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How companies can become truly Agile in the wake of COVID-19

By KnowledgeHut

Agile is touted as one of the best, most important work methodologies. In what ways is it relevant (or not?) through a crisis like the one we’re facing brought on by COVID-19?Back in April, we caught up with experienced Agile Coach and KnowledgeHut trainer, Kumaresh Krishnamoorthy on why an agile mindset might be one of the most important skills for the emergent new normal. Kumaresh is a leading industry expert in Agile with experience in IBM, General Motors and Hewlett Packard. He specializes in Agile Transformation from Waterfall to Agile to Scaled Agile using (Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), Disciplined Agile (DA®) and other Agile frameworks and processes. Kumaresh talked to us about what it means for a company to be truly agile, the crucial role that leadership plays in agile transformation and the need for enterprises to upskill their workforce to face the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities in the post COVID-19 world. In this article, we share highlights from the interview along with the video for you to follow along. Customer centricity at the heart of the Agile mindset What I observe during this challenging time is that different companies seem to have different approaches towards dealing with the sudden and massive disruption. In smaller companies and start-ups, the focus is always customercentricity and they build in a designthinking framework around this. The company is this network of people and every single person in the networkis focused on providing value to the customer,irrespective of how many changes come up from the customer’s side. This is how small companies start growing. But as companies grow, a hierarchical structure emerges with processes to be followed. There are policies and departments and as companies keep growing, the focus on customer centricityslowly starts diminishing and instead, they start focusing on the process itself. This is where theissue lies, and the company struggles to deliver true value to the customer. What happens is that the process has taken over, the hierarchy has taken over, the traditional way of thinking has taken over. Now,when the customer wants a change, the bigger companies will usually insist on a change management process. Every change will probably take around two months to be implemented.What agile brings about here is a change in mindset which helps every person in the network focus once again on customer centricity and design thinking enables this. It isn’t that hierarchy isbad. Structures, policies and procedures are very important for every company, but we also need to realize and learn from the things which worked well when the company was small. It is true that change is inevitable and is the only constant in life; the important thing for us to understand is how to adapt. The company that adapts fastest keeping the focus on the customer is the one that will be successful. The customer focus is what Agile brings about. Why do so many organizations fail with their Agile transformations? If you notice some of the big companies like Blockbuster, the video rental company - they didnot adapt and eventually fell apart. But look at Netflix,which started after blockbuster - they understood the reason for change; they understood the Agile way of thinking. They truly adopted Agile. They trained their employees to be truly agile and to be innovative. They trained their employees to take chances and this is how they grew to be so big today. Similarly, companies like BlackBerry and Nokia, all these companiesfell apart while Apple, Samsung, and the like have thrived in adapting to change and been immensely successful. It is most important for companies to understand what the drive for them is to change. Don't change just because others are changing. Understand the reason for you to change. If you don't, someone else will overtake you. That's the drive that every company needs to understand. And based on that understanding, they need toprovide their workforce with autonomy and give them the chance to succeed. Train them, educate them and give them the leadership support, which is often missing. “Don't change just because others are changing. Understand the reason for you to change.” There is a big difference between “doing agile” and “being agile”. Many companiesfeel they that they are agile because they have adopted some of the frameworks and methodologies in their working until it does not work or they find they are not able to deliver value to customers. If these companies do a deep dive, they will soon realize that they are just “doing Agile”, not “being Agile”. “Doing agile” boils down to external reasons – I’m doing it because my neighbour is doing it, my friend is doing it or my competitors are doing it – without an understanding of the reason behind the need to become agile. So,the first and foremost important thing is to recognize your need for change. Unless you are convinced, you will not be able to do justice. The second reasons companies struggle is because they do not understand the true principles and values behind agile. When companies make decisions without understanding the principles behind them, they