On Agile: SCRUM

Oluwakorede Asuni January 4, 2017 1 Comment

This piece is yet another installment in my series on Agile methods and mindsets. Each article in the series progressively elaborates on the subject and shouldn’t be consumed on their own, but along with the other entries. The form in which the articles are split isn’t along any lines except for those of my convenience. At a later stage, I may re-organise the content so one article flows into the other, however, my primary concern for now is to share the knowledge in my head as quickly as possible. Please please feel free to share your thoughts and excitement in the comment section below. Thank you. Agile is a project management approach that was first adopted by cool people building software. Today, is adopted to drive the delivery of different types of projects irrespective of the domain. The Agile Manifesto, puts forward 12 principles to guide software teams (and really any team) that uses or plans to adopt the Agile mindset. Some key advantages of Agile is that the teams detect potential failure(s) in delivering the project early and can then take steps to remedy the situation. The team(s) understand change and are quite adaptable to it. And the customer knows what is being built, sees the work being done take shape and can thus re-evaluate their priorities, bring new information that can impact the product being built to the attention of the project team, commence the process for making changes etc. At a very high level, Agile, lets teams build and deliver

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Ariwo Oja*

Oluwakorede Asuni December 19, 2016 No Comments

Ariwo oja The din. The noise. White, red, green and black… Distracts. Could disrupt too. You go. You come. Hands empty. Nothing in hand. All things at hand. Stories. Excuses. Of souls battered. Of men beaten. Ariwo oja The ‘misfocus’. The misadventures. Lost. Totally not present. The chatter. The troubles. The questions. The ‘misanswers’. The bother. The worry. The noise. Ariwo oja — *Ever been in/to an African market? Ariwo Oja is the literal noise that consumes you whilst in one. It is also the figurative noise that surrounds humans all life long. ** Cover Image: Bodija Market, Ibadan. Shamelessly copied from BuzzNigeria.  

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The Internet of Things (IoT) – a set of (my) random thoughts about something so new, but quite old as well

Oluwakorede Asuni November 29, 2016 No Comments

I have developed a canny for poking my nose where it doesn’t belong and then write about things that may appear to be none of my business. If you are in doubt just read other pieces here and let me know if you know what my business is. So what is this new fad? The internet has been with us for some time now and so is the internet of things, in principle but the major focus until now has been the internet of people (IoP). IoP can be loosely described as using the internet and its myriad of associated resources to enable transactions (communications, interactions, etc.) between humans. Internet of things (IoT) then, loosely translates to a shift to or the enablement of transactions between machines or things by themselves with little or no human intervention. My favorite example is the fridge talking to the grocer’s order collection system, and another favorite is the smart calendar that not only keeps track of users’ plans for the day (or any time period) but is capable of suggesting practical changes based on users’ realities, and taking actions based on a combination of the users’ pre-programmed instructions, insights from her realities deduced in realtime (thanks to AI technology) and a myriad of other circumstantial information – such actions may include hailing a cab, ordering food, changing flight bookings, setting up Out-of-Office messages, booking a table at user’s favorite restaurant ahead of valentine’s day rush, ordering flowers to be delivered on the wedding anniversary.

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Traffic

Oluwakorede Asuni November 11, 2015 No Comments

Thus far, I have spent approximately 90 minutes in traffic every day of the last three days – don’t blame me for whining, I am used to driving against the general flow of traffic until this past Monday. As there are approximately 240 work days in a year, my projection for the next 12 months, if I do nothing besides experiment with new routes and rely on the duo of Google/Waze and the kind people at 94.7 FM’s Breakfast Xpress show,  is: 15 24 hour days or 45 work days in traffic. In my family, there are two working adults with approximately the same travel time and experience. This translates to 90 work days a year, up in the smoke. Let’s estimate there are 10,000 other people like me. That will be 450, 000 work days, unaccounted for every year. Not able to mind my business, I started to think: definitely, traffic is expensive. But who picks up the bill? Looking at my surroundings as frequently as possible , I observed that: the majority of vehicles traveling along the same route and in the opposite direction are personal vehicles (sedans, SUVs and hatch backs) the majority of them have 1 or two occupants (leaving 2-3 empty seats, and in the case of 7 seater SUVs, 4-6 empty seats) I travelled for most of the route (at least today) with similar cars next to me and directly behind me (it can be inferred that we are coming from and going to locations

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Time for a wearable for the masses? (I)*

