Weakest Link - Part 1

Summary: Weak components determine the lifecycle of a product. Similarly, in the business, weak points within the IT systems and processes determine failure. In addition 'inbuilt obsolescence' reduces shelf-life. This article looks into the design decisions for identifying those points and options to manage them.  

PART 1 - This is part 1 of the 2 part series on this topic

Two months ago, my Surface Pro's charger stopped working. upon closer inspection, it is broken at the point the thin wire connects to the main processing adapter unit.

Here is the photo.

The problem is at a juncture where the soft wire meets a hard component. The solution is to include a sleeve which gradually transitions from the soft component to the hard component. This provides a gradual shift and protects the wire. However, in this case, the key design principles were not followed. In this case, the sleeve is made up of hard material which does not provide the required protection.

Here is a charger from another manufacturer of using a sleeve to provide a gradual transition from hard to the soft surface.

BTW - Apple's original adapters and cables for iPad also broken at the same place in the past due to a similar design flaw.


Whilst the entire adapter could be used for a couple of years more, it needs replacement due to one small breakdown.

How many times you felt that you could use the smartphone longer if its battery lasted through the day? Even if everything else in the smartphone is perfectly alright, you have to replace it with the new due to its battery.

How many times have you used products which are rendered useless due to one small component breakdown?

In product management, this is called - Weakest link. The strength of a chain is equivalent to the strength of the weakest link. It doesn't matter how many strong links are in your chain, the strength is always determined by the weakest link. 

The weakest link may not be apparent until the product is used by customers, or it may be identified early on, however, due to various reasons it is left in.

A product manager usually has three options:

1) Maintain the products as is: This is done when customers do not have a very good alternative and the replacement of the product provides better revenue. This applies to the Adapters, accessories and smartphone batteries.

2) Fix the weakest link: This might improve the life of a product. However, this might not be favoured for two reasons: a) cost of improving the strength of the weakest link (or multiple links). b) Fixing the weakest link might expose the next weakest link and that link might provide undesirable negative PR.

3) Smooth out the curve: If the weakest link determines the strength of a chain then it might be prudent to align all links to a particular strength profile. While redesigning the next version of a product, gradually bring all links of a chain to the same quality/longevity but reduce the strength of all links to a degree where they become affordable. This strategy has been used in Cars and Consumer white goods in recent years. These products work perfectly through their warranty period, but multiple components start failing subsequently.

The image above shows the weakest link having the strength of 30 whereas other links are at 100. As the weakest link determines the overall strength of the chain, the strength of the entire chain is 30.

During subsequent iterations, the strength has been dropped to 60 whilst improving the strength of the weakest link to 60. This has improved the strength of the overall chain to 60 (double than previous) while saving 30%.

You can see why Product Managers like this approach due to commercial reasons. However, from the consumer point of view, the overall product's quality has reduced from 100 to 60 (a net reduction of 40%). I will go through the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy in a separate blog.


Now, when we apply this wisdom to the IT systems, we can see how this pans out. Every IT service is a combination of several IT systems, their interfaces and components. These links together form a chain (operation) which underpins the day to day business operation. Going with the key principle above, the strength of the business operation will be determined by the weakest link.

Here are some examples of weakest links:

• An interface between the E-commerce system and delivery management system may be weak and prone to breakdown. 
• The 3D secure (verified by Visa) link breakdown may be resulting in several abandoned shopping carts by customers. 
• One attribute missing from the product information may deter customers not buying that product. 
• Internal IT helpdesk's wrong processes may result in dissatisfaction of internal users. 

Wherever I worked, I found hundreds of such weak links. So the question is - why no one takes initiative to fix them.

The product-focused technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google have product managers, however, in non-technology companies, IT Product management is in a nascent stage.

The IT product management responsibility is shared between Business Product Owners, Business Analysts, Engineering team and Architects. It is not even recognised as a role or considered as a skillset within the IT department in traditional businesses. As a result, no one is accountable for the longevity of IT Products. Most leaders do not realise that the lack of Product Management results in significant deterioration of IT products within a short period of time.

