Tag: Work

Setting Up a Healthy Engineering Culture: A Blueprint for Success

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
engineering culture

As organizations strive to build innovative products and deliver exceptional value to their customers, fostering a healthy engineering culture becomes paramount. A strong engineering culture not only attracts top talent but also drives productivity, collaboration, and long-term success. In this blog post, we’ll explore the key elements of a healthy engineering culture and provide actionable steps to set it up within your organization.

What Is Engineering Culture?

An engineering culture encompasses the shared values, norms, and practices that define how engineers work together to achieve common goals. It’s the DNA of your technical team, influencing everything from code quality to communication patterns. Here are some essential features of a robust engineering culture:

  1. Collaboration and Communication:
    • Encourage open communication and cross-functional collaboration. Foster an environment where engineers can freely exchange ideas, seek feedback, and learn from one another.
    • Use tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or other communication platforms to facilitate real-time discussions and knowledge sharing.
  2. Continuous Learning and Professional Development:
    • Invest in learning opportunities for your engineers. Provide access to conferences, workshops, online courses, and mentorship programs.
    • Encourage engineers to stay updated with industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies.
  3. Agile Development Practices:
    • Adopt agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum, Kanban) to promote iterative development, shorter release cycles, and adaptive planning.
    • Regularly review and adapt your processes based on feedback and performance metrics.
  4. Code Reviews:
    • Make code reviews a standard practice. They improve code quality, knowledge sharing, and alignment with coding standards.
    • Encourage constructive feedback and ensure that reviews are respectful and focused on improvement.
  5. Engineering Excellence:
    • Set high standards for technical excellence. Encourage engineers to write clean, maintainable code and follow best practices.
    • Invest in tools and practices that enhance code quality, such as static analysis, automated testing, and continuous integration.
  6. Innovation and Experimentation:
    • Create space for innovation. Allow engineers to explore new ideas, experiment with technologies, and propose improvements.
    • Celebrate successful experiments and learn from failures.
  7. Diversity and Inclusion:
    • Build a diverse engineering team that brings different perspectives and experiences. Embrace diversity in gender, ethnicity, background, and thought.
    • Foster an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and respected.

How to Build an Engineering Culture

  1. Lead by Example:
    • Leadership plays a crucial role in shaping culture. Demonstrate the desired behaviors, communicate the vision, and actively participate in cultural initiatives.
    • Encourage transparency, accountability, and empathy.
  2. Define Core Values:
    • Collaborate with your team to define core values that align with your organization’s mission. These values should guide decision-making and behavior.
    • Examples of core values: integrity, customer focus, continuous improvement, and teamwork.
  3. Promote Psychological Safety:
    • Create an environment where engineers feel safe to express their opinions, ask questions, and take calculated risks.
    • Avoid blame culture and encourage learning from mistakes.
  4. Recognize and Reward Success:
    • Celebrate achievements, both big and small. Recognize engineers who go above and beyond.
    • Consider peer recognition, spot bonuses, or team outings as ways to appreciate contributions.
  5. Invest in Team Building:
    • Organize team-building activities, offsites, and hackathons. Strengthen relationships and build trust among team members.
    • Encourage social interactions beyond work-related discussions.
  6. Measure and Improve:
    • Regularly assess your engineering culture. Use surveys, feedback sessions, and metrics to gauge satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
    • Iterate and adapt based on the feedback received.

Conclusion

A healthy engineering culture is not built overnight; it requires consistent effort, alignment, and commitment. By fostering collaboration, learning, and excellence, you can create an environment where engineers thrive, innovate, and contribute to the success of your organization. Remember that culture is not just what you say—it’s what you do every day.

Vanity Metrics: What They Are and Why You Should Avoid Them

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
Futility of vanity metrics

As a marketer, you probably use various metrics to measure and evaluate your marketing performance and success. Metrics such as website traffic, social media followers, email subscribers, and video views can help you understand how your marketing efforts are reaching and engaging your target audience. However, not all metrics are equally useful and meaningful. Some metrics may look impressive and flattering, but they may not actually reflect the true value and impact of your marketing activities or that of your business. These metrics are known as vanity metrics.