Oluwakorede Asuni June 11, 2015 No Comments

Apple has announced its retinue of smart watches. The Curpertino, California based company, which currently has the most cash in its bank accounts compared to any other company in the world today, has been long rumoured to be working on an offering in this category of consumer goods. If history repeats itself, Apple will disrupt the smart watch market and in a few years, easily pass as the inventor of that category of product – Apple rebooted the portable music player and built an ecosystem of services around it, that today people forget easily that there were others ahead of Apple (not that it mattered that there were others playing in that space before Apple, however, it matters to competition and consumers that whatever Apple touches becomes gold). The same for the mobile phone. Tablet PCs and on a few years, may be months, we will see the iCars and even iHomes.

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some facts about diamonds (and lessons too)

Oluwakorede Asuni February 14, 2015 No Comments

Diamond used to be regarded as the hardest substance known to man. But Wurtzite Boron Nitride which shares diamond’s chemical structures, but contains different atoms, now holds that position. Diamond is a naturally occurring chemical compound made up entirely of the element carbon. It has a 3 dimension crystalline structure, responsible for its hardness.   The compound, diamond, has the same chemical make up as graphite – also made entirely of the element carbon, but with a dissimilar physical structure as diamond (the difference between both compounds is simply in the way the carbon atoms are arranged within each compound). The compound, diamond, has other uses besides being an item of ego and decoration as mostly touted in the movies and celebrities with too much money than any one person truly needs :-). One is as a cutting or abrasive device in industrial cutting tools. Diamond have not always been the symbol of romance that it has become today – that is someone’s idea come true. Diamonds  are forever, is the outcome of a successful marketing campaign commissioned in 1947 by deBeers and executed by the advertising agency N.W Ayer. The campaign was so successful, that we still ear its echoes today as a lot of people now associate expensive diamond crusted engagement rings as symbols of commitment to marry (or stay married). Updated: 28/12/2018

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eMail etiquette: Yes, there are some basic expectations

Oluwakorede Asuni February 5, 2015 No Comments

I write a lot of emails and I get a lot emails too. Indeed, in the fast paced, information driven world we live in today, email as well as other electronic communication methods and channels have become default. However, unlike face to face communication, the reader of an email usually have to depend on the written word to decipher the message being passed. 

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Project Management: Beyond Microsoft Project! (Updated)

Oluwakorede Asuni January 30, 2015 No Comments

It isn’t quite hilarious when otherwise smart people are fooled into believing project management is simply being able to use Microsoft Project. It becomes even more unsettling when, these people are made to part with hard-earned cold cash in the name of obtaining project management training. And for me, it is painful to see all these people (well meaning, but scammed) have to show for their newly earned expertise is some random computer printed A4 certificate attesting to their ability to use MS project, and nothing else. First a confession I am affiliated with the Project Management Institute (PMI) and hold its Project Management Professional (PMP) credential and have been until recently, active in the local South Africa chapter of the PMI (PMI SA). I am also aware of a group of professional peers’ interest to offer cost-effective project management training on demand/in person on weekends and online, self paced open distance learning  (allows other professionals keen on acquiring PM skills without compromising performance on their current jobs). Cost effective as affordability has been identified as leading cause of the pervasiveness of the false ideas about what constitutes project management.

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One long telephone call overseas – a short story, not 100% fiction

Oluwakorede Asuni August 16, 2014 No Comments

I stared briefly at the call duration, 59:28. Reached for my ear instinctively. Slowly massaging it. Dissipating the heat from having held the mobile phone against it for so long. Funny, I didn’t even feel the phone heating up and warming up my ear. But I did feel the discomfort, or so I thought. Next time, use your ear plugs I mused to myself. Why did you stay so long on the call? One hour? International call! The young man sitting next to me fired, rapidly at me. True. Why? Some background. I wasn’t calling my wife. As she’s perhaps the only one I have spent so much time on the phone with on single calls, often when I am travelling and compensating for not being a few feet away from her. But that changed since I started to run my own business almost full time. The call I just ended was to a client, who is about 6,000 KM away from my physical reach and one time zone away from me (easy, there are others 6 timezones away in both directions). And is in response to an email chain which has exceeded the threshold of number of emails that can be exchanged between our customers and our service desk team before the CEO is automatically notified. This in itself is good. Everybody knows I will be notified once a certain number of emails have been exchanged between us and our clients and everybody works pretty hard to ensure all

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EbolaaFactsDotCom

Public service announcement!

