Saturday, 7 June 2014

Book Review: Practical Change Management for IT Projects & Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business

Practical Change Management for IT Projects & Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business
Impackt Publishing
Writer: Emily Carr / An Coppens
Paperback: 170 / 54
http://www.packtpub.com/practical-change-management-it-projects/book

www.packtpub.com/attracting-it-graduates-to-your-business/book

My rating: 5/5 
Learn to properly manage the changes that occur on an IT project, directly affects project success.
In this book the main roles involved in such projects, which is the best way and when they relate to each, and a set of templates that will be very useful to collect all the process are discussed.
In addition to the 20 templates offered us fill in any project to adequately adapt to changes in IT projects, presents an example that allows us to go through the book very enjoyable and secure.

This book is aimed primarily at IT Project Managers but also can provide guidance to HR staff.

* Chapter 1: What is Change Management?
In this chapter the concept of "Change Management" is introduced and briefly explains the pillars that we should try to have a successful change process. These concepts are discussed in later chapters.


Curiously, according to a study by IBM Global Business Services 2008 called Making Change Work, only 41% of IT projects fully meets its goals.

The main points to cover in each of the pillars of change are:

* Chapter 2: Establishing the Framework for Change
There are several frameworks to manage the changes: “See- Feel- Change” y “Rider, Elephant, Patch”. 
-      The Rider: This is the intellectual side of people and is responsible for maintaining their will power.
-      The Elephant: This is the emotional side of people.
-      The Path: This is the process people have to follow to make the change.

They remind us that although the rider might seem to be in charge and does in fact, hold the reins, the rider is very small and weak compared to the elephant they are trying to control. A person's intellectual side may provide the will power to adopt a change in the short term, but unless they are emotionally driven to make the change as well, they will eventually go back to the old way of doing things.

* Chapter 3: Building Sponsorship for the Change 
In this chapter we will see how to compose our project team. Normally include: Steering committee, executive sponsors, change agents and super-users.

The book explores the role of each in the project, the importance of each and the activities involved.

* Chapter 4: Managing your Stakeholders 
A stakeholder is a user or group that is impacted by the change. There are usually 3 categories: sponsors, end users and project team.
Once the members of these categories are identified, we must establish mechanisms of measurement. Normally, these are join to human feelings.
* Chapter 5: Communicating the Change 
Here the author teaches us to avoid the way we communicate in one direction.
Depending on the status of the project and involved members explains what is the best way and timing to do so.
* Chapter 6: Using Training to Prepare Your Stakeholders 
This chapter is essential because any change requires adaptation on staff and therefore this training.
There are different methods of training available.  We should have a plan to training time, resources and materials.
* Chapter 7: Ready, Set, Change 
This final chapter lists the templates that have completed and summing up the tips for each chapter.

To conclude this review I would like to recommend this great book. In my opinion, the most important is all the templates this book cover. You may find theory in some other books but in the real world you need to know how to deal a real situation on your company. Step by step you have the answers here.
All my greetings to the author, awesome job.

Besides, I propose a good way to mix this book. If we have the best people we will have the triumph. I propose another Impackt book, next one: Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business. This book is aimed at hiring managers and recruiters.

To sum up, the main chapters, are the next:

* Chapter 1: What Do IT Graduates Want?
We have a new group of workers. They have been using mobile phones, laptops, tablet devices, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn since their teens.A person who works as human resources need to know how to deal it and how to adapt the internal practices.


* Chapter 2: Be Clear on What Your Organization Has to Offer

The question is "what makes your organization unique?" You have to know better than nobody how is your company (formal/informal clothes, traditional vs innovative, fun vs serious...)., salary you will pay, benefits if you work here (restaurants, gyms, beauty salons...), training and so on.

* Chapter 3: Creativity Rules in Gaining Graduate Interest

Careers page like this one http://careers.microsoft.com
let us show the people that work in our company and the roles we are looking for. Social media like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter also are a good place to organize games or competition to attract candidates.

* Chapter 4: Getting to "You're Hired"

Telephone calls, skills testing, interviews..different stages we may manage and we must learn.

Tuesday, 6 May 2014

Packt celebrates International Day Against DRM, May 6th 2014

Packt Publishing firmly believes that you should be able to read and interact with your content when you want, where you want, and how you want – to that end they have been advocates of DRM-free content since their very first eBook was published back in 2004.

To show their continuing support for Day Against DRM, Packt Publishing is offering all its DRM-free content at $10 for 24 hours only on May 6th – that’s all 2000+ eBooks and Videos at www.packtpub.com.

“Our top priority at Packt has always been to meet the evolving needs of developers in the most practical way possible, while at the same time protecting the hard work of our authors. DRM-free content continues to be instrumental in making that happen, providing the flexibility and freedom that is essential for an efficient and enhanced learning experience. That’s why we’ve been DRM-free from the beginning – we’ll never put limits on the innovation of our users.”
– Dave Maclean, Managing Director

Advocates of Day Against DRM are invited to spread the word and celebrate on May 6th by exploring the full range of DRM-free content at www.packtpub.com, where all eBooks and Videos will be $10 for 24 hours.


Click here for more about DRM.

Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Celebrating Packt 2000 Titles!!

Good news from Packt!!
To celebrate the publication of Packt 2000 title, they’re giving you the chance to dive into our comprehensive catalog and Buy One, Get One Free. This offer will run across our entire range of eBooks until March 26th. Simply choose your titles and add them to your cart – the offer is automatically applied at checkout and you can use it as many times as you like.