Most teams are aware of the weak links, but they are not empowered nor given the resources to fix them.

The holistic understanding of the business and IT aspects of IT products is missing. In addition, fixing the weakest links is considered a less exciting task than creating a new strong link within the chain. It is exciting to replace a system or transform a set of systems than fixing the legacy systems.

However, I have seen products becoming bloated and weak links manifesting pretty soon after the large transformation programme because the Product Management skillset is missing. 

There is no coherent strategy for ongoing management of the products and maintaining their integrity in the long term. In-fact in most organisations, there is little or no control or reporting on the integrity of their products. Once in a while, IT teams will initiate bugathon (to clear out defects from the product) or spare some time to repay the technical debt (the problems left in the product during development to address later).

So how this should be addressed?

to be continued in part 2...


Summary of part 1,

The strength of a chain is measured based on the weakest link, hence when working on an interconnected set of processes or systems, it is important to look into improving the strength of the weakest link. 

A holistic approach while executing any change can go a long way to maintain the integrity of the product. 

As always, any comments/feedback appreciated

Digital Transformation - demistified

I had an interesting conversation with a senior non-IT manager regarding the “Digital Transformation”. I have summarised my explanation below for everyone’s benefit. Happy to learn your thoughts too. 

During the conversation, the individual thought that the digital transformation refers to modernization of the systems (i.e. replacing 15-year-old desktop-based systems with the web-based and mobile-based apps). 

Also, he challenged me about how digital transformation initiatives are different from other IT initiatives. Ultimately you have to modernise systems from time to time and embrace new technology too! 

Here is a simple explanation - 

Imagine... 

Imagine you are a car manufacturing company. You have Car as a product and you have an assembly line responsible for delivering the product. 

(A) Car development goes through the stages such as design, prototyping, parts manufacturing, assembly, quality control and then delivery. 

Continuous innovation is required in new car development to remain competitive in the marketplace (to survive in the marketplace)

(B) Whereas assembly line goes through its own lifecycle of modernization, implementing latest hardware, software, robotics and process improvement.

Continuous innovation & transformation is required to the assembly line & corresponding processes to deliver the best quality product, reduce defects, reduce running cost, reduce wastage, improve the speed of delivery, improve output and handle complex new tasks.

Traditionally IT initiatives were focused on delivering products & solutions (A above). But not much on the assembly line (B above). There was a good reason for this. Most traditional organisations implemented and integrated off-the-shelf products which needed minimal software development. 

It does not make sense to invest in an assembly line if you are only repairing cars in a garage right?

On the other hand - most technology organisations (likes of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google etc) delivering technology products invested effort in improving the assembly line because they were developing these products from scratch. They were literally running a car manufacturing company. 

Over the last decade, the landscape has changed. All non-technology organisations see IT as important for their survival in the marketplace. The investment in IT within every department increased substantially. This brought a need to customise and integrate off the shelf products as well as do new development inhouse. 

Most organisations demand their IT to deliver frequent changes within the shortest time possible (to mitigate market risk) at the same time demand defect-free product with minimum downtime. 

In a nutshell, IT products are becoming critical for organisations, so do the assembly line producing these products. The transformation of this assembly line has an umbrella term called “Digital Transformation”. 

• It is driving cultural change - in the form of Agile 
• Improving development and operational practices - DevOps
• Collaboration practices (throughout the product lifecycle)
• Scalable and flexible solutions (SaaS & Cloud migration) 
• Tools required for all of the above

Going beyond the basics, many organisations are capitalising on this wave and embracing modern technologies which capitalise on the digital assets (i.e. data analytics), provide a competitive edge in the marketplace such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and deliver cool features which were not previously available to the end-users using Internet Of Things (IoT).

Almost every organisation is going through transformation programmes or thinking about it. However, there are several challenges in this process which I will explore in the next article on this subject. 