Oluwakorede Asuni July 27, 2014 No Comments

1. Ebola virus – current outbreak most severe since first case was reported in ’76. The guys at TechCabal rigged together an easy to use information tool available to all here: http://ebolafacts.com – please share and #StaySafe 2. #DigitalLiteracy – Idiots (that’s what they are) are often on the prowl to gain access to your priced digital assets (online/mobile bank accounts, email accounts, social network accounts etc.). In an effort from a few minutes ago, an idiot attempted to fool me into revealing my Gmail account details – see annotated screenshots below. #StaySafe

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Going lean

Oluwakorede Asuni July 16, 2014 No Comments

Saw a video by Eric Ries in which he explains the ideas he had shared in his phenomenal 2011 book the Lean StartUp. Some of the ideas illustrated in the video (those that resonated with me) are detailed below: 1. StartUps are not miniature big companies (so they don’t have to function like one) 2. Pivots are important and should not be disdained or feared – Pivots are changes (ranges from subtle to drastic) to the core business, its underlying model or everything else. They become necessary when you get out the door and reality dawns – assumptions don’t hold true or you find there is a better way to create and capture value. Microsoft  started with a Basic language interpreter, today they have a near monopoly of the desktop operating system and have had for the better part of two decades, Nokia was a Finnish tire company a million lifetimes ago, it became the number one mobile phone OEM and now a growing software and network equipments manufacturer.

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African Round Table Discussion on CiviCRM

Oluwakorede Asuni May 20, 2014 No Comments

Update: Webinar was successful. You can view my slides below and join the conversation on Kabissa’s website. You can also download the recording here (47Mb and 1 hour long). CiviCRM is currently the only CRM tool built from grounds up to meet the needs of civil society organisations. It is free. Open source. Web based. And works with Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress. Out of the box and with minimal base configurations, CiviCRM can be used by charities of any size to manage: contacts memberships (new applications and renewal of existing memberships, offer free or paid memberships or a mix of both) online and offline donations and pledges mass emails and one to one email communications relations and interactions and human resources. CiviCRM is extensible and can be modified to meet almost all challenges that may be presented to it, and where there are cost implications, these are not necessarily as expensive as with proprietary software – and making it even better is the fact CiviCRM is supported by a community of developers who have written plugins (light weight self-contained software) to extend CiviCRM is certain new ways. On Thursday 29 May 2014, at 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM SAST/CAT, Oluwakorede Asuni will host an African Round Table discussion with a panel of end users, developers and consultants who have used or  currently uses CiviCRM in their work and will discuss the adoption process for two international non-profits, who have recently adopted CiviCRM. To join this session, kindly register here. (Session is

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Gay education

Omolara Akintoye-Asuni February 25, 2014 No Comments

I read a story told by a gay Nigerian online, there have been a lot of them lately after the anti-gay law was passed in Nigeria, and  I concluded that the LGBTI sector was portrayed in bad light. The young man related the journey that led him to his unique sexual preference. He said he was introduced to the life-style by the promises of wealth it holds (getting paid for granting sexual gratification to men). He regrets his decision and would like to op out, so he can fit into the acceptable sexual preference, but grieved as he is no longer attracted to women. This is however not a true picture of all gay men,as any one-story of a situation never is, but that of a male prostitute. This brings to my mind that perhaps what should really be prohibited is same sex prostitution since this is not listed as a crime in the Criminal Act. I have interacted with lesbians and gays and come to understand that they can’t control who they are attracted to, no more than some men can control their attraction to slim women and others to fat women. Beauty surely lies in the eye of the beholder hence we must be more accepting of others.

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Making tariffs great again

Yesterday, I told the barista politely that I am going to do something about our trade deficit. The back story: I buy coffee from her,

Reflections on work and being busy?

Do we do work for the sake of it and its direct benefits (ability to buy things and by a stretch the ability to create wealth) or as a means to live a fulfilled life (where each is free to define fulfilment)? A position I might have maintained given “my confusion” is to maintain a hybrid view of work. I seize or attempt to seize every opportunity to create something that brings me fulfilment (I have been known to go as far as crossing boundaries of organisational hierarchy to get stuff done and apologise afterwards rather than wait endlessly for permission) and sometimes, too, I simply toe the line – in the hope that something great emerges – especially one that does emerge despite our efforts to the contrary.

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For the latest in the work Oluwakorede Asuni is busy with and his reflection on matters always start here. 

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