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  • The best books I read in 2023!

    2023 has been a horrifying year. The horrors happening in the world right now, coupled with the horrors of my personal life, have made it really difficult to act like a functioning human being. Reading has been the only solace, and I have read 105 books so far. My reading list was chaotic, and I read anything I fancied; some books I even reread. I also found Dastan-E-Ameer Hamza by Feroz Sons and finished that because of nostalgia, and I needed something nonsensical to read; the same goes for the All the Wrong Questions series. So, here are my best reads from 2023 in no particular order. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini Yellowface by R.F. Kuang Founder Puzzles by Jawwad Farid Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt All the Wrong Questions Series by Lemony Snicket Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono, Emily Balistrieri (Translator) When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, Lucy North (Translator) How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz The Last Children of Tokyo by Yōko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani (Translator) The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs Girls Just Wanna Have Funds by Camilla Falkenberg A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark Boy and Going Solo by Roald Dahl Principles for Success by Ray Dalio What were your best picks for the year? Let's chat!

  • The best books I read in 2022!

    I am here again, keeping up with the tradition of posting my best reads of the year. I know, I know, the year hasn't ended yet. But I wanted to push my list out a bit early. I guessed this year was going to be a wreck, so I set a goal of 30 books a year, but as always, I could read more than 50 books, and now, my goal stands at 60 books for 2022. Let’s see what happens now. This year I read a weird mix of books, from “What happened to you” and “Being Mortal” to “The Secret Garden” and “A Little Princess,” and I loved it. I want to give a special shout-out to Julia, and the Shark, one of the most visually stunning books I have ever seen. Even though I dont buy hard copies anymore (environment, climate change, etc.), I broke my rule for this one as I wanted to keep a copy of this piece of art. So, here is my list, in no particular order. What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, Oprah Winfrey Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Brad Kowitz Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Tom de Freston (Illustrator) Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid What was the best book you read this year? Let me know!

  • Fifteen books every Freelancer should read!

    For freelancers or independent consultants, keeping themselves constantly up-to-date is one of the most critical parts of their workdays. Reading, researching, and learning is nearly as crucial as finding clients and pitching their services. The freelance space is massive and welcoming as we see consistent growth in numbers, both as new freelancers join the lifestyle and money earned. You can check some really cool stats here. I have been working as a freelancer since 2012 but started my journey on Upwork in 2017. Currently, I am wearing multiple hats as a Senior Product Manager, Community Leader, Trainer, Writer, Cofounder of a Coding Bootcamp, and Director of a Career Acceleration Program. My work revolves around building technology products and helping more women to find space in tech and get high-paying jobs. I read every day, and here are some of the books I recommend to every experienced or aspiring freelancer out there. Deep Work by Cal Newport Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber The Freelancer’s Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams – On Your Terms by Sara Horowitz Creative Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Very Successful Freelance Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind by Dan Charnas The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen If you want to talk about anything related to Product, Freelancing, Curriculum Design, or Community building. Hit me up! Happy reading and learning!

  • Fifteen Books every Product Leader should read!

    Product Management is one of the most in-demand skills in the global tech ecosystem. We need more Product Managers who are well-read, empathic, and can work collaboratively. So, I have curated a list of books all your aspiring and existing Product Managers should check out. This list is not ordered. So start with the one that looks more interesting to you. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams by Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw, and Richard Banfield User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton and Peter Economy Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel The innovator's dilemma by Clayton Christensen The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Start With Why by Simon Sinek Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath Tipping point: how little things can make a big difference by Malcolm Gladwell Have you read any of the above? If yes, did it help you think better? Let's chat!

  • Capacity building through social media - A project by UNDP & IBA - Experience Report

