Reducing organisation costs - what would you do if it was your money?

In current economy, managing costs is absolutely crucial in any organisation. Many of us are having to change our spending habits at home, and in work we’re also having to focus hard on cost control. This comes at a time when the wider business needs our support to help deliver what our customers want at a cheaper price.   In most of the organisations, we spend half our life either in meetings or preparing for meetings (what a waste of time?!? Lol ).  Therefore I thought why don’t I change the format of meetings and reduce the cost and save some time (and be productive ;) .  There are few simple measures any organisation can implement and achieve huge cost savings:   ·         Avoid overnight stays. No overnight stays, hotel accommodation or rail or air travel should be booked for the same day and meetings should be arranged for the later part of the day so that attendees can arrive comfortably.   ·         Events. Large scale events and conferences should be subject to rigorous cost control. Encourage employees to use company’s internal facilities where they can. In addition, attendance at external conferences and external training should be approved in advance by senior managers providing a full justification.   ·         Making the most of teleconference facilities. If you’re not in the same building, try to use teleconferencing facilities instead of face-to-face meetings. Conference calls have many advantages – they reduce our fuel costs and environmental impact; avoid the costs incurred with non-productive travelling time; and support our employees well being.  ·         Use Smart board or project: We all print documents for meeting attendees and it get thrown away immediately after the meeting. Instead use Smart board or projector and avoid printing presentations. Advantage – reducing printing and paper costs and environmental impact (10 points for being green and saving trees!). Few other simple tricks: ·         Recruitment. Recruit people from within the company or encourage employees to recommend their friends and relative. ‘Recommend a Friend’ reward should encouraged to reduce hefty fees of recruitment agencies.    ·         Personal equipment. Any unused personal equipment (for example blackberry’s, mobiles or laptops), should be recycled for new starters/replacements wherever possible.      We all need to work together as a team to ensure that we get the maximum value for our money. Tell us what you would do if this was your own cash? We’re interested in finding out how you think we can become even more efficient.    Thanks for everything that you’ll do to help and make sure you keep the ideas coming.   Regards Krish  

Estimating story from trenches

To me, Complexity, Effort and Time are three key things we need to consider. You look at the complexity of a story to derive the effort required to estimate the time it will take you to finish the story.
 
To use an analogy of carrying a log of wood from point A to point B:
 
COMPLEXITY: “How BIG and HEAVY is the Log of wood?”
EFFORT: “How much horsepower is required to pull this log?” This is where Story point comes in (IMO).
TIME: Say it takes 2 Horsepower, “how quickly can 6 horses move the log from A to B?” And this, we all know is velocity which can only be derived after a few Sprints.
 
Complexity cannot be seen in isolation and effort cannot be measured without knowing the complexity.