are not able to make right decisions. The thing I always tell companies is that if you want to be truly agile, you need to understand what the values and principles behind agility are all about. Once you understand these and start believing in them, the decisions you then make, based on these principles and value statements are what will make you truly agile. “The difference between “being agile” and “doing agile” is understanding the principles.” “The difference between “being agile” and “doing agile” is understanding the principles.” With companies that are struggling, you will notice that these companies are trying to be agile only at the team level. The management feels that they don't have to be agile and that it’s only the IT team who actually has to be Agile - that's a huge misconception. And that's why companies are struggling quite a lot, because ofthis kind of hybrid model wherein on the top, you are traditional,but at the bottom, where the work is actually happening, you try to be Agile. This causes a huge disconnect between the thought process at the leadership and management level and the team that’s actually delivering value.Agile is not process implementation, but a shift in mindset. “Agile is not process implementation, it is a shift in mindset.” Enterprises need to adopt the agile mindset because it's not just the teams who are doing the work – the whole enterprise needs to be agile. This is where the Scaled Agile framework or SAFe® comes up. The reason Scaled Agile has made a lot of progress and has become really popularis because it’s a framework which caters to all levels of an enterprise, not just at the team level. Scaling is not an option nowadays; if you don’t scale, you’re dead. It's important for leadership to understand what it is that they must do to be Agile; it’s not just about the teams. And what leaders must then do is to provide the right environment - an environment of trust, an environment of respect and an environment of support. This is what bringsabout the passion in the team to actually deliver true value to the customers. This is where the magic happens and transformation begins. Itall begins with the mindset at the leadership level. Make the best of the lockdown and slowdown to upskill Unfortunately, we are in the middle ofan economic slowdown and companies are struggling. But this gives an opportunity for companies to make sure thattheir employees take the time to introspect in terms of how they have been doing the past - have they been delivering true value to their customers? Are there perhaps better ways to do it? Investingin training and education helps the company grow. This is very important and now is especially a very good time to focus on this. You must do it to prepare for what comes after the crisis.Companies will then have to ramp up and deliver things really fast, faster than ever before because they have to catch up with the economy that will look to rebound rapidly. When companies want to ramp up, especially in scalingAgile, it should not be just at the team level. It should not just be, for example, Scrum. While that’sone of the skills, there are several other frameworks – there’s Kanban, Lean thinking, Disciplined Agile and several others. So, there’s multiple areas they need to upskill themselves on. It’s also important for companies to learn how to choose the right agile solution for their situation. Not every project is “Agileable”; the idea is that teams need to understand which projects Agile must be applied to and which projects they must continue in maybe a Waterfall fashion. Even in projects where Agile must be applied, you need to have different strategies as required - one project may requireKanban and the other Scrum, the third may require Lean or even SAFe®. There are different ways to apply your knowledge but the only way you can make this decision is to gain that knowledge. The way to gain that knowledge is by talking to professionals, going for trainings, andlearning about best practices through case studies. How can companies best prepare for the new normal post COVID-19? The next 6 months to a year is going to be really crucial in terms of how companies wrap themselves around the problem. To build character, adaptability, and flexibility and deliver true value to the customers, the work must happen now. When things come back to the new normal, things will need to really speed up. Enterprises will then need their workforceequipped with the skills and the right frame of mind to really help the company grow at double the speed. That's why this transition period during the lockdown is crucial for companies to prepare their employees for what's coming up in the future. The best part is that trainings which were traditionally delivered as classroom trainings, whether CSM® or Leading SAFe® are all being delivered online now. So, people don't have to get out of their homes anymore; they can get trained safely and from the comfort of their homes. So, as companies are trying to adapt, it’sa great opportunity for people to make use of their time and upskill. \ Video: How companies can become truly Agile in the wake of Covid-19Ready to start or grow your Agile career? Check out our latest cou—you’ll learn the skills and get the personalized guidance you need to land the job you want.