    Below is my experience report for the project's training component and some personal thoughts. Social Media has proven to be an effective tool for community mobilization and democratizing access to information, news, and entertainment worldwide. People can connect with each other, find ways to share ideas, and collaborate. We saw some incredible feats achieved by people in the past decade where social media acted as a catalyst. But, there have also been incidents that made us think hard about content moderation and social media censorship. Another aspect is to consider the impact of living inside an echo chamber because social media algorithms only show us what they assume we are interested in or want to see. But, today’s story is not about the impact of social media on people and society but rather my thoughts on a project that I recently completed with IBA and UNDP. I won't get into many details about the overall project, but only about the training component. I was hired to conduct two full-day capacity building through social media workshops. The aim was to teach digital skills, mainly social media, to young people living in two major informal settlements in Karachi: Azam Basti and Rehri Goth. Some data on smartphone users in Pakistan can be seen here. I was given a brief profile on these participants, their gender, age, education, and the social media platforms they use. So, I created a workshop catered to their specific needs and the learning objectives shared with me by the project team. Before we talk about the contents of the workshop, here are some of my observations on the workshop participants. Both of my workshops had a majority of female participants. Over 50% of them were students from grades 9 to 12. Girls/Women who have already completed their education, mostly intermediate, were working in some capacity, either by running a small business (tea stall, handicrafts, etc.) from home or working in a factory or school. Most people have informal jobs, and salaries/earnings are paid in cash. Most have no access to financial services, including a bank account. Cultural and religious conservatism is apparent, and I observed very pronounced gender roles in the stories they shared during the workshops. Girls/women were motivated to do something with their lives and wanted to change things for themselves and their families. They wanted to get a higher education and work in a formal setting to earn more. Male participants were very open about the issues the women in their families and surroundings face and understood the unfair way women are treated generally. A significant number of younger men/boys were interested in sports, and some of them were avid gamers. PUBG seems to be very popular in these areas. Every participant in both workshops had access to a smartphone, either they owned one or used one that another family member had. Most girls were using phones owned by their father or brother. All participants were familiar with Whatsapp and thought it was essential to their lives as they could make free calls and connect with their loved ones. The second most used platform is YouTube, and Facebook followed right behind. Instagram is used mainly by women, and mostly younger participants use TikTok. We discussed the reason why they use a particular platform. TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are mainly used for entertainment. YouTube is used to learn simple skills, like cooking, fixing things around the household, DIY projects, and improving English speaking skills. YouTube is also the primary source of entertainment and news due to the 24/7 live news channels and Pakistani and Indian drama channels. All participants showed concerns about the dangers of social media and the internet by sharing stories of harassment, financial fraud, scamming, and identity theft that happened to them or people in their circle. Some data on Pakistan’s mobile gender gap can be seen here. I created a dialogue and activity-led workshop plan. We talked about WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok and how these platforms can be used for skill-building, finding economic opportunities, and citizen journalism. Internet Safety was also an essential part of the workshop, alongside a content creation activity we did at the end. We spoke about hashtags, geolocation, algorithms, curated vs. created content, and the business models of these platforms. This led to a discussion around why we see what we see on our newsfeeds and how we can improve the way we consume content. We had an exchange on internet safety and about safeguarding ourselves and our loved ones from scammers, hackers, and thieves. Data privacy was also an important item in the agenda, and we chatted about getting consent before taking and posting someone’s picture online. Workshop participants were interested in improving their economic condition, as the majority in Azam Basti and Rehri Goth are working-class people and near the poverty line. We talked about upskilling opportunities, career options, and the potential of eCommerce for their handmade products. The last part of the workshop consisted of an hour-long activity that helped them connect the dots between social activism and citizen journalism. Participants worked in groups, picked one cause/issue they wanted to work on, and then created a powerful story. They presented their work using chart paper and created hashtags for their chosen topic. Both Rehri Goth and Azam Basti are facing similar problems. So, we explored the most pressing issues in these areas and came up with a list. Drug epidemic No roads/infrastructure Unavailability of public transport No clean drinking water No hospitals nearby Mental health crisis Lack of colleges/vocational training centers for girls No waste management system No recreational spaces for youth The governmental and municipal authorities have neglected both areas, and people are living in misery, and the areas lack basic facilities. Lack of social cohesion is another problem because most people come to Karachi from other parts of the country to find work, and they find it difficult to adjust here. Their ideas and stories showed an accurate picture of the life of a low-income family living in an informal settlement in Karachi. Even with all this happening around them, they were hopeful for their futures and wanted to learn and advocate for themselves. The young generation needs direction, tools, and support to become successful in their lives and change the dynamics of their families. There is no lack of potential, only a lack of opportunities and awareness. With these workshops, we tried to expose them to opportunities and avenues that could help. They learned to advocate for their right to be treated fairly and have basic facilities in their townships/areas. We also created two closed digital spaces for them to stay in touch with each other and me. The stories they shared were heartbreaking. I don’t have the heart to include them in this post, but I would like you to visit an informal settlement near you and have an open conversation with people living there. I don’t know how I feel right now. A part of me is hopeful to see their potential, how quickly they learned, and the work they produced. But another part of me is enraged at every person who was ever hired or elected to take care of this city. Almost all of them failed Karachi, which means they failed the whole country. The city’s infrastructure is crumbling, and there are a plethora of urban challenges. Still, we can’t seem to find a listening ear, neither in the provincial government nor the federal government. This city and its people are resilient and are still trying to do their best, but at the same time, nobody should be expected to be this resilient and experience such inequalities, and neglect. You can see some of the work under this project here and here. I am also thankful to Dr. Lalarukh Ejaz and Aqsa Jawed for taking me on board. I am hoping for better days, for Karachi and all of Pakistan!

  • Business Incubation Program by IBA, AF, and USAID - Experience Report

