We’re often asked by companies about how they can get the most value from Agile/Scrum practices. More specifically, they want to know if they are being as effective as best they possibly can be by using the Scrum framework for their explicit needs.

The other objective for individuals is determining if it necessary to be certified in order to be effective in the Agile Scrum world?   In short, a good Scrum Master must understand four things: the business they work in, the technology they work with, the Agile and Scrum principles, and, most importantly, people!  Based on these facts, Scrum Master Certification is not enough – real life experience and a bit of soft skills should be part and parcel of their training. For organizations, the main goal is to understand industry best practices when adopting and applying agile principles, to build strong teams, understand and distill business needs into software requirements.

In terms of getting a good grip on training for Agile/Scrum, one can opt to pursue a certification in Scrum (CSM) Certified Scrum Master for personal reasons or for a job requirement. Or, one can simply opt to learn the benefits and pitfalls of the methodology and decide the best approach for them.

There are different ways to get started with Agile training. Below are two of the most common paths to Agile our students take.

IT Outsourcing came to foray as a means for corporations to focus on critical business operations while having a specialized IT company take over the responsibility of managing the IT infrastructure and application development. For corporations especially in the developed countries, IT outsourcing provided two fold advantages, one was access to a highly talented pool of engineers and that too at a lower cost since countries like India were quickly growing their stature as an IT outsourcing hub.

IT Outsourcing is now as mainstream as ever and almost every leading organization outsources some or all parts of its IT infrastructure to a specialized company. It makes pure business sense and with tightening budget controls, IT outsourcing has become one of the strategic cost reduction driver for most organizations. Moreover, IT outsourcing is no more restricted to companies in USA & Europe outsourcing their IT projects to countries like India. Domestic companies within India itself actively use IT outsourcing including the Indian government like the India Post project given to TCS.

Is it then a no brainer that IT Outsourcing is critical to your business? Well, if it is cheaper and does not seem to have any inherent disadvantages why not!! Not really, IT Outsourcing despite proven benefits has its limitations and you should be cognizant be of the same before considering outsourcing your IT operations.

·         Limitations in estimating the actual cost of IT outsourcing:Let’s tackle the biggest driver of IT Outsourcing-Cost Savings. For anyone to estimate the cost savings from IT Outsourcing one needs to be able to predict the cost of outsourcing which then helps understand the cost savings from the same. Yes, at a higher level it is a matter of a simple $ per man-hour costs and IT outsourcing will appear to be cheaper in almost all cases. However, “hidden costs” are commonplace with IT outsourcing and it can be immensely difficult to accurately predict these hidden costs. For example, you need to be able to identify the costs of transitioning your in-house IT to an outsourcer, management overhead needed to manage the outsourcing relationship etc. In addition, IT outsourcing contracts are fixed at the start of the contract and as a result any additional requirement/change tends to be charged additionally. It is no surprise that IT requirements can change frequently and if your outsourcing contract doesn’t account for flexibility, you might be limited in the actual cost savings you might make. There is no surprise that there have been so many instances of IT outsourcing projects overshooting their budgets by a huge margin such as the one government shared services project going 500 million pounds over budget

Have you ever played a game on your iPhone and wondered how to share it with your friends? Of course, not everyone has iPhones, and they aren’t always watching the leaderboards on the Gaming app, provided by Apple. Well, guess what? You don’t have to take a whole other camera to take a picture of your iPhone to create a photo of that particular score you have achieved. All you have to do is simultaneously press the “Home Button” and the “Lock Button” on your iPhone. After that, your iPhone should consequently flash to white, as if it were snapping its shutter, and taking a picture. Afterwards, you should be able to find the picture in your Photo Albums and share it with your friends.                                                                                        

But, taking screenshots of your iPhone doesn’t always have to deal with your game scores, you can take screenshots of almost any happening on your phone and share it with people! Have you ever had a memorable texting conversation with your friend, where you mistyped something, and the conversation went haywire? Sharing it becomes easy by using this feature. Want to show how odd a website looks on your iPhone compared to looking at it on your computer, and give it to their support to fix it? Take a screenshot of it! The possibilities of this feature are endless, and can become timeless with a simple picture.