One quick note - ‘digital transformation’ is not equal to ‘Digitization’. Digitization refers to converting manual processes and paper-based systems into digital (software-based) systems. Most organisations been on a digitization journey for the last 30 years and will continue. 

What do you think about this article? Do you agree? Disagree? Any comments welcome. 

Brexit - landing during the storm

I came across a clip of BA aeroplane trying to land at Heathrow unsuccessfully. The pilot decides to quit the landing attempt and ascends again to avoid catastrophe. The news story is covered here.

This reminded me of the situation we in the UK currently going through in relation to Brexit where the pilot is determined to land irrespective of passenger safety.

The imaginary story goes like this - 

Once the plane was sailing at 10000 feet and making good progress. It's pilot David was experienced and passengers felt confident in his ability to fly the plane.

One of the passengers came up with an idea that the plane should take a stop at the city of Atlantis which no one ever visited before. It was not on agenda, but the champion managed to pursued the pilot to have a vote on the stopover. Based on the fake articulation of the champion, somehow it was decided to land in Atlantis by a tiny majority.

The pilot felt that it is a stupid idea and decided to quit & handover to assistant pilot instead. The assistant pilot Teresa was promoted to the pilot role. She is not as experienced as David and passengers do not have confidence in her ability.

But she felt confident that she can pilot the plane and can successfully land in the unknown city of Atlantis. As the plane entered the airspace, the weather condition does not look favourable. The city looks into ruins and the landing strip is not safe for landing either. The chances of plane landing without damage are slim.

Now passengers who were in favour of landing are having a double mind. The champion managed to jump with the parachute and took another private jet to another destination.

The Pilot is still adamant that it was the mandate of the passengers to land in Atlantis by hook or crook. She is far removed from the reality that the passengers can see that the promises were fake and the crash landing can cost them their lives.

Instead of looking into the safety of all passengers, she is looking at the whole episode as a challenge to her capability. Instead of quitting the landing attempt, she is determined to land. She is buying the time until its too late to pull out then all passengers will have no choice but to embrace the crash landing.

More to follow later as the story develops...

Follow the spirit not letter

Story goes like this. Once a tribe was introduced to light bulb. Our engineers installed cables, switches and light bulb to community which did not know about electricity or lights in general. Most households were taught how to switch ON and OFF lights. They did not know how it works, but it made huge difference to their lives. Their day now stretched beyond after dark hours and they felt more empowered and safe in their houses than before.

But one day when switch was moved to ON position, light did not come up. This started several superstitious theories about this incident. They called witch-doctor to home to get rid of black powers which stopped light in their house but that did not make any difference.

On their next round engineer visited house and replaced blown up bulb. He also explained science behind it and how it operates. This helped them to understand that switch was just means to control electricity flowing to the light; it is electricity which was driving force behind the bulb. As anything in life things sometime breakdown and they need replacement too.

In Corporate world I have observed that several processes are followed like a ritual without understanding logic or reasoning behind it. Many managers/leaders do poor job in explaining Ethos (spirit) behind processes.

In my experience of delivering projects with Agile development methodologies, I have observed that at organisational level they implement methodology without understanding reasoning behind it. Various Agile rituals such as standups, user stories, retrospectives, iterative development are followed without really understanding their purpose.

In one organisation onsite team and offshore teams ran their own standups separately. Their concept of collaboration was couple of telephone calls between both teams in a week. In other place they carried out development in multiple iterations but they would release/ ship product quarterly. In most organisations project governance team did not like agile development because it was difficult to explain to senior stakeholders why a project is delivering to production frequently without following robust (i.e. lengthy) service introduction process.

Agile gurus also do not do good job at explaining reasoning behind agile. To be fair, they may not get opportunity to educate senior management. Agile implementation is seen as localised exercise within development teams. It is rarely considered as organisational cultural change.

