The HEAP (Healthcare, Economics, Anthropology and Performance Engg) blogs

DevOps is walloping up IT shops and like it or not, all have to roll along in the great DevOps marathon.  We all have to be cognizant of this upcoming wave and consider aligning our expertise and operating model to this world. Everyone have their own interpretations and way of using DevOps to solve their business problems (like, 'I don't like this fella, lets DevOps him'). Let me share on whats DevOps need to be doing. I am heavily colored by experiences with projects that took too long and fell out of end user's favor and I acknowledge that there could be more than one use cases for DevOps. Objectives 1.  DevOps originates from need for agile infrastructure where Development team and  Operations collaborate. 2. Quick releases and reduce time to go to market. This I believe was not one of original goals but a natural outcome as conflicts diminish thus reducing the need for paperwork and process. It may also be an outcome of market demand of doing t

Some original quotes that you may use with due credits in your presentations, smart alec responses or generally to relieve stress. First quote is provided in template that I would like to request you to use. I automated the totally useless activity that we should not be even doing and saved huge money for the company.          ~ Vikram Chandna NoDev, need is the mother of invention. Unpredictive Analytics, 'tell me what I  don't know' Artificial Intelligence- fed bank statements, credit card details, diary scans,  lipid profile, facebook timeline, blog hits analytics and recent job performance appraisal and applied K-means clustering algorithm and ARIMA model to get some guidance. It told me I should be sleeping on left side at 45 degrees angle. Thanks God for creating all the species. We would be running out of names for the latest products. Doc prescribed Agile for 'collective amnesia'. I had to get DevOps guy. I wasn't sure

I have not done any justice to ‘economics’ part of my H E AP blog. Not that I ever had any special credentials to brag about. In fact I found it a very boring subject in my college. Though, it is very fascinating as an after-thought.   i.e. after the boom or bust books continue to be published for decades. Every country seems to have a top economic adviser drafting some eclectic policy, which is nowhere visible in ground level activities. I would like to bring forth an alternate view of economics, which of course is very much colored by my performance engineering experiences and perspectives. To me economics is about generating denominated transactions between living beings and entities. Almost similar but no exactly like standard definition of- the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. To generate transactions, living entities need to flog natural resources and somebody else needs to consume them to complete the circle and ec

Common marketing tool used for big data is that human mind is unable to analyze when more than 7 variables are involved. That seems an overstretch when I see many discussions where there is struggle with just one variable. This topic of complexity is of great interest to me because I see this as main driver of human and technical evolution. Further in my profession of performance engineering it is at abundant display. Complexity is an invariable outcome of wide and conflicting demands and finding solutions for everything in one product/service. At philosophical level complexity of products and services is a reflection of human being and nature's complexity and diversity. Real life complexity At more mundane level, at which I operate there is love-hate relationship between compexity and simplicity. Those who master complexity feel vastly entitled while those challenged by complexity loathe it and profess superiority of simplicity aka common sense. I feel I would be prej

Some time back I had described the restaurant analogy for Performance engineering. Here is another one. This time it is on outsourcing, but in lighter vein.   Outsourcing is well discussed and I do not have anything more to share on it that readers would not know.   In fact this narrative is more about problem solving skills of a person I worked with at some point of time. I would like to mention that all content here are fictional in nature.     The Dolphin park analogy was inspired by this middle manager I had the privilege of working with and would refer to as ‘Dee’.   Dee was perfect fit for middle management and an embodiment of its values as reflected in his waistline. He had no vision and no time for other’s vision. His job was keeping delivery well-oiled and he did that extremely well. He always prepared for worst case scenario mode. I had pointed to him on need to get his cholesterol checked. The morning of lipid test I found him devouring fish curry with wine. I t

Can you help ‘tune’ this restaurant?   Recently a performance test COE I looked after went through massive expansion and we had to find a lot of resources in short time. Along with experienced resources we also looked at getting some fresh engineers and get them trained in performance testing. Question arose, as to what criteria we need to choose in screening the candidates. After some deliberation I came up on following.   1. High energy and motivated 2. Passion for technology 3. Quest for knowledge 4. Analytical mindset   My able colleagues assisted me in rigorous interviews. I focused on evaluating analytical mindset aspect of the candidates. There was some disappointment in the process.   I was expecting the resources to floor me with their fresh and invigorating ideas and their analytical capabilities but it happened far too less for my liking. It’s my conjecture that social media is taking toll on mental development by taking away free time that w