What are vanity metrics?

Vanity metrics are metrics that make you look good to others, but do not help you understand your own performance in a way that informs future strategies. These metrics are often easy to measure and manipulate, but they do not indicate any real return on investment (ROI) or customer behavior. Examples of vanity metrics include:

  • Website traffic: The number of visitors or sessions on your website may seem like an important indicator of your website’s popularity and reach, but it does not tell you anything about the quality and relevance of your traffic, or how your traffic converts into leads or customers.
  • Social media followers: The number of followers or fans on your social media accounts may seem like a measure of your social media influence and authority, but it does not tell you anything about the engagement and loyalty of your followers, or how your followers interact with your brand or products.
  • Email subscribers: The number of subscribers on your email list may seem like a measure of your email marketing potential and growth, but it does not tell you anything about the deliverability and open rate of your emails, or how your subscribers respond to your email campaigns.
  • Video views: The number of views on your videos may seem like a measure of your video marketing reach and impact, but it does not tell you anything about the retention and completion rate of your videos, or how your viewers take action after watching your videos.

Why you should avoid vanity metrics

Vanity metrics may be tempting and satisfying to track and report, but they can be misleading and harmful for your marketing strategy and goals. Here are some reasons why you should avoid vanity metrics:

  • They do not help you make data-driven decisions: Vanity metrics do not provide any actionable insights or feedback that can help you improve your marketing performance and outcomes. They do not tell you what works and what does not work, what to do more of and what to do less of, or what to change and what to keep. They do not help you optimize your marketing tactics and channels, or allocate your marketing resources and budget effectively.
  • They do not help you align with your business objectives: Vanity metrics do not align with your business objectives, such as increasing sales, revenue, or profit. They do not show you how your marketing activities contribute to your bottom line, or how they generate value for your business and your customers. They do not help you demonstrate your marketing ROI, or justify your marketing spend and efforts.
  • They do not help you build trust and credibility: Vanity metrics do not build trust and credibility with your stakeholders, such as your management, your team, your partners, or your customers. They do not reflect the true quality and impact of your marketing work, or the real needs and preferences of your target audience. They may even damage your reputation and credibility, if your stakeholders discover that your metrics are inflated, manipulated, or irrelevant.
  • They can be open to subjective interpretations: Vanity metrics can be interpreted in a variety of methods, thus creating confusion instead of giving a clear direction towards efforts.

How to avoid vanity metrics

To avoid vanity metrics, you need to focus on metrics that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. These metrics are often called actionable metrics, as they help you take action and make decisions that improve your marketing performance and success. Here are some tips on how to avoid vanity metrics and use actionable metrics instead:

  • Define your marketing goals and objectives: Before you start measuring and evaluating your marketing performance, you need to define your marketing goals and objectives, and align them with your business goals and objectives. Your marketing goals and objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, instead of having a vague goal of increasing website traffic, you can have a SMART goal of increasing website traffic by 10% in the next quarter, by targeting a specific segment of your audience, using a specific channel or tactic, and measuring a specific metric or outcome.
  • Choose your key performance indicators (KPIs): Based on your marketing goals and objectives, you need to choose your key performance indicators (KPIs), which are the metrics that indicate whether you are achieving your goals and objectives, or not. Your KPIs should be relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. For example, instead of using website traffic as a KPI, you can use website conversion rate, which measures the percentage of your website visitors who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase.
  • Track and analyze your data: Once you have chosen your KPIs, you need to track and analyze your data, using various tools and methods, such as Google Analytics, dashboards, reports, and experiments. You need to track and analyze your data regularly and consistently, to monitor your marketing performance and progress, and to identify any trends, patterns, or anomalies. You also need to track and analyze your data in context, by comparing it with your benchmarks, targets, or competitors, and by segmenting it by various dimensions, such as source, channel, device, or audience.
  • Take action and improve: Based on your data analysis, you need to take action and improve your marketing performance and outcomes. You need to use your data to make data-driven decisions, such as what to do more of and what to do less of, what to change and what to keep, or what to test and what to implement. You also need to use your data to optimize your marketing tactics and channels, and to allocate your marketing resources and budget effectively. You also need to measure and evaluate the impact of your actions and improvements, and to iterate and refine your marketing strategy and goals accordingly.