Rated 4.0/5 based on 13 customer reviews

How companies can become truly Agile in the wake of COVID-19

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Integrating Realm with Xamarin (Includes Realm Sync)

By KnowledgeHut

When it comes to mobile applications with database support, the first thing that comes into our mind is SQLite. However there are few drawbacks with SQLite like no support for data encryption, and low performance when dealing with large data. Realm is a non-relational database and is a solid replacement for SQLite and core data. It is quite efficient and works seamlessly even with a large amount of dataWhy use Realm Easy to use Provides data synchronization Fast and Efficient Provides Encryption of data Ways of using Realm Using realm locally: This creates a local file in your mobile app. Using realm cloud: The data lives in realm cloud and will be synchronized with the local database. In this article I will show how to integrate realm in the Xamarin Forms project. I will also show how to use realm as local database(Part-1) and realm cloud(Part-2) Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2015 Update2 or higher for windows Visual Studio for Mac 7.0 or higher Part-1: Using Realm Local Database Firstly, create a Xamarin Forms project in Visual Studio for Windows or Mac. Go to the NuGet packages and install the realm package in all your solutions. Always prefer to install the latest one. It automatically adds fodyweavers.xml. If not added, please add it manually in all your projects. Go to PCL project>—>Right click—>Add—>New File—>XML File—>FodyWeavers.xml Go to Android project>—>Right click—>Add—>New File—>XML File—>FodyWeavers.xml Go to iOS project>—>Right click—>Add—>New File—>XML File—>FodyWeavers.xml Add the below code in the file FodyWeavers.xml Let's create a model public class Animals: RealmObject { public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } } Opening Realms Opening a Realm can be done by instantiating a new Realm object. // Get a Realm instance var realm = Realm.GetInstance(); Note: If nothing is passed, it creates the default realm. You can add realm name as below var realm = Realm.GetInstance(“Animals”); This will create realm db with “Animals” name To add/delete/update or do any operation of realm, first you need a Realm instance. 1) Add elements var _realm = Realm.GetInstance(); Add elements _realm.Write(() => { var entry = new Todo{ Name = “Dog”, Age =3 }; _realm.Add(entry); }); 2) Delete elements var param = _realm.All().First(b => b.Name == “Dog”); using (var trans = _realm.BeginWrite()) { _realm.Remove(param); trans.Commit(); } 3) Update elements _realm.Write(() => { param.Name = “Cat”; _realm.Add(param); }); Part-2: Using Realm Cloud Now let's see how to use realm cloud. The setup is still the same. Here we need a few more additional steps. 1) Create an account in realm cloud at https://cloud.realm.io/ (one-month free trial account). 2) Create an instance in realm cloud by clicking on create an instance This instance ID will be further used for authentication There are two types of Realm sync Full Sync: All the data present in the cloud will be synced locally Query Based Sync: Only partial data i.e the result set that is queried will be synced into the local copy. Here I am going to show you how to use full sync as Realm recommends using Full sync. Client Authentication: Realm supports two types of authentication Simple Authentication: To simply get started one can use simple authentication which uses username, password and other one is anonymous login. JWT Authentication: It is recommended to use JWT Authentication for a better experience. The below code shows how to use simple authentication with username and password. var authUrl = new Uri("https://myinstance.cloud.realm.io"); var credentials = Credentials.UsernamePassword(username, password, createUser: false); var user = await User.LoginAsync(credentials, authUrl); To authenticate, you must supply a server URL. This is the base URL for your server, such as https://myinstance.cloud.realm.io Note: Here “myinstance" would be the instance id that you generated while creating your account Create Realm through realm studio or through code. If the realm has not been created, while calling the realm instance it will automatically create. If you have already created through realm studio, you can just call the instance. Example: public static string realmPath = "realms://instanceId/realmname; Here the realm path consists of instanceId followed by realm name. Something like this public static string realmPath = "realms://instanceId/Animals; Now let’s login and call realm instance public async Task GetInitialize() { await StartLoginCycle(); } private async Task StartLogin() { do { await Task.Yield(); } while (!await LogIn()); }//Call the login methodprivate async Task LogIn() { try { user = User.Current; if (user == null) { var username = "DevUser"; //Pass your username var password = “User123"; //Pass the password var credentials = Realms.Sync.Credentials.UsernamePassword(username, password); /// Log in as the user. user = await User.LoginAsync(credentials, new Uri(RealmConnectionString.AuthUrl)); } Debug.Assert(user != null); Console.WriteLine("Login successful."); await GetDataFromRealm(); return true; } catch (Exception ex) { ///await Application.Current.MainPage.DisplayAlert("Error", ex.Message, "OK"); return false; } }//Call or create realm instance: public static async Task GetDataFromRealm() { var configuration = new FullSyncConfiguration(new Uri(realmPath, UriKind.Absolute), user); Var _realm = await Realm.GetInstanceAsync(configuration); var param = _realm.All(); //Adding/updating/deleting operations are same as above } I hope you understood how to integrate realm local db and realm cloud into your xamarin forms project. You will also be able to perform operations like adding items, updating items and deleting items (showed in Part-1). These code snippets are the same for realm local database and realm cloud. You can find how to use linq queries in the below reference link. However few features are not supported like groupby, union, intersect, distinct,except, select, selectmany, join, group join, concat, skipwhile, take, skip, takewhile. Note: Opening the realm instance asynchronously for the first time is recommended. Once the data is synchronized, the instance should be called synchronously. You can also download realm studio, create a realm file, and add the data. This helps to minimize the code in your application. Below are the reference links that might help with further information Using realm with xamarin- https://realm.io/docs/dotnet/latest/ Linq support- https://realm.io/docs/dotnet/latest/api/linqsupport.html Realm Encryption- https://realm.io/docs/dotnet/latest/#encryption Thanks for reading my article. Hope it helps you. Do share your feedback. Let me know if you face any issue w.r.t realm integration.