    Written on September 3rd, 2017 This post is my experience report on the “Business Incubation Program for Women Home-Based Workers” that happened in collaboration with IBA and Aurat Foundation and was funded by USAID. Back in May 2016, I received a call from Soha Zulfiqar (Manager Women Entrepreneurship Program – IBA CED), she told me that they have a project for me and that I should come and meet with her and Dr. Shahid Qureshi (Director – IBA CED). I met them and were briefed about the program, we discussed the scope, terms and over the coming weeks, we were to develop a course outline and see if it fits our intended audience. The content was in Urdu (as it's our national language) and every participant was to get a practice book that they can take home. The program was in collaboration with Aurat Foundation under their Gender Equity Program (GEP) sponsored by USAID and the orientation happened in January 2017. Two cohorts were planned for this program, one in Karachi and the other in Quetta. The training for each cohort was of three months (Quetta had a condensed version of the same training) and had different areas of study including, Accounting and Finance, Marketing, Entrepreneurial Skills, Soft Skills, and IT for Business. Participants were women from marginalized areas and were skilled in different crafts, including Beauty and Fashion (tailoring, designing and embroidery, makeup, and grooming, herbal cosmetics, handbags), Food and Beverages (cooking, baking), Teaching, and Home Décor. The idea was to train them and help them kickstart their home-based businesses. The program also included seed money and access to further finance for all the participants. My part consisted of 20 hours of training (using Computer Labs) to help these upcoming entrepreneurs in effectively using Information Technology for business. I divided the content into four parts, which meant 5 hours each day and my course outline looked as follows: Day 1: Getting to know your Devices The participants were taught about different devices we use in everyday business, including computers, smartphones, printers, USB devices, scanners, etc., they were also taught about operating systems, installing different apps (Skype and Chrome), and how to use common desktop apps like calculator, calendar and MS Paint. They learned to connect their smartphones with computers via data cables and also the use of USB drives for saving and accessing data. Day 2: Introduction to the Internet We talked about the history of the internet and the world wide web, learned about browsers and their features, about different websites and search engines. Participants were given time to explore Google Search and we did different exercises in selecting good keywords and finding information in different formats. Participants created their personal email accounts and learned to send emails to their peers and to me. We talked about different features that Gmail offers and also learned about the use of Google Drive. Day 3: Using Social Media for Business Day 3 was all about social media, participants created their Facebook profiles and business pages and learned to navigate them. We also talked about privacy settings, internet safety, brand building, content types, product photography and descriptions, setting up a Facebook shop, and customer services. They also learned to use Instagram for product promotion. Day 4: Introduction to MS Office Apps The last day was about using MS Office for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Participants created their resumes and a presentation about their dreams and aspirations. They used images and quotes that resonated with them and emailed them to me so that I can give them feedback. After the completion of all the content, we did an extra two-hour session (for Karachi only) where I answered all of their questions and talked about the plans for them to move ahead with creating a social media presence for their businesses. After Karachi’s cohort, I went to Quetta for two days (IBA partnered with BUITEMS and we used their campus facilities) and we condensed the training by completing it in two days only (9 hours each day). We have a Facebook group where both cohorts are added and it’s open for questions or to showcase their recent work and wins. Most of these ladies are very active on their social media profiles and we have seen great friendships coming out of this Entrepreneurial program. Each cohort had their own Pitch day and Bazar where they presented and showcased their Business Model Canvas and products to their trainers, mentors, and officials from both universities, Aurat Foundation, and USAID. They took feedback and networked with the guests. I couldn’t attend either of them but I saw the pictures and spoke to the team afterward and got to know about the amazing professionalism shown by our newly trained business owners. This program was a notable initiative for encouraging women's economic empowerment and successfully trained more than 100 upcoming Women Entrepreneurs. We all know that Women’s economic empowerment is a really important step towards creating a better and more economically stable world. Investing in women is smart economics because it causes a shift in the spending habits of a family and we see that more is invested into children’s health, nutrition and education. You will find numerous researches where it was proven that women invest more in their families than men and add greater value to the household and the economy. For more details on this, check "Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment" at UNWomen's Website. I would also recommend you to take a look at "The Economic Crisis: The Impact on Women", a fact sheet by USAID, and a report on “Indicators of Women’s Empowerment in Developing Nations” by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now, about my own thoughts on the project, I don’t think I have ever been involved in something that made me so overwhelmed with emotions and there were times when I had to take a moment and process all that I was observing. I run a community for WomenInTechPK, so I have seen plenty of talented and ambitious women but this lot topped everyone else. These women were skilled, eager to learn, and more than that had so much hope for the future. Our workshops were very open for communication and these women had no hesitation in asking questions. I saw that the more they learned, the more fascinated they became with technology. In the first session, I asked them about their expectation from this program and most of them wanted to learn how to use technology for their personal and professional goals. Also, when we talked about the reasons to start a business, I heard some really remarkable goals, like, putting kids to a better school, helping husband/father/brother with finances, buying a house/car, being financially independent, able to afford better living and healthcare, improving themselves and making their families proud. These women were inspiring and had an intense growth mindset, they took notes, completed their exercises, and sent me questions via email after each session. A lot of these women had rational and some irrational fears about technology and we discussed at great length how to use the internet safely. We also talked about how to spot a fake profile or a troll and ways to deal with these situations. I sat with each one of them to make sure that they understood Facebook’s privacy settings and also taught them to block and report people. This whole exercise was really important in building their confidence and helping them understand good and bad behaviors on social media. I have had some great teammates during this project and their guidance and support were vital for the value that I was trying to deliver. Soha Zulfiqar, Kanza Sohail, and our EAs were really helpful and executed this project flawlessly. I owe a special shout-out to Ayesha for being super amazing, especially during our trip to Quetta! This project will always remain very close to my heart and I would love to be a part of further Women Empowerment initiatives. Let’s talk about the possibilities, tweet at me!

