after my first POC ASAP. Till then send in feedback & suggestions.

Should we care about the speed of light or faster

Should we care about the speed of light. This is just on different note I am not a physicist but as reader loved this info

A change in how scientists conceptualize relativity could alter how we think about causality and turn physics on its head. When physicists announced last week that they had detected subatomic particles, called neutrinos, that appeared to be traveling faster than the speed of light, it seemed to be an exception to a cosmic speed limit set by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity.

Einstein's theory, which he proposed in 1905, describes the relativity of motion, particularly the motion of anything moving at or close to the speed of light. At the time, people believed that light waves, just as sound waves, ocean waves or shock waves, had to travel through a medium. But rather than air, water or ground, they believed light waves traveled through a substance called ether, less tangible than air, that pervaded the universe.

Scientists assumed that the laws of physics would be different for an object at rest with respect to the ether, and with the proper experiments it would be possible to figure out what was truly at rest, according to Peter Galison, a professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard University.

"Einstein got rid of that," Galison said. "There are no physical properties that go with the statement 'I am truly at rest.' That's really what special relativity is about."

In other words, the properties of physics are the same for me whether I am riding my bicycle or sitting on a park bench. Special relativity, however, does not apply to acceleration. Einstein would tackle this later in his general theory of relativity.

Special relativity is also based on a second assumption that gives the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second) — in a vacuum a special status. Einstein postulated that light always travels at the same speed for every observer, regardless of that observer's speed, Galison explained.

So, if you have a fast enough car, in theory, you could catch up to a bullet. But you could never catch up to, or even reduce the apparent speed of a pulse of light, regardless of whether you were driving toward it or away from it.

Ultimate speed limit

Under Einstein's theory, the speed of light becomes a sort of ultimate speed limit. In fact, objects with mass, be they cars or neutrinos, can't reach the speed of light because they would need infinite energy to do so, according to the theory.

Some experiments have appeared to play with the speed of light, but these effects are illusory, according to Galison. Light traveling through different mediums, such as chilled sodium gas, does slow substantially, but this is because the light is being bounced between the atoms within the medium. But between interactions with atoms, it is still traveling at 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second), he said.

Claims that it's possible to push light beyond 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second), are equally illusory, Galison said.

Galison uses a hypothetical to explain why. If you shine a laser pointer on the surface of the moon and flick your wrist to sweep across the surface, wouldn't that mean that the bright dot is crossing the surface of the moon faster than the speed of light? No, because nothing is actually crossing the surface of the moon — the dot isn't an actual object, it is just a series of photons in the laser beam hitting the surface.

"For 100 years, people have used these and more sophisticated paradoxes to try to say, 'Well isn't there this way to exceed the speed of light?'" Galison said. "They usually turn out to involve accelerating motion, something that is not really an object" — like the bright spot of the laser pointer — "or infinite energy." In other words, cheats.

In the lab, researchers can create the impression of sending light faster than the speed limit by tweaking the speed at which the wave crests of light propagate through space. This, however, does not increase the speed at which the actual electromagnetic information travels — this is conveyed by the overall shape of the wave's amplitude.

Iron clad theory?

Since Einstein introduced special relativity, the theory and the special status it gives to the speed of light have appeared iron-clad.

Until now, that is. Scientists working on the OPERA experiment at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland beamed neutrinos 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground to Italy, and calculated how fast they made the trip. Shockingly, the neutrinos appeared to beat light speed by 60 billionths of a second. The finding appears to fly in the face of the last 106 years of physics.

"Our understanding hasn't evolved at all, we've been doing extremely precise tests of special relativity since the very first days," said Ben Monreal, an assistant professor of physics at University of California, Santa Barbara. "Special relativity has been passing tests with flying colors for over 100 years now. That is why this result is so surprising and unexpected."

If the finding of the OPERA experiment does pan out, the implications are much more mind-bending. Under special relativity, if something travels faster than the speed of light, it goes backwards in time. Such a proposition could interfere with the basic rule that cause precedes effect, called causality.

"The reason a lot of physicists are very unmoved by these claims is that it could make causality itself very problematic," Galison said. In other words, it raises the prospect of time travel.

There is another issue too. Einstein introduced the speed of light as a mathematical constant, c. If neutrinos can indeed exceed the speed of light, then c loses its special status, giving rise to a host of other problems elsewhere in physics, where c has been used in calculations, such as the famous formula E=mc^2.

"For all of these reasons, people are going to need extra evidence to conclude that it is going to hold up," Galison said.