Key success factor for project is management support. But Agile rarely gets appropriate management support. Agile is not just development methodology or project methodology, it is cultural change. In my opinion most organisation fail to grasp this cultural change and fail to capitalise on Agile.

If you have worked in corporate world, you may have observed that any cultural change is typically led by senior management or board and then trickle through the organisation. Whereas agile is rarely implemented in top-down fashion. Agile is implemented as bottom-up change which no wonder results into painful journey for everyone involved.

I will be publishing series of blogs addressing every aspect of agile with reasoning behind its principles. Hopefully if you are on AGILE journey, you will be able to get value out of them. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Author is IT consultant with decade long practical experience of delivering projects using Agile and traditional project management methodologies. Vinayak also been responsible for introducing and strengthening agile development techniques in various organisations.

New Postcode for India

New postcodes……for INDIA

When I order new product from Amazon, I have to just provide postcode and house number to order. When I call HMRC ( revenue & customs) I have to just provide two pieces of information to provide my complete address. When I have to travel to new place I just need to know postcode to enter into my navigation software and it knows where to take me.

All above is possible because granular postcode system in the UK & detailed maps of land being maintained by relevant authorities. Postcodes in the UK are very granular, in fact a postcode takes you to a street level or sometime 16 houses in a block. Even US zipcode is not as granular. Entire postcode system simplifies many tasks about address lookup, address validation, credit checking, logistics and so on.

Compare this with Indian postcode system. A PIN (postal index number) typically covers half a million population. So you need lengthy address which contains references to landmarks such as school, temple, government building or historical place (i.e. behind XYZ school etc). On top of that there is no consistency so there is no way to verify this against any database. So it is a challenge to find a place without asking anyone else. Either delivery man/postman should be familiar with each and every house in that area or be lucky to ask relevant person who knows about that premises.

When we combine this with lack of granular maps of land; it is simply inefficient for postal department and courier companies (and they still do good job!)

If we combine this with sparsely populated places in rural area or temporary unorganised (and sometime unauthorised) housing such as slums; problem becomes much larger.

The system needs change. It needs to be more detailed, more organised and systematic. Possibly allows easy integration with navigation software and database systems as well. But there are other on ground challenges to meet as well.

• There is constant development happening across India. Every year thousands of new building, houses are built
• Existing places are converted or demolished
• Large population lives in farm houses away from villages and cities.
• Unorganised housing such as temporary dwellings and slums are difficult to organise and allocate numbering for.
• And of-course sheer scale of Indian population and geography

There are several options possible.

1. Expand on existing PIN code and add more segments to it. For example in US they created extended ZIP code. This allows far small area under one extended zip code.

For example a PIN code which reads like 411 002 would become more granular such as 411002-7878. So each current PIN code can be divided into 9999 segments.

2. Create new system from ground up.
   1. Create system similar to what RTO department did. For example typical car number in Mumbai starts with MH-01; first two letters denominate state and next two digits are for district. Add further four digits to it. i.e. divide a district into 9999 zones to pin down specific location within possibly area of 500 meters. So a postcode for a specific segment in Malad (western mumbai) would read like MH-01-5643. COOL!

 It is still going to be challenging to make either system flexible enough to take care of imperfect/unorganised/unplanned housing. Keeping pace with demolitions and new builds will make it very difficult to keep this database up-to-date.

Also we have to have another matching database which contains physical geographical location of these postcodes. This is typically done by identifying GPS coordinates of particular postcode. Since we do not have official granular maps, it will take many years to perfect this system.

Instead – Why not use GPS coordinates for postcode system?

Using geo-coordinates for postcode purpose is not completely new concept. Many countries which did not have postcode systems; adopted geo-coding systems for their postal network.

GPS coordinates of a particular premises will not change ever. Also it is flexible enough to create postcode for new location based on GPS coordinates of that location. No duplicate entries ever. Also we do not need to create separate entry for GPS location because postcode itself acts as geographical coordinates making it easy to create new maps of new location and making it easier for navigation systems to crawl new locations in their database.

