How to become a good Team Member

Following are some of the qualities that one must have to become a good team member:

1. Proactive attitude towards work
2. Initiative
3. Be attentive
4. Analytical and Problem solving skills
5. Good communication skills
6. Domain knowledge
7. Adaptability (i.e., changing according to situation)
8. Cordial relationships
9. Ability to complete the work within the time schedules
10. Maintains control and pace of work despite unpleasant pressures in working environment
11. Must understand and follow standards and procedures
12. Must participate in group discussions
13. Awareness about desired quality and quantity aspects
14. Must inform management timely
15. Must accept constructive criticism and feedback
16. Must follow and execute directions and plans of immediate manager
17. capability to undertake new challenges & work pressure
18. Self improvement attitude
19. Must act and change according to the feedback received from management

Professional writing: definition and basic introduction

We can broadly classify writers into two categories namely professional writers and hobby writers. Writers, who take up writing as a profession and make a living out of it, are professional writers while the writers, for whom writing is just a hobby, are hobby writers. Nowadays, professional writers can be seen in several fields, being referred to by different names in different fields. Following is a list of various forms of professional writers,

Industry Title of job

Software, Hardware & Manufacturing Technical writer
SEO SEO writers

Website/CD designing firms Content writers
Academics Instructional designer
Business Houses Proposal writers & Business Writers
Advertisement Copy writers
Law Legal writers
Medicine & Health care Medical Transcriptionist
Press Journalists
Film industry Story writers, dialogue writers and script writers



All the above mentioned, referred to by different job titles, do one common thing i.e., writing. Though they all involved in one common task called ‘writing’, the nature and style of writing varies a lot from one job to another job. Hence, professional writers have to acquire two sets of skills:

1. Skills that are commonly required to any kind of writer. e.g.: Basic skills in computer operation, basic Internet skills, Basics in authoring tools like Ms-Word.

2. Skills that are specially required to the domain they are involved in. e.g.: Keyword research tools for SEO writing, legal terminology for legal writing and tools such as Robo Help and Frame Maker for Technical writers.

Hence, a professional writer must possess basic skills as well as domain specific skills. If he possesses any of the skills related to another domain of writing, it will be an added advantage for him.

'Deccan Chronicle' - The Voice of South India

Deccan Chronicle, a leading daily paper in Southern India, emerged as the largest circulated news paper in South India, out throwing The Hindu, the age old champion of South India. Now, Deccan Chronicle is the largest circulated daily paper in South India and fourth largest circulated news papers in India. The circulation of Deccan Chronicle news papers is spread across three states Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Buzz among media circles is that the news paper is set to enter Kerala too, within a few years.
Till 2009, The Hindu was the largest circulated news paper in Southern India and 3rd largest circulated news paper at national level. Hence, it was popularly considered the voice of South India. By the end of 2009, Deccan Chronicle has captured the first position in South India. However, The Hindu is still the 3rd largest circulated news paper at national level. However, The Hindu may loose even its 3rd position at national level due to the rapid growth of Deccan Chronicle. That will be again another blow to The Hindu. After becoming the third largest circulated news paper at national level and expanding it base further in South India, Deccan Chronicle may capture even the second position, which is currently held by The Hindustan Times, the second largest news paper in India. Then, it will emerge as the next only to The times of India at national level and unquestionable champion in south India. However, The Hindu remains the largest and unquestionable number one in Tamil Nadu. Deccan Chronicle may not take The Hindu in Tamil Nadu even after ten years.
By state level figures, Deccan Chronicle is the largest circulated news paper in Andhra Pradesh and the second largest news paper in Tamil Naud and third largest circulated news paper in Karnataka. According to ABC figures, the circulation of Deccan Chronicle stands at 1,349,959. It is the first largest circulated news paper in Andhra Pradesh with a record circulation 7,93,296 copies.