Now let's understand this "Light Travels Backward and Faster than Light"

Robert Boyd, professor of optics stated this. It sounds nuts, but a scientist says his team has made light go backward. And this is not a simple trick of mirrors.

Previous work has slowed light to a crawl. But in the new research, a pulse of light is given a negative speed and—as if just to make your head spin—the researcher says the experiment made light appear to exceed its theoretical speed limit.

If you totally confused, don't worry. This reporter doesn't get it either. Nor do a lot of really smart scientists. "I've had some of the world's experts scratching their heads over this one," says Robert Boyd, a professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "It's weird stuff."

The research was reported in the May 12 issue of the journal Science. Though not normally stated in news reports, Science is a peer-reviewed journal. That means some experts read Boyd's paper and said it was good to publish.

That said, nobody would blame you if you stop here. Otherwise, grab a couple aspirin, have a look at depictions of the experiment and read on the internet.

If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second.

But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether. (This is a good one you can have a smile or two).

Nothing we know of zips along more quickly than light. Einstein, nearly 106 years ago, said it's not possible. For us, the speed limit makes strange sense: Go faster than light, and you could return before you've left, become your own grandpa, or perform other leaps of cosmic logic. We're going to let Boyd do the explaining. And this next sentence is the crux of it all:

"We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."

"The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber." Faster than light

Let's put that another way, verbatim from a statement issued by the University of Rochester:

"As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light."

What about Einstein, who said nothing can exceed light-speed?

"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," Boyd said.

A spokesperson at the university's communications department added this: "Everything that defines the pulse that enters, also defines the pulse that exits. But the energy of the light does not travel faster than light."

Fast forward a century. Astronomers are now measuring stuff -- material, matter, things -- that moves at so close to the speed of light you might think it'd make Einstein a bit nervous. His theory of relativity appears not to be endangered by the blazing speeds, though.

Among thee speed demons of the universe are Jupiter-sized blobs of hot gas embedded in streams of material ejected from hyperactive galaxies known as blazars. Last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scientists announced they had measured blobs in blazar jets screaming through space at 99.9 percent of light-speed.

"This tells us that the physical processes at the cores of these galaxies ... are extremely energetic and are capable of propelling matter very close to the absolute cosmic speed limit," said Glenn Piner of Whittier College in Whittier, California.

Ponder the power of the fast moving superheated gas, known as plasma:"To accelerate a bowling ball to the speed newly measured in these blazars would require all the energy produced in the world for an entire week," Piner said. "And the blobs of plasma in these jets are at least as massive as a large planet." The blazar jets are running around the universe in some fast company. Slightly faster, in fact.

In another study presented at the meeting, ultra high-energy cosmic rays thought to originate in a collision of galaxy clusters are slamming into Earth's atmosphere at more than 99.9 percent of the speed of light. Measurements put the number at 99.9 followed by 19 more nines -- about as close to light-speed as you can get without splitting hairs.

The particles are not light, but actual matter. They are tiny, thought to be mostly protons, but the energy that motivates them is similarly fantastic, and the mechanisms may be intertwined.

Scientists still don't know the exact mechanisms involved in accelerating matter to such high speeds, however. In the case of a blazars, it appears a black hole is involved. Anchoring an active galaxy, a supermassive black hole draws gas inward. Some is swallowed, yet some is simply accelerated and then ejected in high-speed jets along the galaxy's axis of rotation. Intense, twisted magnetic fields may play a role. Some ultra high-energy cosmic rays might originate in blazar jets, Piner told SPACE.com. But other phenomena may serve as particle accelerators in space, such as merging galaxies or colliding black holes.

Piner and his colleagues observed three blazars, known from previous observations to be super speedy, using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array radio observatory. The results confirm the previous work and pin down the speeds with greater accuracy. The phenomenal pace of the plasma blobs looks to have reached a limit.

"All the results from blazar jet observations are in agreement with Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity," Piner said. "The jets are accelerated right up to the edge of the speed-of-light barrier but not beyond, even though these are some of the most efficient accelerators in the universe."

See now we are fighting to believe could we one day travel faster than light ? This is matter got .... Have great one. Feedbacks are welcomed.

Do's Process Improvment

Each time I publish one of these articles, I get a flurry of e-mail from folks who agree with my position, disagree with my position, or want to share a horror story of their own related to the topics or experiences. Historically, one of the first e-mails that I get is from a close friend Raj. Raj's feedback usually taken the form, "I really liked what you said, but I thought you were going to take the article in this direction..."

When I approached Raj about co-authoring an article, I piqued his interest by telling him that I would write the opening and set up the situation, but allow him to take it in whatever direction he felt appropriate.