Here are some of the best titles across Packt's main categories - but Buy One, Get One Free will apply across all 2000 titles:


Take a look to the categories and enjoy reading!!

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Chance to win Free Copies of Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook – Second Edition!!!

Readers would be pleased to know that I have teamed up with Packt Publishing to organize a Giveaway of their popular kettle book . You can find my review of the book here (http://todobi.blogspot.com.es/2014/02/pentaho-data-integration-cookbook-review.html)
3 lucky winners stand a chance to win eBook copies of the book. Keep reading to find out how you can be one of the Lucky Winners.

How to Enter? 
All you need to do is head on over to the book page ( http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-data-integration-cookbook-second-edition/book) and look through the product description of the book and drop a line via the comments below this post to let us know what interests you the most about this book. It’s that simple !!!

Deadline:
The contest will close in 1 weeks time. 3 best comments will be selected as Winners by me and will be contacted by email by a representative from Packt publishing, so be sure to use your real email address !!

Good luck!!

Saturday, 8 February 2014

Book Review: Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook Second Edition

PACKT Publishing
Writers: Alex Meadows, Adrián Sergio Pulvirenti, María Carina Roldán
Paperback: 462
Link to the book page:
http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-data-integration-cookbook-second-edition/book
My rating: 5/5
Pentaho Data Integration or also called Kettle is one of the best open source tool for tasks as extraction, transformation and loading data between different systems. It is integrated within the Pentaho BI suite and covers all necessary to develop and maintain a data warehouse / data mart functionality. Beyond the scope of BI, allows us to deal with and transform data in multiple ways.

This book explains simply and with numerous examples how to get the most out of this tool Pentaho. It is mainly aimed at both developers who have basic knowledge of Kettle, and advanced users who want to know the new possibilities it brings a new version of the tool.

Some years ago, about 2011, one first edition was published with a lot of useful recipes:
 http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-data-integration-4-cookbook/book
As a general recommendation and for all chapters, I would add a new tip called such "advance trick" where reference is made to some more advanced features. It will always be useful for the user to keep in mind if you handle this case in the future.

* Chapter 1: Working with Databases
This chapter mentions the simplest thing we can do with Kettle: read data from a database. We have 15 recipes, from how to establish a simple connection to database with JDBC or JNDI to more advance recipes like how to build dynamic SQL query options.

* Chapter 2: Reading and Writing Files
When we work using PDI, the data source can be very different. In this chapter we have 14 recipes. We will see how to collect and write data in different files .Very interesting recipe that tells how to read data from an instance of Amazon Web Services S3.
Knowledge of regular expressions is essential to get the most out of this chapter.

* Chapter 3: Working with Big Data and Cloud Sources
Currently, when we are implementing a data warehouse, we have new possibilities. Depending on the problem to be modeled, we can make use of NOSQL or cloud services like SalesForce.
In this chapter we have 8 recipes on how to get / load data using such technologies.

For those wanting to delve deeper into the world of Big Data and Pentaho, the following book is recommended
http://www.packtpub.com/pentaho-for-big-data-analytics/book

 * Chapter 4: Manipulating XML Structures
It is very common to find XML files. In this chapter, we have 10 recipes, from reading a single file to validate the contents against a DTD or an XSD schema definition. Generating XML files and reading from an RSS feed generation is also discussed.

* Chapter 5: File Management
This may be the most interesting chapter to IT staff profiles as systems management. We found 9 recipes that tell how to upload / download files, compare the contents of these, create ZIP files or encrypted files.

Also, as some previous chapter, knowledge of regular expressions will be critical to get the most out of this chapter.

* Chapter 6: Looking for Data
In this chapter we find in 8 recipes and based on various criteria how we can get data from a database, files or web services using PDI.

* Chapter 7: Understanding and Optimizing Data Flows
When we are dealing with data streams, it is common that we find the problem to synchronize that. In this chapter we have 12 recipes to synchronize or redirect our data flows.

* Chapter 8: Executing and Re-using Jobs and Transformations
On PDI tool there are 2 ways of structuring our action sequence: jobs and transformations. In this chapter we have 9 recipes to deal with transformations considering parameters and for certain cases.

* Chapter 9: Integrating Kettle and the Pentaho Suite
In my opinion, I find this chapter as the most interesting. It allows you to extract the full potential of Pentaho integrating PDI with the different elements of the suite.

The chapter consists of 6 recipes among which are how to create a report using Pentaho PDI, or how to populate a dashboard created with CDE and using PDI.

In addition to knowledge of PDI, to follow this chapter successfully is required a minimum knowledge of the Pentaho suite, the Design Studio tool and CTools of WebDetails also are recommended

* Chapter 10: Getting the Most Out of Kettle
This chapter contains a variety of recipes that do not fit in any of the other chapters. Specifically, there are 9 recipes, from sending mails with attachments files, processing JSON and one interested recipe for tunning about transformations and jobs.

* Chapter 11: Utilizing Visualization Tools in Kettle
In this chapter there are 4 recipes. One is about adding more functionality to PDI, adding plugins from the MarketPlace . As responsible for maintaining the plugin to extract / load data into CiviCRM using PDI, I can not let pass the opportunity to mention that:
Also, in this chapter there are other interested recipes as data profiling using PDI and DataCleaner, or display data from our business using AgileBI on a quick way.

* Chapter 12: Data Analytics
The final chapter of the book consists of three interesting recipes on how to obtain information from our data. We will see how to read data from the analytical suite SAS, obtain statistics using PDI steps, and creating a set of random data to the WEKA data mining tool.

Rating