Biggest challenge of using GPS coordinates as it is that they are very long. For example GPS coordinates for a location in Mumbai are 18° 58′ 30″ , 72° 49′ 33″. I have excluded “North” and “East” from coordinates because India is in northern hemisphere and in East side of Greenwich (so they do not need to be specified separately). Now if we exclude other symbols, still we are left with 12 digit code (that’s double than current PIN code).

Above GPS coordinates are granular to approx 30 meter diameter. That is enough to use it for postcode purpose.

There are ways to shorten this code. To begin with we can be less granular. But that will forfeit the purpose of whole exercise.

We can use Base 36 encoding to convert into short digits.

For example 18° 58′ 30″  can be converted into 3ZDY and , 72° 49′ 33″ into FJD1.

OR we can combine all numeric digits and then use base 36 encoding to convert to one code such as – 2DDA TD1H

And this can be decoded to their GPS location with simple math, so you don’t need access to separate database to look into.

Numeric digits will be lengthy but easy to convey instead of alphanumeric code. Alphanumeric code will be short (and hence taking less space) and easy to remember but difficult to convey to someone over phone.

I am sure there are other ways to shorten this code.

Using GPS coordinates will help India to shape its modern logistics system. It will need some centralised database, but wont be pre-requisite to begin with. Using devices available in the market anyone can easily create postcode for themselves (to their own location) and anyone with simple GPS devices will be able to reach to a postcode and deliver intended package. Postal department and private courier companies will not need to spend billions on creating or extending existing system. Instead they will be able to utilise simple worldwide standard system immediately.

There are some proprietary geo-coding systems in operation, especially in small countries such as Mauritius adopted those systems; however patent & algorithm is owned by particular body. These companies provide free license to its users (i.e. postal departments and end users); however they hold and maintain database themselves. Cost of licensing database can be significant (running into thousands of pounds).

India should avoid using any proprietary concept or system for this purpose (even if free license is available). New postcode will be lifeline of logistics, postal, commerce and other crucial elements of country, hence a country of such magnitude should avoid dependence on external body for this purpose. I am sure with its knowledge-base and abundance of intellectuals & researchers new postcode system (albeit based on geo-tagging/geo-coding) will be possible.

it will be lengthy and costly to build up new database if government decides to build up database on its own using top-down approach. Instead using bottom to top approach new database can be built by people themselves once they know how to do it and provide them tools necessary to do it. This database can be then cross verified and corrected by government body over few years.

My intention of writing this article is to stimulate ideas to a specific problem. This is certainly not end solution, more input will be needed. So please feel free to discuss this article and comment on it.

BBC TV Licensing - Does it make sense?

(This is blogpost about TV licensing system operating in UK; which requires all individuals who view TV content to pay £145 per annum; generated income goes to BBC to fund for its programs)

Whenever question of BBC TV licensing comes, UK population is divided into two major camps. One justifying existence of BBC, quality of its programs and justification for TV licensing and another camp talking of lack of choice, ever increasing belly of BBC budget and lack of value for money.

I think both are correct. BBC produced some of the finest programs and hence justifies budget spent on those programs; but on other hand if an organisation has no competition, does not need to please audience and has assured increase in budget they can always roll-out best quality. Lets face it, if I have £100K to spend I would buy top of range cars from Jaguar, Ferrari or Mercedez/BMW, but if I have just £10K to spend, I have to find most economical option from market. Its simple equation.

To justify its budget, BBC increases its scope (i.e. channels, radio stations etc), and then asks for more cash to fund this extra spend. That is really bizarre! If this was a commercial entity, it would have long back gone into bankruptcy with this strategy.

Most people are not against BBC, but its revenue model which hurts their pocket.
Over years politicians tried to fix the issue but without much success. They want a model which delivers value for money, please opponents and retain values on which BBC is based. The answer lies into BBC’s history itself. We dont need to reinvent wheel.....