Conclusion

Vanity metrics are metrics that make you look good to others, but do not help you understand your own performance in a way that informs future strategies. They are often easy to measure and manipulate, but they do not indicate any real return on investment or customer behavior. Examples of vanity metrics include website traffic, social media followers, email subscribers, and video views.

To avoid vanity metrics, you need to focus on metrics that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. These metrics are often called actionable metrics, as they help you take action and make decisions that improve your marketing performance and success. To avoid vanity metrics and use actionable metrics instead, you need to define your marketing goals and objectives, choose your key performance indicators, track and analyze your data, and take action and improve.

By avoiding vanity metrics and using actionable metrics, you can improve your marketing performance and outcomes, align with your business objectives, and build trust and credibility with your stakeholders.

Generative AI in lending

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
AI content creator generated using DALL-E

The Indian lending market is one of the fastest-growing and most diverse in the world, with a huge potential for financial inclusion and social impact. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, the Indian lending market is expected to grow from $1.2 trillion in 2019 to $3.5 trillion by 2024, driven by the increasing demand for credit from individuals, small businesses, and rural segments.

Problems in the lending industry

However, the Indian lending market also faces several challenges, such as high operational costs, low credit penetration, complex regulatory environment, and high credit risk. Traditional lending models rely on manual processes, limited data sources, and rigid criteria, which result in inefficiencies, delays, and exclusions. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation, as lenders face increased defaults, liquidity crunch, and changing customer behavior.

To overcome these challenges and tap into the opportunities, lenders need to adopt innovative and agile solutions that can enhance their efficiency, scalability, and profitability. This is where generative AI, a branch of artificial intelligence that can create novel and realistic content, such as text, images, audio, and video, comes into play.

What can generative AI do?

Generative AI can transform the Indian lending landscape by enabling lenders to:

  • Automate and optimize the lending process: Generative AI can automate and optimize various steps of the lending process, such as customer acquisition, verification, underwriting, disbursal, and recovery. For example, generative AI can create personalized and engaging marketing campaigns, analyze alternative and unconventional data sources, such as social media, e-commerce, and geolocation, to assess creditworthiness and risk, generate customized loan offers and contracts, and create interactive and empathetic chatbots and voice assistants to facilitate communication and collection.
  • Enhance fraud detection and prevention: Generative AI can enhance fraud detection and prevention by identifying and flagging suspicious patterns and anomalies in the data and transactions. For example, generative AI can detect fake or tampered identity proofs and documents, such as Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, and bank statements, by comparing them with the original or authentic versions. Generative AI can also detect fraudulent or malicious behavior, such as identity theft, money laundering, and cyberattacks, by analyzing the behavioral and transactional data of the customers and the lenders.
  • Innovate and diversify the lending products and services: Generative AI can innovate and diversify the lending products and services by creating new and tailored solutions that cater to the specific needs and preferences of the customers. For example, generative AI can create dynamic and flexible loan products that adjust to the changing circumstances and requirements of the customers, such as income fluctuations, emergencies, and life events. Generative AI can also create new and niche lending segments and markets, such as peer-to-peer lending, microfinance, and social impact lending, by leveraging the power of the crowd and the network.

Challenges in using generative AI

Generative AI is a new frontier for the Indian lending industry, as it offers immense possibilities and benefits for both the lenders and the customers. However, generative AI also poses some challenges and risks, such as ethical, legal, and social implications, data quality and security issues, and human-machine interaction and collaboration challenges. Therefore, generative AI needs to be adopted and implemented with caution and responsibility, ensuring that it is aligned with the values and goals of the stakeholders and the society.