  • Lessons Learned in Teaching QA

    Written on August 20th, 2017 (Title is inspired by Lessons Learned in Software Testing, a book by Bret Pettichord, Cem Kaner, and James Marcus Bach) Back in December 2009, I started my career as a Jnr. Quality Assurance Engineer and my role were focused on testing the applications that we were enhancing along with the maintenance of QA processes, environments, and servers. It’s been almost 8 years and my role has evolved into a strategy maker but implementing QA activities is still the favorite part of my work. In January 2016, I was asked to teach a course on Software Quality Assurance to Computer Science undergrads and since then, I have taught three batches at two different universities. During this time, I have worked on revamping the course outline and have added some workshop facilitation techniques in our usual lecture-style classes. This blog is documenting my journey to find strategies that work or don’t work while teaching this course and how I made sure to deliver some value to my students. Usually, we are given a course outline that talks about the course objectives including topics, the sourcebook, and any reference book (s), if required. We are also given a calendar of classes and exams that will be taken during the semester. Following is the official course outline for SQA taken from Higher Education Commission’s official website that applies to all the CS undergrad programs. You can see the complete document here. Course Name: Software Quality Assurance Credit Hours: 3 Prerequisites: Software Engineering Course Outline: What Is Software Quality: Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering Software Testing: Testing: Concepts, Issues, and Techniques, Test Activities, Management, and Automation, Coverage and Usage Testing Based on Checklists and Partitions, Input Domain Partitioning and Boundary Testing, Coverage and Usage Testing Based on Finite-State Machines and Markov Chains, Control Flow, Data Dependency, and Interaction Testing, Testing Techniques: Adaptation, Specialization, and Integration. Quality Assurance beyond Testing: Defect Prevention and Process Improvement, Software Inspection, Formal Verification, Fault Tolerance, and Failure Containment, Comparing Quality Assurance Techniques and Activities. Quantifiable Quality Improvement: Feedback Loop and Activities for Quantifiable Quality Improvement, Quality Models and Measurements Defect Classification and Analysis. Risk Identification for Quantifiable Quality Improvement, Software Reliability Engineering. Reference Materials: 1. Software Quality Engineering: Testing, Quality Assurance, and Quantifiable Improvement, Jeff Tian, Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Press, 1 st Edition, 2005(or Latest Edition). 2. “Mastering Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques for Software Developers”, Murali Chemuturi, J. Ross Publishing, 2010 (or Latest Edition) After seeing the above outline, I sat down with one of my teammates and we talked about how disproportionately theoretical it looks and the books mentioned are very one-dimensional. All the classes were supposed to happen lecture style and with all this theory, there wouldn’t be any time left for learning anything practical. More recent methodologies were missing from it and there was no room for different schools of thought and comparative studies. We also saw the outline for its prerequisite course and it was full of various document templates and traditional Software Engineering Practices. So we concluded the following: We need to add content about Exploratory Testing, Automation Practices, Agile Testing Quadrants, Cross-Browser and Cross-Platform Testing Techniques, A/B Testing, and Monitoring. We also decided to add more diverse reading material for students so we made a list of books and blogs that we thought they must-read. We also decided to add Continuous Delivery and DevOps in the content along with an overview of a Test Management Tool (JIRA) and an Automation Tool (Selenium). Bonus points for doing JMeter. Also, Testing will be taught by doing, so we will pick an industry project for students so that they can learn to hunt and report bugs. Assignments will include creating Test Plans, Test Cases, and Test Scripts. Also, a study on formal methods and their relevance to the current tech industry will be included. Pretty ambitious, eh? I know! I tried to divide all the content into 15 weeks of teaching, 3 hours every week and I realized that I was in trouble. So I made a list of topics that were “must to teach” (just like “must to haves” in our Product Backlogs). My list looked something like this: Quality, Software Quality and its factors, Software Quality Control and Assurance. SDLC, STLC and Bug Life Cycle, Bug Reporting and Bug Advocacy, Test Cases, Field Validation Matrices. Test Planning, Writing a Test Plan, Software Testing Types, Levels, and Approaches. Heuristics for Exploratory Testing, Alphabets of Testing, Agile Testing Quadrants. Code Coverage, Code Refactoring, Testing Automation, and Heuristics for Stop Testing. Cost of Quality, Defect Prevention, Defect Detection Techniques. Fagan Inspection, Software Inspection, Formal/Informal Reviews. Gold Plating, Scope Creep, and Change Management, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and DevOps. Software Failure Mechanisms, Software Reliability Engineering, Models for Quality Assessments. Defect Analysis, Data Integrity, CRC, A/B Testing, and CBCT. Tool(s) Overview. I selected the following books as reference reads: Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Bret Pettichord, Cem Kaner, and James Marcus Bach Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design by James A. Whittaker, Alan Page Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory Managing the Testing Process: Practical Tools and Techniques for Managing Hardware and Software Testing by Rex Black Software Quality Engineering: Testing, Quality Assurance, and Quantifiable Improvement by Jeff Tian In our first class, my first slide looked like this: So here comes the lessons that I have learned during the three semesters that I have spent teaching this course. I am learning new things every day and I will try and keep this list up-to-date! Lesson # 1: Context gives meaning to everything! Context can be defined as “the formal or informal setting in which a situation occurs; it can include many aspects or dimensions, such as environment, social activity, goals or tasks of groups and individuals; time (year/month/day), etc.” Brown (2010). As we started discussing certain practices and their uses in certain scenarios, I realized that students think more critically when I ingrained in them that without context