‘BBC = Television’ was equation, hence anyone who owned TV paid TV license to BBC. BBC continued to rollout programs for all ages and appeal to general public.In short, it delivered content which was protecting “public interest”. After invent of other commercial broadcasters, BBC’s TV license model was justified on the basis of retaining impartiality. It is certainly free from influence of political parties, subscriber’s popular demands etc.

If we combine both principles above, we should have organisation which should produce programs which "deliver public interest” and “protect impartiality”. Most of news and journalism related programs would fall in this category. Similarly documentaries would also fall in this category. But most of entertainment programs do not meet thumb rule. Certainly commercial interest does not necessarily threaten impartiality of entertainment programs.

Harry Potter is not going to change his plot based on who is advertising or Tom Cruise is not going to change his strategy in Mission Impossible based on which channel the movie is being broadcasted. That means there is no need to display Hollywood movies on BBC using TV licensing fee.

If we stick to this combined rule, we can easily cut down substantial number of entertainment and sports related programs. This will retain values on which BBC is based and keep scope within its limit and hence TV licensing cost to individual tax payer.

There are certainly other programs which need more assessment such as children’s programs, BBC Proms etc, which need to be funded commercially but ensuring that they do not fall victim of commercial entities interest.

Some might argue that what is wrong with current BBC model? Biggest issue here is choice. When TV licensing cost to individual person keeps increasing, it leaves less funds to spend on their choice of programs.

Hopefully our politicians, BBC Trust and individuals will take pragmatic and out of box approach about BBC.

I have suggestions about BBCs revenue model/funding arrangements and overall reorganisation which I will set out in future blog (will post link here later..). Certainly be assured that revenue model I suggest will retain BBC values (“Deliver public interest” and “Protect impartiality”)

Smart card project

Smart Card Project for Parking, fuel and other services related to one vehicle

Introduction:
This project looks into possibility of creating centralised IT system for parking places across UK. The purpose is to create unified card system by which users can pay for the parking slot they are using. Also this card expands beyond council owned parking slots. This project will enable usage of private car parks across country. This card is inspired by smart card implementations across the world. These smart cards are made up of RFID tag and can store data inside it. This card is also intended to use for multiple services related to the vehicle for example automated petrol station payment.

One example of smart card implementation in UK is Oyster card for Transport for London.

How parking ticketing system works in UK?

It varies from place to place and council to council but majority of them can be divided into 2 categories:

A) Road side parking: You park your vehicle, go to ticket machine, insert coins into machine. Get ticket for specific timeframe (2 hours, 4 hours etc). Display this ticket in your car dashboard. If you are running out of time, come back enter more coins and get another ticket. Mostly you pay in 1 hour slot and you should know how long you will park. Traffic warden keep watch on all vehicles parked and issue penalty ticket if you run over time. Penalty ticket issued is very harsh and it is common belief that council makes more money from penalty than parking places.

B) Major parking facilities: typically these places are at airports, major shopping centres and exhibition centres. Whole section of building is reserved for parking. While entering into facilities get a ticket. when you are moving out of parking facility pay at ticket machine. Mostly you pay in 1 hour slot, but you pay while going out, so you don’t need to guess how long you need parking. There are no traffic wardens and no penalty tickets but you need to have cash to pay for these facilities.

Following is snap shot of this project.

I am seeking to get this project off the ground if any one with enough influence ready to get involve into it.

1. Project description

   • This project is intended to make smart card, which can be used to pay for multiple services related to one vehicle.

2. Applies to:

   • Parking spaces across UK both council owned and privately owned.

   • Pay congestion charge

   • Pay petrol station bills quickly

   • Pay motorway toll

3. Disadvantages of current manual system

   • Parking spaces council owned

     • You need to carry sufficient change with you all the time. Most of the time people are penalized because they went to nearby shops for getting change

     • You have to specify how long you need parking space in number of hours. Even if you use it for less time, you do not get any reimbursement. In practical world most of the people do not know how much time they will be using. If they go for meeting, and meeting goes beyond time limit, either you get penalty or you have to quit meeting even if it is very important

   • Parking spaces privately owned

     • Carry sufficient change all the time. It is difficult task.

