OTM On Premise 6.5.x

~ Danny Kwok ~ 1 Comment

OTM (Oracle Transportation Management) last version for on premise is 6.4.3 since 2017. Many are encouraged to move to OTM Cloud as Oracle had stated there will not new version. Fast forward to 2021, there is a new update to the on premise approach. To my surprise, Oracle announce that there will be further patches to extend the life of on premise from 6.4.3 to 6.5.x till 6.5.3.

Source: OTMSIG Channel
Good News?

The surprise turnaround from Oracle is good news because many customers are unable to move to Cloud on time. This is not surprising as Cloud platform was faced with risk and uncertainty 3 years ago. Many struggle to migrate without a clear picture of OTM Cloud as it becomes a huge black box of PaaS (Platform as a Service).

OTM Cloud remains Innovation Platform

Those with OTM on prem will still be faced with a decision to move to OTM Cloud. The message from Oracle is that OTM Cloud will remain their innovation platform. It seem that we are unlikely to see much changes for on prem version for 6.5.x except for patches and minor enhancements.

In summary, the extension to 6.5.x will give many customers more time to migrate on premise to OTM Cloud. This is a big relief because migration to OTM Cloud is not just a technical change but a digital transformation strategy.

Chatbot and Responsive Web Design

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There are many Chatbot options for different channels like Ms Teams, WhatsApp, WeChat or Web. Each channel have its characteristics and efforts to be displayed nicely. You can try to use responsive web design (RWD) if your Chatbot have a web version.

Why RWD for Chatbot

Building a Chatbot for all channels are impossible. As mentioned in Chatbot channel selection, web is usually the default preferred channel. Many devices can support web with the main browser like Chrome and Safari. Using RWD will help your Chatbot to display properly across different screensize. If you are evaluating Chatbot, you can include RWD support for web as a key criteria.

Omnichannel with RWD

Your user reach is also a key reason for RWD in your web. Since mobile devices is a key factor for user reach, you will find it time consuming to include mobile development in your roadmaps. RWD approach allows Chatbot to be standardise for omnichannel. This reduces your time to market and increases user reach globally without the need of specific channel.

A key consideration of Chatbot is to default web as your main channel. You must test the Chatbot web to be compatible with RWD. Combining these 2 approaches will help you ready your Chatbot to be used globally.

Responsive Web Design 101

~ Danny Kwok ~ 1 Comment

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a design approach to render your web sites to easily to different devices size like mobile phones and tablets. My preferred RWD is jQuery mobile framework. It is simple to setup and allows you to create RWD quickly. Have you test drive RWD before?

Choosing RWD

There are a few RWD format. The most popular frameworks are jQuery and Bootstrap. My personal preference is jQuery mobile because I can set it up easily and it is easy to configure for different UI (User Interface). Do take some time to review and test with different type of framework. I recommend that you use the popular framework because there will be more sample codes and active community. It is best to set some use cases and selection criteria for your testing.

Skillset Required

The skillset required for RWD are JavaScript and CSS. You will also need to be familiar with different devices and its characteristics. A lot of patience is required to tweak for different screen sizes. If you are getting a designer, this is where you must translate design to CSS style sheet. Do separate your design from application layer as design is prone to changes.

RWD is a basic norm for web sites design framework across different devices. This reduce your efforts to code differently for laptop and mobile. In addition, RWD framework is easier to setup and deploy. There is no reason not to utilise RWD for your website.

Cloud Dictionary

~ Danny Kwok ~ 1 Comment

The world of Cloud is merging to a common language. This is because different cloud providers are coopetitors to offer compatibility across their cloud. One of the market leader are setting many of their terms in the dictionary. These are some common cloud terms you will find useful.

Most Common Cloud Terms

Some of the common cloud terms are listed for quick references:

  • Bucket – Cloud storage or your hard disk equivalent
  • Region – The geographical area where your cloud server is physically located.
  • Assets or Resource – Your server, storage or applications.
  • Container – Application for deployment that are meant to be isolated from other processes
  • ACL (Access Control List) – Your security policies and rules for managing access to your assets.
  • Tags – Setting a tag with value helps with search and reporting.
  • Shell or CLI (Command Line interface) – Black terminal screen or console to allow you to use command line instead of user interface for configuring your cloud.
  • Serverless – Serverless Application Model (SAM) that allows you to run functions without the need of server.

There are a long lists and these are the most common ones for starters. I will continue to add as I come across these common terms.

When to Implement User Requirements?

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In the world of limited resource and time, we need to evaluate and prioritise when to implement user requirements. There should be clear guidelines on how requirements are prioritise. These are some of a ballpark guideline to give you a sanity check if the requirements are worthy to be implemented.

Requirements Criteria

There is actually a quick way to ballpark the priority of your requirements. One key method is to use ROI (Return On Investment) model. This is usually used together with data statistics to understand the impact and expected returns. Agile based methodology will view the priority for items that maximise value or benefits to the product.

Setup a Checklist

Before you go in depth to design solution to all the requirements that flow your way, it is cost effective to do a sanity check with a simple checklist.

  • Impact of Requirements e.g. high volume vs low occurrence
  • Is there workaround if this is low occurrences?
  • What is the ROI? Is it a positive gain of value and benefits?

It is now a norm to evaluate requirements to maximise the value and benefits. This is usually overlooked due to external factors such as management pressure and voice of customers. You can use a simple checklist to determine the viability of implementing these requirements.