we cannot determine the validity and efficiency of any solution. They started talking about hypothetical situations and did in-depth discussions about the factors affecting those situations along with the strategies that can be considered to solve the chaos. Lesson # 2: Visual Aid tools make things fun and easy to learn! We used mind maps and flow diagrams everywhere. Be it illustrating an application’s features or deciding how to run a strategy meeting, we used visual aids and took visual notes too. I directed them to check the mind maps made by Santhosh Tuppad and his team and they loved browsing through their work. Because we were doing these activities in class we used good old pen and paper to create a visual aid. Lesson # 3: Testing by doing is the way to go! We picked up products (one each semester) from the local incubators (The NEST I/O) and entrepreneurs, we strategized the testing efforts and went ahead with it. Students were divided into multiple teams and were assigned team leads. They took a week’s time to explore and test the products (without any specifications). They filled in bug reports and compared the product with its competitors, wrote their analysis and recommendations, and in the end, we shared them with the development team by inviting them to our class. This whole exercise showed them how testing can generate value for a business and the goal is not to undermine or find faults with anyone, but rather improve the quality of the product. Lesson # 4: Comparing different schools of thought/approaches helps in seeing things critically. We talked about different schools of thought and used a number of diverse books throughout the weeks which helped with understanding how complex real-world problems can be and a person’s ability to understand and evaluate possibilities is a skill that requires rigorous learning and diverse experience. We also checked some definitions and templates used by the practitioners and standards (ISO, CMMI, etc.) and concluded that these templates can’t be used without adopting them to our project, process, and people’s context. Lesson # 5: Sometimes, chewing what you bit becomes impossible. The changes that I made to the course outline added pressure for me and we had to skim through some of the content because of time shortage. We also couldn’t do a full-on tutorial of the test automation tool. So I decided to give them the material and a week’s time to experiment with it. I wanted to call in a Test Manager to talk to the class but the schedule didn’t work for us two out of three times. I also ended up doing more unplanned work due to the complex nature of tasks and high student engagement. But all in all, it was all worth it! Lesson # 6: Working in a team is a key lesson! We hit a few problems during the testing assignment where some students were uncomfortable in working with a certain team lead or in a group without their friend(s). Sometimes I let them change their team, other times they had to put up with whatever was given. Another lesson was for team leads to review work done by others and take responsibility for their teams. They presented the findings to the development team after we were done with testing, reporting, and sorting of all the information. Lesson # 7: Humor is a great aid in keeping the class awake and interested! They say that our sense of humor is connected to our sense of wonder. Students tend to retain better when humor is involved and they also participate in the discussions more. The point to note here is that humor by no means translates to vulgar language or jokes, rather topic-related humor that either questions or comments on the concept. We had a strict policy against sexist and racist remarks, crude and sarcastic tone, and infighting. Lesson # 8: CD and DevOps are geek-gasmic topics for tool buffs! Deployment pipelines, automated test frameworks, infrastructure maintenance, monitoring, and testing in production were well received by students. We also talked about tools for automating most of the error-prone and time-consuming tasks. All of them were familiar with GitHub but after the discussion, they actually went ahead with researching tools like Docker, Puppet, and Chef. Lesson # 9: Storytelling is an excellent teaching strategy! There’s something about stories that stick with us and help us in retaining the lessons better. Stories engage our thinking, emotions, and imagination all at once. We used a lot of cases and stories to talk about the topics and I received help from so many fellow testers who shared their glorious successes and screw-ups with me and gave me permission to narrate them in my classes. I also shared stories about my old and current projects with them and a lot of times, the students amazed me by understanding the situation better than I did. Lesson # 10: Talking about Risk is a must! Testing requires asking a lot of questions and then trying to find the answers that fit. It also requires excellent listening skills and you need to listen to your client, your team, and your C-level management and put the pieces together to create a picture that can help you test better. A lot of these questions and information will be about the things that can go in unexpected ways (that’s a risk!) so doing a risk workshop is imperative. We did that before starting testing the product and made sure that we write them down along with the mitigations and contingencies. This activity introduced them to risk-based testing and its significance. Talking about the more risky features (for example, the ones where you are using some external services/APIs) and features that can’t be tested from a specific user persona/interface made them ask some really fascinating questions. During one of the sessions, we saw that the APK file that was given to us didn’t work on some phones and failed the system consistency test. We made sure to check the OS version and phone configuration but we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. When we spoke to the development team about it, we got to know that they never installed the app on any phone other than the only high-end phone that the team lead had and used it for testing, the app worked fine on it but didn’t work in one out of three cases when we tried to install it on our phones. In one case, we found out that the live app force the user to make a new account every time to try to use the app and that too with a new email account. So yeah, you got the point! There are so many stories to tell from the classes but I guess I should end this post here. I am trying to document more of my experiences these days and I would love to listen to your suggestions and experiences. Please feel free to reach out by commenting here or tweeting at me!