Rated 4.0/5 based on 13 customer reviews

Integrating Realm with Xamarin (Includes Realm Sync)

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How to Keep Your Project Moving During the Coronavirus Outbreak

By KnowledgeHut

The Coronavirus outbreak has put the world into testing times and quite a frustrating one as well. People are being laid-off from work due to companies suffering from financial and production losses. Some still are directed to go to work and risk being infected with this terrible disease. The biggest challenge is companies facing difficulties to keep their projects running during this pandemic, especially with how teams work and communicate.Current SituationMultiple companies have given their employees instructions to work from home to avoid being infected with the COVID-19. This has brought out the possibility of hiring new employees remotely. Additionally, the virus could fast-track the remote hiring trend. While the World Health Organization (WHO) works with leaders from every nation to discover initiatives to precisely analyze, adequately contain, and build up a fitting response for this infection, workplaces are gearing up approaches to effectively deal with issues related to their projects. COVID-19 is the worst outbreak to date that is changing how people work, pushing humanity towards working from home for good. How can companies coordinate and work remotely, while also keeping their projects in sync? Read on and find out. A. Provide timely and clear communication with accountability from team members For companies that have never practiced remote working, it would take some time to get used to. It can be challenging for certain project managers especially those who micro-manage. Remote project managers believe that a deep sense of confidence is built from their teams’ and individual members' skills. A company with self-motivated members who are highly disciplined and possess good communication skills makes remote working easier. Additionally, managers taking a step back to allow team members to carry out their work helps in building self-reliance and self-confidence. Moreover, it is essential to interact with the teams with timely and clear communication while working as a remote leader and trying to maintain timely delivery and completion of the project tasks, thus ensuring everything is on schedule.B. Devise and implement clear plans to form remote work policiesCompanies should define specific policies and implement them to ensure that the best practices and concerns related to working remotely are addressed. The policies should be able to handle security problems and should have a backup plan to implement infrastructure, workflows, and interaction strategies. C. Use online project-collaboration tools to stay in touchProject teams working remotely need the necessary cloud-based tools from the companies that they are working for. Below mentioned are the ways with which companies can work with their teams to manage their projects collaboratively and handle the challenges that they may be facing while working remotely:Virtual meetings and video conferencing: Scheduling interactions with remote employees can be challenging. With video-conference resources, team members can stay connected to tasks and address general topics and events around the organization. GoTo Meeting, Zoom Meetings, and Cisco WebEx are some of the platforms that enable video conferencing, video chat, live and private chat, streaming, and screen sharing.File sharing and synchronization: To keep projects running smoothly, Cloud-based platforms can be used to share resources and files, which are easy to work with and quite affordable too. Cloud-based platforms like Google's G Suite, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, NextCloud, Wimi, and Samepage are handy to regulate tracking access, auditing, communication, and cooperation. Moreover, these platforms use encryption, search filters, and process management. Teams can easily exchange files from all over the world in no time at all.Project status tracking and status reporting: Many cloud-based tools provide remote teams around the globe with ways to interact, track, collaborate, report project status, share files, video chat, and carry on daily face-to-face activities whenever required. With certain Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions such as Changepoint, and project management tools including Trello, and Wrike, apps get the power to facilitate hard-pressed activities so that teams working remotely can finish their projects before the deadline, be it anywhere or from any device.Before planning for remote team collaboration and workflows, companies must develop policies and select tools that have cloud security and data storage enabled as this protects your information with governance and compliance rules.The way going forwardLife is unpredictable and so is the way people work. Flexibility and improvisation are the gifts imparted to humans. Amidst this unprecedented Coronavirus outbreak, companies should stay positive and resort to alternate methods to carry on with their projects while working remotely with their teams. A lot of opportunities can emerge during challenging times. When companies can efficiently work with their employees remotely, it helps in strengthening their sense of discipline, maintaining the ultimate trust and accountability of each employee’s work, and building confidence in one’s ability to perform optimally. Not only this remote working is now a growing trend and can contribute greatly towards business growth even in the future.

Rated 4.5/5 based on 45 customer reviews

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