JMR UK Consultancy Ltd

Archive for February, 2012

Group Dynamics in a Workshop

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

With a diverse group of people in a workshop it is never clear how the group dynamics will turn out. Listed below is a selection of what I think are the key things that affect the Group Dynamics in a Workshop:

1. First Meeting

2. First Impressions

3. Group Leader

4. Location

First Meeting

The first meeting will always prove to be the most difficult as you will never know what to expect. After being placed in this situation on several occasions, I can safely say that what you may imagine in your head is never how it really turns out to be. It is in the first meeting that you make your judgements on people and people make judgements on you, so make your first impressions good ones.

First Impressions

Key Tip – SMILE! Smiling presents you as a friendly and approachable person. If everyone presents themselves as unapproachable, this will reflect in the group dynamics and in turn impact the course of the workshop. However, if there is a positive atmosphere, it will make the workshop a lot more bearable. A problem I had was being too shy to ask questions. No matter how ridiculous the question may seem in your head, I guarantee most people sitting in the room will be thinking of the same question. It is never fun to be the one that quietly sits back and lets everyone else do the talking so ask questions, join in, what do you have to lose? Asking questions makes the workshop a lot more interactive and displays your enthusiasm for the discussed subject. Challenge your group members; defend those you agree with, share your knowledge with others. It will be this interaction with your group that makes the dynamics of the group a lot more relaxed and social. It also makes the job of the workshop leader a lot easier.

Group Leader

The person leading the group plays a large impact on the group dynamics as he/she effectively sets the atmosphere. Let’s face it, someone reading from a PowerPoint presentation or a pile of papers is never the most amusing of situations, in fact it is the one thing that will put 90% of the group to sleep. Where there are some workshop leaders that will take this approach, on the whole most group leaders will take a different route to running their workshops. It is the use of vibrant presentations, the gesture of talking to you rather than at you, the asking of questions and the provoking of group discussions that makes a workshop a fun learning environment and it is these factors that influence the group dynamics in a positive way.

Location

As weird as it sounds I do believe that the choice of room plays a major impact on how the dynamics of a group will turn out. Being placed in a small, dark room, huddled round a table fighting for space to place your notepad and pen is not exactly the ideal setting for a workshop. It may force you to communicate with the people near you but purely for the reason that you experience that awkward feeling of literally sitting on top of one another. Ideally it pays to be in a spacious, well lit room. Not only is the atmosphere less tense but it gives everybody the freedom to network in a more comfortable environment. A lesson learnt for me, the darker the room the more bored and tired you get. If the room is bright you will find yourself being able to pay attention for a lot longer.

Top Tips

To summarise, below is a list of the top tips for assisting in creating positive group dynamics in a workshop:

1. Smile

2. Make Yourself Approachable

3. Ask Questions

4. Participate in Group Discussions

Interaction is essential to ensuring positive group dynamics in a workshop.

How JMR Consulting Ltd can Help

JMR Consulting UK Ltd’s core expertise is based upon its Financial Services heritage and 15 years of operating in the Finance and IT sectors. JMR Consulting has vast experience in running various types of workshops for example, design workshops, strategic workshops, vision, mission and values workshops as well as various types of problem solving workshops. If you would like more information, please call us on 0845 052 0900 or send an email to info@jmruk.com.

This post was written by Mandy Baga, a member of JMR Consulting UK’s graduate programme. If you would like more information on the JMR Consulting Graduate Programme, email jobs@jmruk.com.

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What makes a good CV?

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Surely any CV will be looked at?

JMR Consulting UK Ltd will help you write your CVCVs are extremely important for making a good first impression. Without a good CV, job prospects will be limited and it will be very rare that you are invited to the next stage of the recruitment process. It is very easy to distinguish between a good CV that somebody will be interested in, and a bad CV that will most probably be put to the back of the pile.

Formatting

In order to have a CV that is classed as being ‘good’, an appropriate format is vital so that the information appears organised and concise. Do not try and fit everything onto one page if it means you have to decrease the spacing and make the page look messy, unless you have been asked to submit a one page CV, which in that case it should be a summary of your full CV and should still look well organised.

The formatting needs to fit the job role you are applying for, e.g. if you are applying for a marketing role, your CV needs to be creative and show that you can sell yourself, this will make the recruiter believe you have the ability to market products and services and therefore will make you more hireable for that role. If you are applying for a role in professional services, your CV needs to be more sober but still stand out from the crowd, showing that you have the ability and the professionalism to work in the professional services industry but also that you are different and surpass the other candidates applying for the same role.

Content

The content of the CV needs to be detailed, so that the recruiter can see exactly what role you held, what company it was in, how long you were there for, your responsibilities and your achievements, if you experienced issues or problems when carrying out work, and how you successfully overcame these.

However, make sure the information on your CV is not too detailed. One way of achieving this is to summarise your responsibilities and achievements into bullet points. This ensures that what you are saying is concise and relevant and prevents you from writing unnecessary and inane information, resulting in a more interesting CV. By writing in bullet points and including obvious headings the reader can navigate through your CV more easily making the reader much happier. Whatever happens make sure your CV is not like an essay and that it is not too many pages long, as this might be too detailed for the reader to spend the time reading through your CV, meaning it could be disregarded. Remember, most people who are looking for staff want to be able to glance through the main points in your CV and decide whether to read further.