  • Agile Transformation – What is it about?

    Written on September 4th, 2017 “We need Agile urgently!” I heard our director saying this in a meeting after coming from an international trip where someone mentioned it to him during a sales meeting. “Our teams are getting out of our control and I think Agile is the way to fix it!” I was staring at him and thinking about all the stupid shit I have done in my life and taking up this job was the biggest of all (trust me, it was). “I thought you were a qualified PM and you never even mentioned it once that we can use it to fix the problem. Did you even know what Agile is? I was told that it doesn’t have a PM, so you are scared of losing your job, am I right?” This was directed towards me and I couldn’t say anything. Just lots and lots of internal screaming! Have you ever been to a situation like this where your efforts for cultural change were shot down every time and then you hear someone selling Agile to your C-level management? If yes, my sympathies! This story is not a new one, you will find Project Managers talking about it in forums and on Twitter that their employers and/or bosses think that Agile is a magic pill and it is going to solve all of their problems instantly. You will listen to their woes about the fruitless discussions they had with their senior management and ended up getting to sit with a shiny consultant selling false dreams of no chaos and people saying yes to everything, major cost cuts, and customers eager to pay more for your services/products. You will scream internally, curse yourself and then move on with the direction that has been forced on you. Does this sound like your life story? If yes, make yourself a hot beverage and take a seat! I have 12 years of experience in Project Management and I have worked with almost a dozen companies helping them in streamlining their processes. I know what Agile is, I teach it, I preach it, and I breathe it. But sometimes, Agile is not the answer, firing stupid headless directors is! (Just kidding, your job is safe!) Let me take you to the list of misconceptions that I have heard in these years, my thoughts on them, and also, some tips on helping your team and company in becoming truly Agile! Misconception No. 1: Becoming Agile means no process, impromptu process, or chaos! No, it doesn’t. Not having a process is not an Agile thing, it’s a stupid thing. We can’t make things up as we go and then say we are going the Agile way. Agility is about the ability to move, to change, and to pivot. We can only do that when we know where we are going and no, those colorful Gantt charts won’t tell us that! Misconception No. 2: Agile is a methodology! No, it’s not. It’s a set of values. It has a manifesto with some solid principles behind it. These principles talk about collaboration, transparency, autonomy, adaptation and leadership. Agile doesn’t tell us how to get the job done, or what processes to use, it just tells us how to be. Agile methodologies include Test DrivenDevelopment, Feature Driven Development, Extreme Programming, Lean, Kanban, and SCRUM. Misconception No 3: Agile can fix everything! Nope. Not a quick fix. Can’t fix bad leadership or lousy management or bad hires or dodgy contract terms or even the leaking tap in our office’s cafeteria. Agile is not a magic pill or a wand (HP fan alert!). It’s a process of change that requires time, effort and excellent leadership skills. Misconception No. 4: Agile will aid in micromanagement. Agile upholds the principles of transparency and accountability but it doesn’t expect the managers to become nosy. Micromanagement is the opposite of Agile. The reason that most of the Agile-based methodologies talk specifically about self-organizing and cross-functional teams is that they want the teams to have the autonomy and authority to make decisions for the collective benefit. We can’t stand near the SCRUM board and reorder stories in the middle of a sprint and no hourly reports for anyone. Also, nobody can write 150 emails a day while developing software! Misconception No. 5: Agility will come to our team overnight! Agile transformation is a BPR project, which means change will happen to the end-to-end business process and it is an organizational change that doesn’t happen overnight. It requires changes in everything from team count in a project, to skillsets, to hierarchy and the role of managers. It even makes changes in how we estimate our projects. All of this can’t happen on a Monday morning after a long weekend. Even the prep time can take days. Case studies can help but every transformation is different, we will hit some walls, fall into wells but if we know what we are doing, we will come out of it alive and stronger. Misconception No. 6: We will simply buy Agile. Lol, what??!? We can’t. Even if we are willing to pay for it with Bill Gate’s net worth. We can hire one million consultants or specialists or coaches or whatever fancy titles these people give themselves, but we can’t just buy it. Can we buy fitness? Nope, we have to work for it. In the same way, we work for this cultural change. These consultants are knowledgeable people with a lot of experience but they can’t fix management hurdles or biases trickling from the top. Coaching does help but change happens from the inside. Misconception No 7: Management’s buy-in is essential. Nope, we don’t need their mere buy-in, we need their passionate involvement and their full-on commitment. Senior management may think otherwise but you can’t delegate change. Remember, it is a BPR effort which means top to the bottom initiative. Bottom-up initiatives will fail if management is not willing to inspect, reflect and adapt their own behaviors and work patterns. Becoming a facilitator from a manager doesn’t apply to our functional managers only, to change our organization, we will have to change ourselves! Misconception No. 8: Reading a Wikipedia page will tell us all about working in an Agile environment. Our team will need vigorous training, coaching, and mentoring. We will have to invest in people and make sure that they are skilling up properly. They will need time to cope with this change and this disruption can also cause displacement, so people who aren’t ready or are unwilling to change, will have to go. It can even temporarily slow down their work progress. We will have to be patient and train with them. Misconception No. 9: Only Software Development Teams need to be Agile. No, our whole organization will need to transform and bureaucratic values must go out of the window. SCRUM can be implemented even in non-tech teams and we can teach them to use it to get things done faster. The agile movement was initially about Software Development but with the passage of time and experimentation from both the researchers and practitioners, these principles have moved into other work domains as well. Misconception No. 10: The purpose of Agile is to increase revenue. Increased revenue can be a byproduct of Agile Transformation but it is not the sole purpose of it. The real purpose is to deliver high-quality services/products to our customers with minimal surprises and delays. When we talk about implementing SCRUM, the main goal is always about eliminating waste, precisely waste of time. This waste happens everywhere, unproductive meetings, lengthy and useless reporting, slow decision making, and delays in early defect detection, which can help in reducing rework. Now let’s talk about the questions that we should consider before taking up Agile Transformation. What is the vision for change? Do we need it or just want it? And why? Is anything broken? What is it? Can it be fixed without the transformation? Is our team ready? Do we need transformation or adaptation? BPR or TQM? Do we have any critical deadlines or client commitments approaching? What is our current process? Do we even have one? Who owns the current process? Can we name a person? Does the person know about their ownership? What are the pain points for the team? Are they similar to the ones that the management has? Are we aware of the waste in our process? If yes, what kind of waste is it (Partially Done Work, Extra Features, Relearning, Handoffs, Delays, Task Switching, and Defects)? How do we measure our process efficiency? Do we have communicated metrics for it? Which methodology suits our context better? Do we have a budget for investing in infrastructure (tools) and people (training)? Do we have a communicated deadline for this transformation effort? Answer these questions for every stakeholder, what’s in it for him? How will it change his work/day? These are the questions that we need to sit and discuss with our senior management. We need answers for each one of them to assess the situation and see where we stand and what we will need to accomplish this organizational change. If you have decided to go for it, here are some tips for you to make it less painful for yourself and your team. Have a transformation agenda that talks about the reasons and expectations from this effort. Start with a visual board (use a wall or a whiteboard), buy sticky notes in different colors and some dry erase markers. Identify people who are going to lead this project. Talk to them, listen to their concerns, give them the answers to the questions and ask them to select a leader within themselves or you take up the headache. Get yourself and your core team trained from an Agile Coach or an industry practitioner. Spend some time reading books (see the end of this post for some book recommendations) and blogs, watch some relevant talks and listen to what experts are saying. Make the process simpler by removing buzzwords, jargon, and corporate garbage terms from your vocabulary. Find the quick wins or low-hanging fruits to top up the team’s morale. Find a pilot project to implement the new way of working, observe what hell breaks and why? Orient yourself again, make a decision, and act on it. You will have to make sure that no information hoarding is happening, clear, open, and continuous communication is the lifeline of Agile so let the board be seen by everyone, have daily standups, and let people work with each other to make it happen. If you use tools for managing projects, you will have to take a look at them again. Tools that aren’t user-friendly or adapted for Agile should be replaced with simpler more collaborative tools (JIRA, Asana, Slack, and Trello). If not, use a wall and sticky notes. As “mindset change” is the objective, you will have to spend time in communication, trust, and team-building exercises. Remember, barbeque parties or team lunches won’t enrich trust, everyday interactions and teamwork will. Make sure you and your team are listening to people and helping them as much as you can. Make feedback your best friend, so listen to everyone, your management, your teams, and your spouse (just kidding, don’t listen to them. LOL. No, don’t take my advice on that!). Agile methodologies (especially SCRUM) believe in continuous improvement and you will always find ways to improve. Record the feedback, analyze it and then implement whatever is necessary. Create some wall art by posting SCRUM’s (if you have selected it!) pillars, Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation there. Also, create a quick-term repository with it, for example, the definition of done, the definition of waste, etc. Set some metrics to record the progress and measure the impact of your efforts. You can track your team’s velocity by seeing how many story points/features are done (ready to use) in a single sprint. You can also use different quality metrics (customer feedback/rating/reviews, number of failures reported by the client, time taken to fix, etc.) to see how well your team is doing. Lastly, you will need practice and patience to scale your efforts and let them spread to all of your teams. You will need team rituals to get people going and you may face resistance but don’t let it stop you. If you are looking for some books to learn more about Agile, I would recommend the following: SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland (co-creator of SCRUM) Succeeding with Agile Software Development using SCRUM by Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization by Johanna Rothman Agile Transformation is not a task for a random Tuesday rather a well-thought-out decision to make things better. Agility can bring so many blessings with it and it sure is helpful but we need to make sure that we are doing it for the right reasons and the right way. At the end of the day, it’s the team that matters and we need to make sure that they are in on this mindset change. It won’t happen overnight and you will stumble upon the way but you will need to keep going till you have a thriving culture of being transparent and adaptive! I do hope that this long rant will be helpful for you and I would love to listen to your experiences in Agile Transformation. Feel free to comment or tweet at me and I will get back to you!