The reason I mention this is that I want all my good friends (and any potential clients!) to know that I love to express myself over and over again to makes everyone life easy & more organized so that we could achieve the similar things more effectively & efficiently. So keep it up & I am happy to receive any comments / suggestions. So I'd suggest that you kick your shoes off, pour yourself a nice cup of tea or coffee and enjoy this article.

In many parts of the colder countries, the winter months provide inhospitable conditions for running outdoors, so the majority of runners begrudgingly rely on treadmills to rack up miles. Being a consultant who spends 90% of his time traveling on business, most of my treadmill miles are accumulated in hotel exercise rooms. Typically these facilities are sparsely equipped, have inadequate air conditioning, and provide a television that always seems to be stuck on the Home Shopping Network. The only good news is that you usually have the room to yourself – except when the “January Effect” kicks in.

At the beginning of each new year, hotel exercise rooms enjoy renewed popularity. Wearing their brand new Gortex running suits, the New Year’s resolution crowd tries to look buff as they plod along on treadmills while reading their newspapers. The only part of this ritual that I truly enjoy is when the programmed cool-down period starts and the treadmill actually speeds up. Two or three weeks later, the January Effect ends as abruptly as it started, and I once again have ample treadmill access.

Many software development organizations exhibit these types of January Effect behaviors in their quality improvement initiatives, believe me this is very true, although they’re more aptly named “Quality Infatuation Cycles,” (we can call them "QUICs") . Last year they tried TQM, but that didn’t work; two years ago QFD turned out to be a big disappointment and some even remember the failed attempt to implement Quality Circles several years back – what a joke that was! This year, they’ll try “doing CMMI” and after seeing how flawed that is, they’ll try the Aglie or the Empowerment Initiative for Enabling Improvement in Organizations – any similar approach.

And how do organizational personnel respond to QUIC cures? A few exhibit passionate advocacy – they are the “Done QUICotes” of the current quality crusade. Most others elect to sit on the sidelines and enjoy the infatuation while it lasts. Just as I am amused when the treadmill speeds up during the cool-down period, they derive perverse pleasure from watching spring romance inevitably turn to summer boredom. Finally, a vocal minority relish in the pleasure of superior ITYS wisdom (I Told You So). Most organizations have tried so many QUIC cures that personnel are sick of acronym alphabet soup.

As a youth, I loved alphabet soup with a passion - not only was it good to eat, but it was fun to play with. I liked eating alphabet soup so much that I kept eating more and more of it, sometimes twice and three times a day. Then one day, as I raised the spoon to my mouth, I found myself nauseated by the smell, and I've never eaten alphabet soup again. Just as I lost my passion for alphabet soup through overdose, groups on the QUIC path to improvement eventually give up on all the quality B.S. (“Bullets of Silver”).

Whether starting a quality initiative or an exercise program, the secrets to early success are realistic expectations, gradual buildup of capability, and perseverance. Don’t overstuff everybody with the nutritional promises of alphabet soup, but prepare them for a few false starts, a few setbacks, and even a few injuries along the way. Runners have the motto, “No pain, no gain,” reflecting the realization that even minor improvement takes hard work. If an organization is not going to exhibit stick-to-itiveness, they may be well advised not to even start down the improvement path. Rather than raising, then dashing the hopes of the afflicted, those contemplating yet another QUIC solution may be better off following the anti-runners’ motto, “No pain - no pain!”

Let's move a bit on the management side of the story & try to understand view point of the subordinates & learn what should be the report contain .

If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is there to hear it, did it make a noise? If management tells you to do something, but never asks anything about it, did they really care? What questions are asked by YOUR management team and, more importantly, how are those questions interpreted by the troops? Ponder these questions as you read this article further , "Do Ask Different Questions."

My wife used to work at well know college as a manager on the administrative Staff. In one position, her responsibilities included generating the agenda for, participating in, and distributing the minutes from the top bosses (then- executive body etc) staff meetings. One of her biggest regrets is that she started in that position a few months after the management changes. If only she would have been there during that period, the book would be written, Oprah would have endorsed it, and we would have retired rich! But I digress…

Being a freshly-minted MBA sitting in a board room, she was constantly amazed at the power of the executive questions. If, while discussing international truck sales, seniors happened to ponder, “I wonder how many 4x4s jeeps sold in south Africa in 1993?”, she would inevitably detect some Executive Vice President jotting a note and subsequently assigning a Harvard MBA to conduct two weeks of research that was then packaged into a colorful, chart-filled report for the Chairman. She was equally confident that the particular boss didn’t have a clue why he received this particular report or what he was supposed to do with it.