Writteh by: S. Chandrashekara Reddy
chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Process and phases of a "Software Project"

The process and phases of a project can be mentioned as follows:
1. Client Requirement
2. Client approach
3. Discussion with client
4. Client Requirement Specifications
5. Project plan
6. Plan review
7. Commencement of Project
8. Completion of Project
9. Internal Quality Check by the team members
10. Quality Test by Quality Assurance Team
11. Quality Test Report
12. Fixation of errors and resubmission
13. Re-auditing by QA
14. Submission to Client
15. Client Acceptance

Client Requirement: Client requirement is the point of commencement of any project in the world. If client does not have any requirement, the question of approaching an individual or a business firm and the planning for any project will not arise at all.

Client Approach: When client has any sort of requirement, he approaches either an individual or a business firm which can provide a solution to his requirement. While approaching a business firm, client takes several factors into consideration such as reputation of the firm, easy accessibility, client friendliness, and certifications of the firm.

Discussion with Client: All the details about the discussion are mentioned in Minutes of Meeting. This discussion is usually attended by client, project manager, team leader and some of the team members.

Client Requirement Specifications: By the end of discussion, Client specifies all his requirements. A document titled “Client Requirement Specifications” is signed by the client as well as Project Manager. When the document is signed mutually, both the parties are said to be entered a legal bondage.

Project Plan: After client mentions specifications, Project Manager and his team members prepare Project Plan. While preparing a Project Plan, Project Manager has to take several factors such as resources available, resources to be hired if required and possible, provision of training to staff if required, assignment of activities to different members according to their capabilities, time scheduling, internal quality check and quality check by QA team and dead line.


Plan Review: The entire team reviews the Project Plan and makes modifications to Project Plan according to the requirements.

Commencement of Project: Project Plan is finalized after Project Review. The work commences and goes ahead according to the specifications of the Project Review. Team member assigns the work to different team members according to Project Plan. Internal quality check is conducted to check whether the work is carried on according to Project Plan. If any inconsistencies are found in the completion of work within stipulated time, reasons are detected and rectified.

Completion of Project: Project must be completed within the deadlines i.e., the time stipulated by the client and the final output must satisfy the specifications of the client. Quality objects must be satisfied and final output must be user friendly.

Internal Quality Check: After the completion of the Project, the project team conducts an Internal Quality Check in order to confirm if the client specifications and quality objects are met or not. If any discrepancies are found, team members fix them. Such kind of Internal Quality Check reduces the errors, improves the quality of final output and promotes confidence among team members about the quality of the project.

Quality Test by Quality Assurance Team: After the completion of internal auditing, the project is submitted to Quality Assurance Team. QA Team audits the projects and locates the errors and sends Project Test Report to Project team.

Fixation of errors: The project team fixes the errors according the Project Test Report and re-submits the project to Quality Team.

Re-auditing: The QA team re-checks the project work once again and sends the Project Test Report to the project team, which is supposed to fix the errors if any mentioned in Project Test Report and re-submits the work to QA team. This process continues until the zero errors are found.

Submission to Client and Client Acceptance: The final output is submitted to the client and client acceptance is the ending point of the project.

Prepared by: S. Chandrashekara Reddy
chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

Introduction to ISO

The International Organization for Standardization, widely known as ISO, is an international standard setting and supervising organization. It is the largest standards setting organization in the world. It was founded in 1947. Its headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a non-governmental and independent organization. The organization has a very great reputation across the globe and there are several instances where its standards are made mandatory by governments of various countries. In various cases, ISO standards, such as ISO 9001 quality management system, have become market requirements. However, as a non-governmental organization, ISO has no legal authority to enforce the implementation of its standards. English, French and Russian are its official languages and www.iso.org is its official website.
Every year, ISO also publishes several Technical Reports, Technical Specifications and Technical Guides. ISO has its presence in 158 countries out of 203 total counties in the world. ISO sets standards for several sectors ranging from agriculture, construction and mechanical engineering to transportation, IT and Management.
Standards measure various characteristics of products and services such as quality, environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, and efficiency. Whether a rich nation or developing nation, each country has an equal say to influence the direction of ISO's standards.
Benefits of ISO standards:
Enhances Credibility among clients: ISO certification enhances the credibility of a company. Most of the clients prefer to outsource their work to such companies, which are certified by well reputed certification companies like ISO.
Enhances Market credibility: Certain ISO Standards, such as ISO 9001 quality management systems, have become market requirements. It may become difficult to survive in the market without such certifications.
Legislature compulsions: Though ISO is a non-government organization, some countries have made it mandatory for companies to follow certain ISO Standards for business houses. In such countries, it will become illegal if any business house violates any legalized ISO standard.
Enables to follow the state of the art methods: ISO conducts a periodic review of its standards, at least once in every five years and decides whether the standards should be followed, updated, replaced and withdrawn. Thus, ISO standards enable the business houses to follow the state of the art methods.