I am not even going to talk about the compliance risk and the risk of using a pre-cooked model which may not even be similar to the target audience.

Generative AI is not a magic bullet that can solve all the problems of the Indian lending industry, but it is a powerful and promising tool that can augment and enhance the existing capabilities and solutions. Generative AI can help the Indian lenders to become more efficient, scalable, and profitable, while also serving the customers better and faster.

However, smart and crisp solutions are yet to be seen in the Indian market, and this is an area of work for us at Homeville.

Customizing WordPress to work like Confluence

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
The image shows a smooth transition from the blue and white confluence logo, which consists of two overlapping circles and a letter C, to the blue and white wordpress logo, which consists of a stylized W inside a circle. The image conveys the idea of changing from one platform to another, or integrating them together.

At Homeville, when we started active product development, JIRA and Confluence were our go to tools. As the technology team grew from a 4 member team to a 65+ member team, one of the things that became a slow burn for me was to see the monthly user-wise licensing model for both of these tools.

JIRA was free for the first 10 users, then for the next 40 odd users that we added, we were paying roughly 400 USD per month! Similarily, Confluence was free for the first 10 users, but at a team of 40 or so, our bills from Atlassian was matching our bills from AWS!

Shifting from Atlassian

One of the quickest shifts we did was to find an open source self hosted version of JIRA. OpenProject was the perfect solution. The benefit of self hosting these systems was that access to all the proprietary analysis and research in the form of features and requirements was now within our AWS account and thus in a much more secure environment. The added benefit of localization within the country also meant any form of regulatory compliance was also much better aligned.

It took some scripting, but using a python script to connect to JIRA and OpenProject (OP) both, we were able to import the projects, tickets and sprint informations from JIRA to OP.

Wiki or independent system

One of the key decision that we had to undertake was to see if the documentation was to be done within the OP, or was it to be hosted separately? One option was to continue with Confluence albeit under a smaller user base.

We finally decided to try things with a self-hosted WordPress. However, we did tweak quite a lot of things, listing all of these.

Customizing WordPress

Going into this project, I knew that this would be a continuous evaluation and test work. Sort of a rinse and repeat exercise. Hence, choosing WordPress was the obvious choice.

Custom Taxonomies

We setup PODs because of its ability to quickly add custom post types, custom taxonomies and easy relationships between the two. Using this we could easily keep a separate taxonomy for our credit platforms and systems.

Authorization and Access

Since we were on Microsoft o365, we setup an active directory plugin to enable tech team users to login using their o365 credentials. This also seamlessly created their user ids on WordPress and enabled access without the trouble of invites and importing users.

We also wanted a login gate to enable authorized access to our content. Thus a simple membership plugin to restrict content access was setup.

Similarly, we also setup a plugin that disabled the REST API so that the content wasnt available over unauthorized REST API calls.

We also setup a NACL rule on our AWS to prevent access to the system outside the office premises.

Integration with OpenProject

We also setup easy shortcodes that would pull data from OpenProject agile sprints and display those within a post, allowing for product teams to create east release notes followed by the sprint backlog with links to the OpenProject stories.

This was done using a custom plugin integration that we wrote. Obviously this could not have been possible without OP not having a REST API.

Document Templates FTW

This entire process would not have been successful without the new WordPress editor and its ability to create document template types within the post.

We took our most commonly used Confluence templates and set them up exactly in the same manner in WordPress. This enabled our product teams to seamless shift from Confluence to WordPress.

The fact that most discussions can also be captured as minutes with the exact time of publishing as the time when the meeting occurred also meant that we could also have a temporal view of our product development.

Thus with these simple and easy tweaks we shifted from Confluence to a self hosted WordPress.

