Thoughts and Learnings

Maslow's hierarchy of needs Physiological Safety Love/belonging Esteem Self actualization Porter's 5 forces Bargaining power of Customers Bargaining power of Suppliers Threat of new Entrants Threat of substitutes Competitive rivalry within the industry SWOT:  Strength Weakness Opportunities Threats

User stories are the smallest unit of activity of a functionality. They are used capture an activity or feature that an end-user does or is impacted with. In essence, user stories are made from functional requirements. A functional requirement can have multiple user stories. User stories should have the following structured in anyway deemed fit- User story number Parent functionality number Name Created by Created/Last Updated Date Actor(s) Description Trigger Pre-condition(s) Post-condition(s) Success criteria A good user story will have the following qualities- Simple Clear Concise Verifiable/testable Complete Consistent Viable A good user story will also contain the answers to what, why, when, where and how questions.

What is an API? An application program interface (API) is code that allows two software programs to communicate with each other. APIs expose features and services to developers.  Advantages Re-usability- The same API can be used by multiple applications. The APIs require the input in the right format and they will give the output as per the API contract. Hence, existing functionalities can be shared. Data Abstraction-Only the relevant details are shared (request and response). Data Encapsulation- Collection of features are grouped together to make an API.  Polymorphism- Depending on the request, the response can be varied. Maintenance – APIs are standalone entities and hence instead of enhancing or updating the individual applications that use the services, APIs can be updated and the necessary changes can be communicated to the consuming applications. Challenges APIs may undergo changes and update might be required. This will need ver...

Sources:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/computing/A-guide-to-mobile-wallets/articleshow/48641325.cms https://www.techinasia.com/talk/mobile-wallet-wars-india

Most IT applications will involve some kind of integration with an external system. This external system can be a database or any other application. The communication between systems determines how well the overall system performs. Integrations are crucial links and help us leverage the capabilities of different systems effectively. But, these integration points are vulnerable and information can be lost if all possible scenarios are not addressed. There are basically 2 scenarios that happen when a request is placed to a system- Response (System responds) No response Response can be further broken down to- Positive Acknowledgement with Data Negative Acknowledgement with Data Data- Data can be send with any/both of the responses. Whenever, there is no response from a system, there is loss of data. To retrieve the data we may have to send another request. This is where exception scenarios come and they need to be defined. The following can help us defining the scen...