Global Acceptance: ISO standards are recognized across the globe and the methods can be followed anywhere in the world. They promote a kind of uniformity among the work structures of various companies across the globe. ISO Standards enable us to examine ourselves whether we are working the same way as our counterparts in other countries.

Tips for effective online writing

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“Online writers are those who prepare content for online publication sources such as web sites, blog sites, forums, social net works, social book marking sites, and online directories. They also prepare content for several online activities such as mail marketing and news letters”.

The prime function of any writer is to prepare content about a topic on which they are working up. However, preparing content for a online publication is different from preparing content for offline publication. 

• Compare to an average offline reader, an online reader is technically more skilled and usually leads a comparatively busy life and finds less time to read any stuff.  

• Online reading strains the eyes of the readers and causes more strain to the reader’s body. Hence, online readers usually do not read but usually scan the content.

• If an offline reader does not find sufficient content in one book, he cannot easily go for another book as each book incurs him some expense. But, an online reader is usually highly impatient and he switches to another website or blogger, whenever he does not find sufficient content about topic he is searching for. (Visiting another website costs him nothing if he has unlimited broadband and a little if he has limited broadband).

All the previously mentioned factors make web writing different from offline writing. Hence, it is compulsory for web writers to follow certain rules while preparing content for a web site and some of such rules are mentioned below:

• Make your content as short as possible.

• Content must be relevant and precise

• Popular saying “One picture is worth 10,000 words” must be always remembered. Where ever it is possible, use images. At first, try to represent given content in the form of images. If it is not possible to represent something in the form of images, try to represent the content in the form of tables. If the second option too is not viable, represent the content as a list. When the third option too is obscure, then present the content in the form of text.

• If it is possible, try to represent the content in the form of audio and video too. If it is possible and affordable, go for animations.

• Paragraphs should not be too long.

• Remove the repetition

• Present the content in interesting manner and look that it will never turn boring

• Heading must indicate the actual content contained in the paragraphs that follow the heading. Heading must be appropriate, attractive and interest creating. If heading is attractive, it attracts more number of readers. If heading is appropriate, it helps readers locate required content easily and with in less time.

•Readers often prefer to take print-outs if they like your content. Hence, do not split the content into different pages. Try to present the entire content in a single page to the maximum possible extent.

Online readers mostly scan rather than read and they just go through headlines, sub-headlines, summaries, captions, hypertext links, and bulleted points. Hence, try to make them content rich in such way that the reader must grasp half of the content by following them.

Online journalism differs from print journalism a lot. For example, online newspapers allow articles to remain available online for years together. The online journalists can simply link to old articles instead of explaining about the background of a particular event.

Written by: S. Chandrashekara Reddy

chandrashekarareddys@gmail.com

India: Drastic improvement in literacy rate

Indian literacy rate was just 12% in 1947, when India obtained freedom from Britishers. According to 1951 census, the literacy rate was just 18.33%. It rose to 64% by 2001. Though it is not a wonderful achievement, it is still a drastic achievement in Indian context!
The success story contains some other sub-stories of success like the state of Kerala achieving 99.86% literacy rate, which is equal to the literacy rate of both USA(where it is just 99.0%) and China(where the literacy rate is just 93.3%). It is a remarkable achievement in the history of Indian literacy. In 1990, Ernakulam district was certified as the district with 100% literacy rate.
Year Literacy rate in India
1951 18.33
1961 28.30
1971 34.45
1981 43.57

1991 52.21
2001 64.84
But, the achievement did not stop with the Kerala itself as some other states too are following the foot steps of Kerala. Mizoram, a remote state in North East, is set to achieve the same distinction with in a few years and here, literacy rate is 88.80% by the 2001 census.