WordCamp Ahmedabad 2023

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

After attending WordCamp Mumbai this year, I decided to keep attending more WordCamps throughout India. As luck would have it, Ahmedabad was just around the corner and I did my booking. WordPress is also used as a quick fix for landing pages in advertising, and hence I thought it would be a good exercise for Harshaja to attend, hoping that she meets some competent (and affordable) WordPress agency to handle the development side of things at 13 Llama‘s end. That, and the super interesting schedule that Ahmedabad had put up.

Getting to Ahmedabad

We chose to take the early morning flight to Ahmedabad. That just meant that the day of the event would be super long for us. Since we hardly knew any folks in the city, this was an easy decision to make. I personally wanted to stay and do some site seeing in this city, but no harm – we could always hop by on one of our annual trips to Vadodara.

The flight was short and getting off the airport and into the cab was one of the smoothest exits we have had. Carrying everything in an overnight handbag does have its advantages!

Venue: Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University

One of the supercool things that struck me during this event was the way Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University (BAOU) was setup. Within a 30 minute drive from the airport, the venue is a sprawling university campus that had access to multiple halls, classrooms, and a great open space where the attendees could congregate in.

I honestly cant imagine the cost of such a large sized venue in Mumbai.

Attendees

We thought that instead of checking-in at the hotel, we would directly attend the event and during the breaks in the afternoon do a quick run to the hotel and finish the checkin process. Thus we directly stopped over at the BAOU campus.

At a little bit earlier than 8am, I was expecting the organizers to be just about gathering and deciding on how they want to execute the rest of the day. To my surprise, there was the beginnings of a crowd already gathering.

What ended up as a small crowd quickly grew to a large congregation, with over 1100 attendees, the WordCamp Ahmedabad 2023 was the second largest WordCamp in Asia, second only to WordCamp Asia!!

I could not help but compare this large audience to what we had in Mumbai. This was more than double the audience of Mumbai and then some!

Talks and Speakers

One thing that always strikes me is that every WordCamp I learn something new. Something that helps me in the future years. Even this time, one of the highlights of the event was the last talk by Nirav Mehta. This one was on public speaking and one of the reasons why I had made sure that the both of us were there to attend.

Some of the other notable talks were on Link Building by an agency owner, Custom Blocks by Amartya Gaur, Yoast’s acquisition by Chaya Oosterbroek. It’s uncanny that even when my functional domain has completely changed, I still took a bunch of learning back from the event!

Ahmedabad, you beauty!

As the day came to an end, I could not help but get overwhelmed with the vibrant PHP developer community that I could see in Ahmedabad. It’s definitely larger and more vocal than the Mumbai community and thus would always be one of the factors for us if we were to open a secondary development office. In fintech, I am seeing more companies shift their technical operations to T2 and T3 cities like Ahmedabad and how!

આવજો

6 months of lockdown

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

As I write this after nearing the 6 months mark of lockdown, I cannot help but think at looking back at how things have changed in the last 6 months or so.