   • Petrol stations

     • After filling petrol in vehicle, most of people have to queue in the paying booth. It is more time consuming. During rush hour it is difficult proposition. Because people are inside queuing for paying bills, other people are queuing for filling petrol. It becomes time consuming.

4. Advantages of new system for users

   • No need to carry change all the time. Get statement of charges for all the services at the end of month. Money is already deducted from your account.

   • Pay as you go parking. Pay for only number of minutes you parked, not for number of minutes you did not.

   • Use parking space as much as you want, you don’t need to quit from meeting just because your parking ticket is running out of time.

   • Don’t pay £80 penalty for £1 parking ticket

   • Pay congestion charge at any petrol station or points from where you might enter into congestion zone.

   • Pay motorway toll faster, it also goes from your account.

   • Pay MOT at servicing station.

   • Can be even used for paying penalty, if you make mistake.

   • For businesses it is very useful as sales people do not need to carry change or keep tickets for record, they can concentrate on their work. End of the month statement for whole month will be issued to company, (if it’s company car/vehicle). This statement is easy for accounts purpose to calculate expenses, they do not need to maintain congestion charge receipts, parking receipts, motorway toll receipts and petrol expenses receipts separately.

5. Advantages for council, private car park owners and other bodies

   • Reduce number of traffic attendants, save money

   • Reduce money collection point and overhead of collecting change

   • The parking ticket collection points become victim of vandalism.

   • Money will be directly collected to main centre in electronic format which will be credited at end of the month to council account

   • Petrol station can reduce number of people queuing at station to fill petrol. During night, automated petrol stations can be operated.

   • Different business logics can be built in to the system. For example in few shopping parking places, it is allowed to use first 2 hours free. More than that penalty is imposed. It can be converted into high value parking charges for example £10 per hour.

6. How it works

   • Card known as smart card can be issued to every vehicle owner. This card can be used for services related to one vehicle only

   • Card can be connected to bank account, debit card or credit card. Card can be top-up by using pay point.

   • Card will look and function like it does in oyster card does. Oyster card is used by London transport for paying ticket.

   • Start entry of parking is made through placing card on reader and pressing IN button. When user goes away, he has to place card on reader and press OUT button. Amount of parking will be calculated based on number of minutes used and amount to be charged per minute. Multiple business logics can be used to encourage or discourage people from using parking place for long time.

   • If user forgets to make OUT entry, he will be charged till end of the day or maximum time allowed using that parking place. User can also specify maximum number of hours he will stay at that parking place, this will automatically take him out of calculation after maximum number of hours, unless he makes OUT entry.

   • Private parking where entry gate and exit gate are different, it is easy operation. While entering user will just touch card on reader and enter. While exiting he will use same way and his parking charges will be calculated based on difference between both.

   • In few business complexes, they have registered members who can park in parking place free whereas visitors should pay or pay after staying for more than specified period. In such cases after making IN entry, it will start calculating charges and based charges summary it will charge on card. Same logic can be used at places like stadium, superstores, government buildings etc.

   • Disable people can have special privilege in their card, which can help them to enter at any parking, places even if it is only for members.

   • At petrol station, after filling petrol, just place card on reader, it will charge on smart card and issue receipt for the charges.

7. Traffic attendant

   • Traffic attendant can check for list of users in that parking lot by taking list of vehicles parked at that time, then manually verifying them with parked vehicles, if vehicle is found without entry, they will be penalised. Such possibilities will be less compared to current system.

8. Ease of use

   • Card is very easy to use. It should be just touched on the card reader, which will read it. Card is durable and does not carry any magnetic tape, interfering signals etc. Failure of it not working is very less

   • If you forget your card, just enter combination of “vehicle registration number” and “card number” that’s it!