The point I am trying to make here is, employees exhibit bizarre behavior in an attempt to please executives – or at least to stay out from under the microscope of executive scrutiny. When presented with data that, on average, projects were spending about 50% of their time testing and fixing, an executive asked if it would be possible to reduce it to 35% by the end of the next quarter. The challenge successfully motivated the organization to change its behavior and accomplish the objective – not by changing how much time they spent testing and fixing the software, but by changing how much time they reported that they spent testing and fixing the software.

“Executive questions” provide insight into organizational priorities. It’s nice that the Process Improvement Sponsor asks process-related questions in the monthly Steering Committee meeting, but what kinds of questions is the senior management team asking in project reviews. Some still growl things like:

“Whose fault is it that the project’s behind schedule?”

“Who do I chew out/demote/fire to fix these problems?”

“Given the state of the project, why didn’t I see many cars here on Saturday?”

Although these questions may reflect senior management’s REAL concerns, the executives need to start asking questions that reflect their new and improved process-oriented view of the world. The kinds of questions that senior management should ask are things like:

“How could the process be changed to avoid these problems in the future?”

“How can issues like this be identified when they’re still just risks, and subsequently mitigated?”

“How do we communicate the painful lessons identified on this project to benefit others?”

Admittedly, when faced with a crisis, senior management must act decisively to contain the situation. After all, when a man is drowning, it’s no time to teach him to swim. But once the man is safely on the beach, rather than chastising his stupidity, it is usually more beneficial to explore how a similar situation might be avoided in the future – and then discuss how the efficiency of the rescue operation might be improved.

Bottom line: senior management influences behavior based on the questions they ask. Furthermore, they change behavior when they insist on getting the answers. The executive question is a powerful tool that can be used to send a strong signal that expectations are changing…or it can be wasted getting answers like 257, right ? do ponder on this especially all Sr. Managers.

Do Separate Process Documentation from Procedures

Early in the life of a new project, systems analysts are often frustrated when customers mix business requirements and implementation detail. “Tell me what the requirements are, not how to implement them” is the oft-heard chant that reflects the analysts’ frustration. “Why can’t customers ever distinguish between what’s and how’s?” is the accompanying mental lament.

A similar comment would probably be heard about the EPG if the software personnel ever took the multi-volume set of process documentation off the shelf and tried to use it. Last month I suggested that you extract the training components from your process documentation; this month I’m suggesting that you further de-bulk it by extracting the procedural components as well.

Similar to business requirements, process focuses on what you are expected to do. Analogous to implementation detail, procedures describe how you are expected to do it. This distinction is often blurred because documented processes and procedures typically include many of the same elements: purpose, roles, inputs, entry criteria, activities/steps, outputs, exit criteria, etc. The real difference between processes and procedures is found in the “degrees of freedom” provided by the documented component.

For example, let’s start with a basic common element a Work Product Review process may have the following activities:

1.Prepare for the Review.

2.Conduct the Review Meeting.

3.Address the Defects and Issues.

4.Verify Defect and Issue Closure.

The tasks associated with “Prepare for the Review” activity may be:

1.Verify that the work product is ready.

2.Select the review team.

3.Assign review roles.

4.Plan the meeting logistics.

5.Invite the review members to participate.

6.Pre-publish the work product.

Note the lack of “implementation detail.” There is no indication of how these steps should be performed. For example, the work product could be pre-published by attaching it to an e-mail, by sending it out via company mail, by walking around and dumping it on each person’s chair, etc. Most likely, this process step does not warrant procedure-level instruction; process-level guidance should be sufficient.

So why am I splitting my last few hairs about the differences between process and procedures anyway?

OK, here’s the punch line - CMMI maturity level 3 is all about establishing organizational consistency at the process level, not at the procedure level. What a maturity level 3 organization does on each project should be consistent; how various projects execute these process steps may be vastly different. By co-mingling processes and procedures, many EPGs encounter enormous resistance because they over-constrain their projects, sub-optimize project performance, and make maturity level 3 a lot harder to achieve than it needs to be.

So what do you do? Well, if you’re just setting out on your process improvement journey, avoid this trap from the outset by segregating training, procedural, and process components. However, if your shelves are already bulging with a complex blend of these three ingredients, “decomplexification” is probably warranted. It may be painful to untangle this jumbled web, but it’s probably a heck of lot less painful than trying to achieve maturity level 3 by telling people how to do things rather than what things need to be done.