Risk Mitigation Techniques

Risk is defined as the probability of unwanted consequences of an event and decision. The purpose of risk management is to "reduce or neutralize potential risks, and simultaneously offer opportunities for positive improvement in performance. A general risk management framework is composed of 3 main action phases: identification, analysis, and control. One way to manage risk is to categorize them using properties such as impact, probability and time frame. Four risk-handling strategies are suggested: mitigation, avoidance, transfer, and acceptance.

• Mitigation is to reduce the probability of a risk and/or the impact that an occurrence of the risk may bear. Risk limitation aims at the implementation of controls that dampen the effects of risk occurrences, while not completely alleviating them.
• Avoidiance is to eliminate the probability of a specific risk before its occurrence. This strategy is normally realized by trading the risk for other risks that are less threatening or easier to deal with.
• Transfer is to shift risk or the consequences caused by the risk from one party to another. Also called "risk sharing". Risk transfer may involve the purchase of an insurance policy, or the outsourcing of risky project parts.
• Acceptance is to adapt to the risk when it becomes a problem. The enactment of a risk contingency plan is required in this strategy.

Multi-touch Interface Technology

It is nice to see that the multi-touch interface technology is now being applied to real-life scenarios. We have seen a sleek implementation of this in 2008 US election coverage with CNN’s Magic Wall. I believe they significantly improve the way information is presented and manipulated. This may become a huge hit when Windows 7 becomes available which will allegedly support a multi-touch UI as seen here and here. Microsoft certainly has learned a lot from Surface which you can see here if you haven’t seen it yet in a Microsoft conference.

A few uses of this technology can be seen here which from www.perceptivepixel.com . Towards the end of this movie they show some nice visualization features that are more applicable to business. At this link Gates demonstrates how a new presentation paradigm can be created using this technology. It seems that this technology was being baked in the labs for the last few decades and has been presented in conferences like TED many years ago.

This technology can be used to improve the presentation of business models like 3DVE and facilitate the brain-storming sessions with the client especially in settings like the Executive Innovation Centers.

Such applications may not be far away if Microsoft commercializes this technology with the next version of Windows.

Web Services Standards Poster

The folks at InnoQ has produced a very nice poster providing an overview of the web services standards. You can download it here.

Does the universe have a purpose?

I was immediately drawn in when I saw this question printed on full page in the Economist magazine. It was an advertisement given by the Templeton Foundation which is a philanthropic organization dealing with the research acitivy relating to what scientists and philosophers call the big questions. Read some of the answers here.

Choreography vs. Orchestration

SOA and BPM are converging to yield a new application development paradigm that is based on coordination of compartmentized resources exposed as services. The coordintaion of services is becoming more and more important in this new platform and it takes two forms based on the scope: Choreography and Orchestration. These terms are usually used inconsistently.

Orchestration focuses on the behaviour of a single participant. It is a hub/spoke based model where a controller residing at a single location in a distributed system, locally enforces a process. BPEL and BPMN standards are emerging as leading representations used to descibe these local processes.

Choreography on the other hand is concerned with global, multi-party, peer to play colloborations between applicant components, distributed within or across an organization's trusted domain. Choreography does not depend on a centralized controller. WS-CDL standard descibes this interactive process from a global perspective.