   • card is allocated to one vehicle only, so if its lost, it cannot be used by another vehicle. Allocating one card for each vehicle makes it easy to use, as user does not need to enter vehicle number at places.

9. Technology

   • Hardware

     • Card and its reader can be custom built for the requirement. It is compact and durable. At the same time it should be reliable. Current technologies available like RFID are good enough.

     • Card reader can be connected to server available in the area by using wire or wirelessly. LCD screen to show status of the card, list of vehicles currently entered etc. IN, OUT, MAX (maximum stay) buttons can be used.

   • Software

     • Card will have its Unique ID connected to vehicle registration number

     • Card reader will have its unique ID, which will help server to calculate charges.

     • Collection done at particular point will be connected to agent. Agent can be council, private parking owners or petrol station owner. One agent may own one smart card point or multiple points.

     • Every agent will get statement of collection done in a month with detailed list. Agent will also get cheque of collection done.

     • Card will be connected to bank account by debit card, direct debit, credit card or top-up. Based on mode selected, it will deduct amount charged instantaneously. Statement for the charges occurred till month end will be sent to user.

     • If late payment arrangements are done with business owners, payment can be collected at end of the month.

10. Commercial viability/advantages

    • Customer satisfaction

      • Council or government authorities charge heavy penalties on users. Most of them feel victimized. Also there is trend of collecting more money from users by means of penalties. This can be avoided.

      • Private parking owners do not need to maintain costly system; they can rent one for their places.

11. Timeframe for implementation (yet to work out).

12. Stake of partners

    • “Smart card company” can keep % of overall transaction as service charge. They can also charge rent for readers, which covers maintenance and cost of those readers. Bulk users may go away with less rental depending on transaction.

Memory Embedded Device Drivers

This concept looks into new emerging possibility of embedding device driver into hardware device itself.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide information about device drivers.
Instead it goes into advanced concept of embedding device drivers into hardware device itself.

For those who are unfamiliar with device drivers following is a simple information.
You can google for more details of device drivers.

Device driver is a software program which is meant to help operating system to communicate with piece of hardware device.
Without device driver, operating system cannot use hardware device.

Every piece of hardware installed into your computer system has driver associated with it.
This includes any graphic cards, keyboard, mouse etc.

Few operating systems are shipped with set of device drivers supplied by hardware vendors into it.
If you are familiar with Windows operating system, you may have observed that when you connect a new device, operating system recognises it automatically and sometime installs device driver automatically. This becomes possible because operating system contains device driver of that device inside it or can locate it on CD or internet location and install it.

In many non-plug-play operating systems, you have to install driver manually.

Also similar to any program, device driver is specific to operating system, so you need a different device driver for different operating systems.
So driver written for Windows does not work on Linux and vice-versa.

Disadvantage of current system:

1. If operating system does not contain suitable driver embedded, device driver should be supplied separately.
2. Sometime operating system installs wrong driver for the device and device cannot function properly.
3. How many times you get a hardware device and it contains warning to install supplied CD before connecting device.
4. Sometime supplied device driver does not work, because its corrupted and its unusable. You cannot locate device driver anywhere on internet. You are left no choice but throw away device.

Solution:
Advances into flash memory are making it possible to have cheap memory available in tiny size. For example MMC, SD, flash, and so on…
What if vendor embed a small flash memory into device itself. Then store main device driver files for all operating systems into it.

When device is connected, operating system will detect device with flash memory on it. It will find suitable device driver from embedded memory and install it automatically.

If device driver contains many interactive files which use rich interfaces which might be expensive to embed into memory, then embed minimum basic required device drivers and then supply rest utilities on CD.

This way, operating systems don’t need to ship with thousands of vendor device drivers. Also it will ensure that correct device driver for device is installed. There is no need to supply separate device drivers for the device.
Wherever device is sent, it will work properly due to inbuilt device driver.

What do you think about this idea? I would like to hear from you…