Other states in the foot steps of Kerala
Mizoram: always above national average
An important aspect is that the literacy rate in Mizoram was 31.14% in 1951 while the national literacy was just 18%. Hence, it must be remembered that Mizoram, though a remote and small state in backward north-east region of India, has been maintaining a higher percentage of literacy when compared to national statistics, since from the very beginning of Indian independence. Here is an historical fact to be noted that the state is ahead of the country in literacy rate since 18th century.
Success story of Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh, a small Himalayan state, has shown tremendous improvement over a period of four decades during 1961-2001. It is even more impressive than the achievement of Kerala. As it is mentioned above, Kerala has been ahead of the nation in literacy rate the 19th century. On contrary, the literacy rate of Himachal Pradesh, in 1961, was below the national average.
Tamil Nadu too has achieved an impressive literacy rate with 73.4% by 2001 census. In backward states like Rajasthan and Bihar too, the situation is changing very rapidly.
Success story of Rajasthan
The literacy rate in Rajasthan was just 38% by 1991 census and now, it reached 61%! The literacy rate has increased by 23% just with in ten years! Now, almost every village in Rajasthan has primary school coverage.
Bihar: Changing rapidly
Bihar is the only state, in India, where illiterates outnumber literates and it is the least literate state. Its literacy rate is just 47% by the 2001 census. Still, the situation is changing rapidly in Bihar too. Present 47% literacy is an improvement over the 39% by 1991 census. The Government of Bihar has launched several programs to boost literacy during recent past.

General guidelines (Golden Rules) to Content Writers

• Your content must be current, relevant, and interesting in order to attract and retain visitors.
• Write with passion and purpose.
• Readers feel the hell to read a dull and dry article. Hence, try to make your article live and interesting.
• Write as if you are having a conversation with your readers.
• If you feel something more important, try to highlight it by using Highlighted text (bold or color, also hyperlinked text)
• Put the most important information at the top.
• Always use the local variant of the language of the target audience. If you are writing for Americans, use American slang and if your target audience is from the UK, use British English.

Guidelines (Golden Rules) to write business letter

Following are some of the guidelines a writer has to remember while writing a business letter:
• The purpose of a business writer is to sell but not to tell.
• He has to prepare his content in such a way that it must influence the reader to buy the product.
• Do not give poetical descriptions about the product.
• Give the utility details, the details that provide the reader some utility
• Do not mention technical details unless it is compulsory
• Explain how your product is superior to the products of yours competitors
• Mention about the price of the product only at the end
• Mention some testimonials you received from your clients and customers

Basic Guidelines(Golden Rules) for SEO Writers

Following are some of the important guidelines that SEO writers bear in mind while preparing content:
• Develop the content based on the given keyword
• Try to maintain required keyword density
• Try to include the keyword in the heading to the maximum possible extent. Remember that search engines give more priority headings and meta tags
• Use keyword at least once or twice, under any circumstances, in the content
• Do not over use the keyword
• Content should not lose its readability due to the higher frequency of repetition of the keyword
• Have at least minimum awareness about “Keyword research tools”

Online headlines and page titles: basic guidelines

While writing headlines and page titles, offline writers focus only catching the attention of his readers. They need not to bother about SEO issues. On the other hand, online writers are often supposed to follow several SEO instructions while preparing headlines and page titles.
Following are some of the instructions that an online writer has to follow while preparing headlines and page titles:
• Make the first word an important and informative one. For example, if you are supposed to prepare content about either a person or a place or a company or a concept, use the respective name as the first word.
• Do not use same starting word for all headlines. Users may feel it difficult to locate particular article, page, or paragraph.
• Most of the online readers do not read the content but scan it and some of them just see headlines when it comes to news items. Hence, online readers must write headlines in such a way that the reader must understand the subject, just by looking at the headline.