  • Understanding Freemium - Tips from the Trenches!

    I have been repeatedly asked for advice from product teams on how to make Freemium work for their products because I am a person who likes to talk less and write more. Here I am with some tips from the trenches of product development. So let’s start! What is Freemium? Freemium is a strategy in which a business acquires new users by hooking them in with a free offering and later upselling their premium features and converting them into paying customers. This strategy can work on both a one-time fee or a periodic subscription fee and it is widely popular with today’s internet-based products. The term “Freemium” is a merger of two terms, free and premium, and was coined in 2006 but the practice is as old as 1980’s where businesses would lure in customers by giving them a basic set of services for free and then charge for the premium or value-added services. How does it work? Let’s assume you have a software product with multiple features, you divide those features into basic and advanced categories, the basic features are the ones you will be offering for free to your users so that you can later upsell them to buy advanced features. This reduces the acquisition cost as people like free stuff and would be keen to signup and get first-hand experience of your product. For example, dropbox gives you free storage space but if you want more storage space, you will have to become a premium user. The same goes for Skype, where basic calling (over the internet) is free but if you want to call someone’s landline or mobile phone, you will need to buy their subscription. Another example can be of games, where everyone can play the game for free but for added lives, moves, or features, you will have to buy value-added services. Is it a business model or a growth tool? I would argue that it is a growth tool and can be a part of your business strategy but it can’t be considered as a sole business model. Your real business model is to sell your product(s) and earn revenue either as a one-time fee per customer or as a periodic subscription but entertaining free users is how you are reducing your promotional costs and acquiring potential customers. This tool has been a proven growth strategy but it comes with its pitfalls, so in some cases, the cost of maintaining free users can become a dead weight on the business. Also, making sure that your free offerings won’t sink your premium offerings is a crucial matter of balance. You will also see that a lot of businesses will opt out of freemium eventually and move towards product demo or free trials for their potential customers. Tips from the trenches! So here are some suggestions for you to make Freemium work for you! Think about your product and market size critically and try to answer these questions. These answers will help you strategize better and fine-tune your offerings. Can you quantify the demand for your product? What are your competitors doing? What are your constraints in terms of the cost of serving free users? What is the size of your market? Is it too big or too niche? What are your USPs and how can you capitalize on them? Do you want to play on the cost or on the quality of your offering? Have you reconsidered the pros and cons of Freemium vs. Free Trial vs. Free Demo? Have you reconsidered the pros and cons of a one-time fee vs. a periodic subscription fee? Categorizing free and premium offerings is extremely important. The free or basic features should be useful enough for the users to love the product but shouldn’t give it all away. The free features should create a value gap that will make them pay for the premium features. Some ways of making sure that your users convert into paying customers are to offer premium support, advanced and novelty features, bigger or unlimited storage and/or user capacity, ad-free experience, more third-party service integrations, and better referral incentives. Also, think about having multiple tiers of paid customers, it may be the way to go for your product. You should give your free users a taste of the premium features by adding a free trial for the premium products, this is to create a FOMO effect in the users and should make them want to switch to the premium product offerings. Create helpful content, this should include, helpful blog posts on relevant topics, the knowledge base about the product features, FAQs, newsletters, and excellent email and notification alerts. The goal is to make your customers take full advantage of the product and have hassle-free access to all the information that they need to do so. Think about the pricing too. I would never recommend you to make your product cheaper and compete on price only, instead, the idea is to price it the right way. In my experience, sometimes, increasing the price to a certain level adds up to the customer’s buying motivation. Similarly, having well-thought-out promotions can also help in increasing your conversion rate. And here comes the conversion rate, so what should be your game plan here? Should you only focus on getting it higher? I say no. It is all about the context, your goal should be to keep it in check while keeping an eye on the total market size as well as the number of new acquisitions. If the conversion rate is too high but the acquisitions are stagnant, it tells you that you are unable to capture new users and if the conversion rate is too low but the acquisitions are increasing day-by-day, it can add up to your cost of serving free users. Manage your referral system well. You need to incentivize your users for their word-of-mouth and refer your product to people in their network. These incentives can take different forms. In some cases, creating a discount system on the basis of referrals can work, in other cases, extra features or storage space is a better idea. You can also gamify the whole process and make it fun for your users. For new user or customer onboarding processes, the first step is not to automate the process, but to create a process and then optimize it. Initially, doing one-on-one onboardings can be helpful in optimizing and automating the process at scale. Invest in social media and especially in social listening. Products with a lively and helpful social media presence with quick response time do comparatively well. Email marketing should be done with extra care, the idea is to disseminate information and make people know the product better and not to blast them with promotional content which will make them ignore your emails or worse unsubscribe from your mailing list. Be mindful of the stuff you are measuring. Not all metrics are useful or give meaningful information. I will advise keeping an eye on the following. Cost per Acquisition Cost of Serving a User Cost of Serving a Customer Conversion Rate Daily Active User Average Revenue per DAU Average Revenue per Customer Lifetime Value Daily Sessions It is always a good idea to have multiple payment options and plans for your customers. Constantly remind your users to upgrade and get creative in finding ways to do so. Use analytics, especially user behavior on your product to decide on future enhancements and re-bundle your free and premium offerings. Not evolving your product can be fatal and you need good data to act on, find that data by observing your users and customers as well as by connecting with them and listening to their needs and concerns. I hope you will find these tips helpful. If you want to learn more about Freemium, feel free to get in touch. I am mostly found on Twitter @FaizaYousuf.

  • Start your freelancing career - A step-by-step guide!