  • Work from home is an accepted norm with remote working at an all time rise. The organizations that could slide into this mode of working have also started realizing the benefits of allowing teams to operate from home. Any teething troubles that were there have been ironed out and I am see teams of all functions coming together on Zoom/Hangouts and making it work.
  • Reverse migration has started. A lot of this working class who can work remotely has opted to move back to their native places. Just to give an example, out of my team of 8 – only one has chosen to stay in the city … the rest are safely back at their native places across the country.
  • Internet penetration and mobile services are at an all time high. The demand for Jio has never been higher with this working class scrabbling to ensure that they have steady connections at home. I see this audience’s demand in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities ensure that brands and the government focus on building out the infrastructure in remote cities.
  • This would lead to some normalization between demand and supply of all goods across higher and lower tier cities. Take Mumbai for example … in the suburbs or in Mumbai proper, it is hardly a case when you see an electricity outage. As you go outwards, you will start seeing specific load shedding hours and schedules. In the Raigad district, there is atleast one day a week when there is no electricity. As the working class goes back to these cities, either the demand for inverters will go up or the respective local governments would be petitioned to increase the quality of lifestyle.
  • Environment conditions across all cities have drastically improved, the Mumbai air feels cleaner, cooler and taking a walk doesn’t seem oppressive.
  • Organizations whose engagement models involved a lot of physical interaction have started discovering alternative methods and workarounds. Dentists have started using full-body kits, delivery boys have established clear package hand-off protocols, restaurants have started opening up with lower floor space utilization.
  • Cost of basic services and commodities have slowly increased. An annualized inflation of 15-16% looks to be on the cards and the common man is going to bear the brunt of this. Any initiative the government is going to take is only further going to exacerbate this.
  • Industries that have been doing well since lockdown –
    • Food Deliveries
    • E-commerce
    • Agri-tech
    • App enabled services
    • Edtech
    • Fintech
  • Communication apps are at an all time high. Zoom has made it to the top 10 websites in India according to Alexa.com
  • OTT platforms are raking it in with a lot of the younger audiences looking at their smartphones for entertainment. Since there haven’t been any theatre releases, all the movies that were scheduled to be released have started being covered on the OTT platforms. A quick glance at the above list by Alexa informed me that Netflix, PrimeVideo and HotStar were all in the top 20.
  • Big tech firms are going all out to change the way things are. Google pretty much gave all schools free access to Google Classroom. Both my children are using this for their new term this year.

As things start settling down from this massive change in life, I see a resilience being shown by businesses as they start figuring out a way to live and thrive in this economically challenging environment. As a technologist, I see a large need to automate a lot of business processes to keep the wheels of the industry turning.

This is what will keep the world going round.

Life and opportunities post COVID-19

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment
Life post COVID-19

It has been 2 months since we have transitioned to work from home and figuring our way out in this time. I noticed that lifestyle and working style of many of us has changed (perhaps for the better). Here’s a list of some of the highs and lows of life post COVID-19.

The highs

  • Work from home has many benefits. The time saved in transit for one. I have been saving 2 hours of idle time wasted.
  • No household help means more work, but it also means you can save on the household expenses because you were otherwise too busy.
  • You become more aware of the household chores, so does everyone else in the household. That’s a liftime savings of bad habits avoided. Not to mention that a lot of households will not go back to hiring so many household maids. We had 3 for instance.
  • Businesses have been forced to either work remotely, or to re-think their operational models. That has meant a lot of top management mental models have changed. Earlier where physical meetings were the first option (and sometimes the only option), now telephonic and video calls are working.
  • Since physical interaction between people is the way the COVID-19 is spreading, most businesses have figured out a way to work without this physical engagement. That has meant higher operational efficiencies, and also a focus on being more transparent.
  • A more conservative mindset is emerging in the society, with all expenses being more need driven than greed driven. This as meant less wastage and less consumption.
  • A large push has come for online education and self help videos. The OTT segment has really bloomed during this phase, with binge
  • The ecology is improving due to a massive cut in the consumption of fossil fuels. The hole in the ozone layer is now no more, that talks about the scale of the lockdown. What we could not as a generation manage in the past decade, a virus outbreak managed in 2 months.
  • Industries where digital enablement was missing are now the worst affected, and that’s where new opportunities are emerging. These businesses are figuring out a way to operate in post COVID-19 world. Some examples of this – real estate, financial services, banking, automotive, etc.

The lows

  • The economy is in an all-time slump with all non-essential services at a stand still. Getting them back to what they were before this crisis will easily take a year or two.
  • There is now one more excuse to discriminate and divide people
  • Physical exercise and activities for people who need them (me, my kids and parents) have diminished.
  • Non-critical healthcare and luxury item supply chain has been wrecked and acquiring specific brands has become difficult.

In the end

As a teen, I have played the hit series Fallout. I am surprised to note how fast we have shifted into living that way. The only difference is that this crisis is not nuclear, it’s a virus.

We have adapted to keep on living. What remains is how long this will continue and what practices do we keep as the world slowly comes back to normal.