Introduction

When applying for different job roles you should not have to change the whole of your CV. The only thing that needs to be changed, and it should only be slightly every time (as otherwise you would spend too long on the CV for the number of jobs applied for), is the introduction. The introduction should be tweaked slightly to show your best and most relevant summary of experience and skills for the job specification. Make sure you do not re-copy the job specification into your introduction, as the recruiter will know that this is what you have done. You need to able to show you fit the job specification without using too many of the same words in the specification given.

How JMR Consulting Ltd can Help with Your CV and the recruitment process

JMR Consulting UK Ltd provides a unique IT contractor placement and a permanent placement consultancy service, specialising in highly qualified and experienced IT contract professionals. Our IT Contractor placement practice is positioned in the Market place between the “Big Five” Consultancies and the generic IT consultancy and IT contractor agencies. We provide high calibre professionals that you would expect from the “Big Five” but at rates that are commensurate with smaller IT recruitment consultancies or agencies due to our own very competitive margins and key relationships in the financial services market.

This post was written by Jagroop Bagary, the newest member of JMR Consulting UK’s graduate programme. If you would like more information on the JMR Consulting Graduate Programme, email jobs@jmruk.com.

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Data Migration Reconciliation

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

Reconciliation is what the business uses or businesses uses to determine if the data has been migrated correctly. The data migration reconciliation becomes what will be used for the final decision to go ahead with the data migration into production therefore it is important to include meaningful data items in the final data migration reconciliation.

Only count what counts

If you are nervous about the data mapping exercise it can become very easy to try to reconcile every field that you are migrating. This can later prove to be a costly and timely exercise because when you discover that this is actually something that cannot be counted, it has usually taken a few days (or weeks) to investigate the various reasons why it doesn’t match. Categories of this that you should include in your data migration reconciliation:

Customer Money

Count money coming in (being paid by customers) and money going out (money that will be paid to customers). This also applies to counting factors that will affect the customer’s money (for example prices)

Tax Money

Don’t mess with the tax man, always make sure the source tax amounts, both tax coming in (if applicable) and tax being paid out

Dates

If you have dates that are important do a hash total count of them. For example start dates, next payment dates, end dates. How you do the hash total doesn’t really make a difference, just make sure that both the source reconciliation and the target reconciliation program use the same method for the hash count of dates.

Don’t count what can’t be counted

Don’t try to replicate complicated Mapping rules in the reconciliations. If you are extensively manipulating the source data before creating records to load into the source, don’t try to count them. For example, if you are creating separate records for husbands, wives, children and other members of a family based on complicated rules using their address (or vice versa) where previously they were a single record; don’t try too hard to manipulate the data to force it to match. Make sure to document why it cannot be counted, and be prepared to accept a different viewpoint from the stakeholders on how to count those.

Data Migration Methodology

Our Data Migration Methodology has been built up over our years of experience and we have incorporated extensive testing, reconciliation, review and validation into our data migration methodology.

How JMR Consulting Ltd can Help with Your Data Migration Project

JMR Consulting UK Ltd.’s core expertise is based upon its Financial Services heritage and 15 years of operating in the Finance and IT sectors. Over this period, JMR’s staff have developed key application migration and data migration solutions and a constant focus on our service philosophy which is at the core of JMR’s business operation.

This post was written by Jo-Anne Owen, a member of the Professional Services team at JMR Consulting UK Ltd. If you would like more information about data migration or our professional services, please call us on 0845 052 0900 or email info@jmruk.com. If you would like to become part of our professional services team, please email jobs@jmruk.com.

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Data Migration Reconciliation Planning

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Reconciliation is something that you can easily postpone until later. DON’T!

Reconciliation is what businesses use to determine if the data has been migrated correctly. It is all too easy to delay, especially when you have data that is not loading 100% of the records each and every time. Here are a few tips and tricks for data migration reconciliation.

Start Simple

Start with a count of the no of items that you are migrating. For example, a count of the number of clients in the source system versus the number of clients in the target system, and reconcile these as soon as possible, these should be relatively simple. Even if you are not loading 100% of the data, the number of clients in the source should match the number of clients in the target, plus the number of clients that have failed to load. Try as hard as possible to match these as early as possible.

Keep people in the loop

Make sure all your stakeholders have visibility of the data migration reconciliation as early as possible, your business representative will be able to assist and decide what is required and what isn’t, while the testing person will assist with ensuring that there is enough test coverage to check the complicated scenarios that cannot be counted.

Keep counting

For each load of the source data into the target system that you do in testing, from unit testing all the way through to user acceptance testing, make sure you at least try to do a full data migration reconciliation once in every run. Make sure that in your reconciliation, you make note of the reconciliations that don’t match because of failures, and where possible, capture the differences. For example, do a hash total of the start date of all the records that failed and see that it matches the differences between what is in the source and target.

Data Migration Methodology

Our Data Migration Methodology has been built up over our years of experience and we have incorporated extensive testing, reconciliation, review and validation into our data migration methodology.

How JMR Consulting Ltd can help with Your Data Migration Project?

JMR Consulting UK Ltd.’s core expertise is based upon its Financial Services heritage and 15 years of operating in the Finance and IT sectors. Over this period, JMR’s staff have developed key application migration and data migration solutions and a constant focus on our service philosophy which is at the core of JMR’s business operation.

This post was written by Jo-Anne Owen, a member of the Professional Services team at JMR Consulting UK Ltd. If you would like more information about data migration or our professional services, please call us on 0845 052 0900 or email info@jmruk.com. If you would like to become part of our professional services team, please email jobs@jmruk.com.

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