    Written on November 8th, 2017 Technology is responsible for a lot of changes in our lives and the most important change of all is how we make money for sustaining ourselves and our families. With the increase in internet penetration and cheaper hardware costs, access to freelancing opportunities has become easier and we have seen a rise in people opting to work from home and providing products/services for a wider audience. I run a community for women who are connected to the tech industry and quite often we find our members asking questions about starting a freelancing career. We have already done a couple of webinars on this topic, but I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog post that can help people in setting things up for starting their journey as a freelancer and a solopreneur. Before moving to the step-by-step guide, I want to give you some context to this blog post, I started my freelancing career in February 2007 and left it in December 2009 after I graduated from University and was expected to get a stable job. I spent 5 years in the tech industry in different positions and then in July 2014, I again left my job to become a solopreneur. It has been a little over three years now and this blog post contains the route I have taken to create a sustainable business and do a lot of passion projects. Usually, the basics stay the same but the details can differ from person to person and as there are no silver bullets for having a fulfilling career, working tirelessly is the only way to achieve your goals. Let's start setting up the shop! Step 1: Find areas of interest/expertise This is the first and the foremost step, you need to find your areas of expertise/interest. The kind of work that excites you and you have some experience with it would be the best choice. Run a search online and see what kind of skills are in demand and if you possess those skills, in some cases, you will have to learn a new skill and/or tool or take a class to improve yourself, don’t shy away from learning, because that’s the only way a freelancer can stay relevant. Step 2: Make Lists (a lot of them!) This step is about taking an inventory of all the things that can help you become successful in your career. List down your skills, the kind of projects you are into, industries/business areas of your interest, things that you need to learn to improve yourself (e.g., productivity, networking, etc.), strengths and weakness, and key people in your Rolodex who can be significant in your growth. Pro tip: Use a tool like Trello or Asana for that and thank me later! Step 3: Get on a freelancing platform (optional) There are plenty of freelancing platforms out there and we have seen massive success stories coming out of these platforms. I have personally worked on Upwork and I am a big fan but there is a very cutthroat competition for projects and it may take you a couple of weeks in creating a kickass profile and some good proposals. Upwork publishes content to help newbies get on the platform and their customer services staff is helpful too. You can also try Fiverr, Freelancer, and People Per Hour for scoring projects. There are separate platforms available for specific kinds of skills, like Toptal and Freelance Writing Gigs. I would recommend you to explore at least two of these platforms and see what suits you and your business goals. Step 4: Polish your Social Media Presence This step is crucial for you to be known as a professional and someone who can be a great addition to any project/team. Most of us use social media for news/entertainment, staying in touch with friends and family, and/or for ranting/venting (especially Twitter), but now you need to shift the focus from all of the above and make it an aid for your business. A few rules that I follow for my social media profiles are: Make sure that the bio/about sections of your profiles are up-to-date. Use your full name and keep your profiles public (if possible), it will make you searchable. No religious/political discussions. No personal pictures/check-ins/details. Actively use Facebook groups for participating in discussions with like-minded people (same rule applies for LinkedIn). Create, curate, and share relevant content with your audience. Use Twitter for connecting with people, taking part in Twitter chats, and forming connections. Evaluate your own profiles and see what can be improved. I would also recommend you to Google yourself and see what shows up. Close/deactivate accounts that you no longer use and make sure that you create a search alert for your name so that you can be notified of any relevant activity. Step 5: Create a Portfolio It truly depends on the kind of work you do, but having a portfolio can increase your odds of scoring better clients. If you are a coder, have a GitHub repo, if you are a designer/illustrator, Behance can work for you, if you are a writer, have your own blog/Facebook page and keep your publications up-to-date. In case, your work is like mine (Product Strategy, Research, Writing, Testing, etc.) and with NDAs, do spend some time in creating some work samples, documents, visual aid, etc., that you can showcase while bidding for a project. Step 6: Create SOPs for your business I have created some Standard Operating Procedures for my business which include protocols for onboarding a client, managing communication, cost/time estimation, setting up deadlines, and billing. I have also created a set of templates that I use for my work, for example, proposals, project charters, etc. For communication, I prefer to keep it all documented which means it’s either email or a collaboration tool (like Asana). Use an e-invoicing solution to automate your invoices and if not, create an invoice template along with an invoicing record sheet. It is highly advisable to spend some time sorting out these details as they will save you from a lot of headaches and potential loss of client/money. Step 7: Sort out the payment method You need to have at least two payment methods to make sure that your clients can pay you without hassle. PayPal doesn’t work in Pakistan and if you are using a freelancing platform, they have their own embedded payment methods. For your other clients, Electronic Funds Transfer can work and if not, you can easily get a Skrill and/or Payoneer account. I would also recommend you Escrow your payments to make sure that you get paid for the work you have done. Step 8: Create a rate card for hourly work or estimation techniques for fixed-price projects Costing is tricky and you will see a lot of people struggling with it. Rather than quoting on the fly, create a rate card/bundles for the projects that are redundant and simple to execute. For complex projects, set an hourly rate for different services that you provide. You can run a search online to see the hourly rate range for different services and even check with your local freelancing community. Once you have set your rate, don’t deviate from it too much because that will going to affect your reputation and clients will negotiate on cheaper rates rather than better quality/scope/value-added services. Step 9: Create your sales funnel You have done most of the setting up work, now is the time to get cracking. If you are working on a freelancing platform, they have a bidding mechanism but if you want to generate business outside the freelancing platforms, you need a sales funnel. You will have to establish yourself as an expert in the field so that people know who to talk to when they are in trouble with a specific kind of task/project. There can be multiple ways that you can have the better acquisition of your prospects: The best and most effective of all is to write blogposts, experience reports, white papers, answers on Quora, etc. Start podcasting, which doesn’t require a lot of equipment and can help you in reaching your potential customers. Creating an online course is also a very effective way of reaching out to the right kind of audience. Email marketing via your website. Hosting a webinar, even a targeted Facebook Live session can help. Participate in online discussions (Targeted Facebook groups are a gold mine of connections) And last but not the least, network with the right kind of people and be helpful. Step 10: Optimize your work procedures and be productive I can’t stress enough on being productive when it comes to running a solo show. Set a work timetable, have a proper workstation (table and chair), a stable internet connection (have a backup if you are in Pakistan), a note-taking tool (Evernote, Google Keep, Notion, etc.), a collaboration tool (Asana, Trello, Slack, etc.), cloud storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) and noise-canceling earbuds. You will need all of the above to be able to focus on your work and without focus, there isn’t much chance of getting success. Step 11: Be reliable Reliability is a great and winning characteristic for any solopreneur, establish yourself as a reliable resource and earn the trust of both your colleagues and clients. This trait will help you in developing long-term relationships with your clients and will turn into repeated business contracts. Make sure that you communicate early and often when you are working on a project. Also, your words and deeds should always be aligned. Step 12: Be a lifelong learner For a freelancer, learning is not only important but necessary to keep the business afloat. Every now and then, you will have to take up work which will be fairly new to you and you will be required to learn a new skill to deliver it successfully. Learning will add up to your skillset and will help you win better and more work. Take an online class, listen to a podcast, attend a lecture or a conference, and add up to your skillset. Learning will help you grow both personally and professionally and you will be able to make better and more informed decisions. I know that it’s a long list and it will require both patience and perseverance in getting your first gig and completing it successfully. It is a tough but rewarding route nonetheless and I assure you that once you get a hang of working remotely and on your own, you wouldn’t want to go back to a 9-5 job. Do you have a question or a project to discuss? Let’s talk!

  • The best books I read in 2021!

    And this train wreck of a year is about to end in a few weeks. Thank God for that! My reading goal for this year was 52 books but I once I reached there, I pushed it to 60 books. Like last two years, here is my list of the best books I read in 2021. This is an unordered list and you will see that my focus stayed on fiction and especially on fantasy. How many of the following have you read? Circe by Madeline Miller Uprooted by Naomi Novik The secrets of consulting by Gerald Weinberg The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story by Lee Berger and John Hawks Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman Anxious People by Fredrik Backman There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klun Finding Your Element by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica How many books did you read this year? And what is your favorite genre? If you want to chat, find me on Twitter!

  • The best books I read in 2020

    2020 has so far been the year of chaos, grief, and anxiety. I lost a few dear ones to this terrible virus and spent a lot of time trying to feel less overwhelmed. I started this year intending to read 30 books as I went back to working as a full-time employee after six years. But it turned out that the more shit I feel, the more I fall back to my kindle. This year has been a year of fiction, to be precise, the year of fantasy fiction. Below is my list in no particular order. I wanted to add all books from N. K Jemisin’s broken earth trilogy, and the same goes for S. A Chakraborty’s Deavabad trilogy, but I didn’t because once you pick up the first book, you will go through the whole trilogy as quickly as humanly possible. So here it goes! On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty The Testament by Margaret Atwood The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday Little Women by Louisa May Alcott How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide by Crystal Marie Fleming The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells So how was this year for you? What books did you read and loved? Let’s catch up on Twitter!

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