Measuring Risk

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One part of Risk management involves the measurement of risk. Risk is an elusive scenario that may or may not happen. So, how to you anticipate and measure risk in IT projects. These are some methods that you may consider for measuring risk.

Historical References

Historical data is the classical way of getting data. You can also reference similar projects and obtain the data as a benchmark. By projection of these data, you can measure risk and build your strategy around these risks. However, these methods have its drawbacks. This is because you may over invest and overestimate based on historical data.

Active Monitoring

Active monitoring is most widely used in Cloud. This is usually resource intensive for your family servers. Risk are captured real time and send for corrective actions. The purpose of active monitors helps to mitigate risks with known scenarios. Ironically, this is rarely used due to the higher cost.

It is useful to list out the risks and mitigations. In many cases, measurement of risks have been neglected. If you have a risk team in place, you will want to continue understanding and measure risks. This approach will give you clear indicator of potential risks regardless of the method you used.

How to Create a Knowledge Base Chatbot

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A very useful feature of Chatbot is to turn your user guide into an interactive knowledge base for users. In ODA (Oracle Digital Assistant), this is the QnA feature. You can even upload some popular translated version of your user guide into QnA.

For new users to your application, they are often lost on how to start using your application. Traditional approach is user guide or demo. Some will conduct training workshops. With COVID-19, this is not cost effective as we are not bound by location or timezone.

Building your Lexicon

A first step is to load your lexicon to Chatbot that will define the languages used for your application. The AI enabled Chatbot will learn with NLP (Natural Language Processing) to understand user queries. Lexicon serve as a baseline to set your application domain language. For example, booking can means orders or delivery in logistics domain.

Content Create in Chatbot

Once you define your lexicon, it is time to include the contents such as user guide into your Chatbot. These contents can even include cheatsheet, cookbook, sharepoint documents or SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). You will never get the desired results from the start. It is a progressive and continuous tweaking as you build your knowledge base in Chatbot.

Chatbot is changing the way we create our knowledge base. These AI enabled Chatbot will aim to understand smartly user queries and provide the best results. It is time you setup your content in Chatbot.

The Good and Bad of Waterfall Migration

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Waterfall migration is the mainstay for on premise application. In recent years, migration is adapting to Agile with Cloud. However, it is common to see conservatives conduct waterfall migration with Cloud. What are the good and bad of waterfall migration?

The Good and Bad of Waterfall

The good parts of using waterfall migration are:

  • Traditional approach with fixed scope.
  • Increased redundancy with development and testing environment.
  • Increased testing and issue management.
  • Tight control of changes from one environment to another.

By using waterfall approach, you need to anticipate these bad situations that will arise:

  • Increased duration from additional environment setup.
  • Increase cost of maintaining and licence costs.
  • Unable to react to scope creep.
  • High reliance to critical path.

While waterfall migration is a tried and tested method, be prepared for longer duration and higher costs due to the environment redundancy.

Force To Cloud

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Application migration to Cloud is on the full swing with many applications ending support for on premise version. If you are an product or application owner, you will be caught in countdown to migrate to Cloud version. In a way, you are compelled to go to Cloud or faced with end of support for on premise version.

Cloud Risk

Cloud risk will increase if you have more than 20% customisation for your on premise application. The first order of business when moving to cloud is a “rollback” to product base by removal of your customisation. This is the most challenging and tedious nature of cloud migration. This means you can either remove the customisation or decoupled them from the product.

Cloud Approach

Migration duration is not the time that you should start the cloud move. If you are aware of the EOL (End of Life) date, you can after preparation as early as possible. For many, this risk is only handled during migration project. However, I favored this preparation be done as early as possible. One approach is to decouple the customisation to Cloud. This leave your entire on premise ready for “lift and shift” migration approach. Another approach is to move your new customers to Cloud instead of on premise. You can always scale up when you fully migrate all your customers from on premise.

The advantages to migrate of cloud outweighs the risks. In many instances, you will be force to cloud due to EOL of on premises. You should start preparing to decouple your customisation as early as possible. Do be creative and consider various approach to lower your risk and increase confidence in cloud. In a way, moving to cloud is more of psychological than technical.

Is Endemic COVID-19 here?

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Singapore plans for COVID-19 endemic seems to be on a balancing act because many have yet to envision how this will be. It will take a few weeks of observations before anyone will know what to do with endemic mindset. Some organisations are quick to restore working in office once the restrictions are relaxed. As usual, the interpretation are subjective as many have learnt to work from home.

Blind Men and Elephant

If your teams are able to function with wfh, there is really no rush to go back to office. This needs are for those who require the office space and equipment. These are the people who have moved their equipments home to enable wfh. If you are to ease into an alternate week arrangement, you will end up being counter productive! Do not be the blind men feeling an elephant. You must have clear view of what you wanted to achieve being in the office.

Endemic Guidelines

A clear indication of endemic COVID-19 is the need to wear mask continuously. Guidelines must be clear and should be reviewed by your team needs. If the guidelines are unclear, adopt a conservative approach for safety. This is true for family with kids less than 12 years old because they are not able to be vaccinated. Another scenarios will be restrictions for high risk people like elderly.

Moving to endemic COVID-19 will take time. Organisation must not be like blind men and the elephant in the haste to resume working in office. Do take a conservative approach for individual needs if you can still wfh. After all, safety first!