Miscellaneous Archives - Mohamed Sami

Disconnecting to Reconnect- A Journey of Self-Discovery

April 19, 2023April 19, 2023Mohamed Sami

Last week, I decided to take two weeks off after waiting for what felt like an eternity for the perfect time to do so. And guess what? It was during the holy Ramadan month! I wanted to try something new and challenging that I had not done in at least a decade, something unusual, especially with my geek passion and my profession throughout my career.

So, I decided to completely disconnect from all digital devices and tools – no mobile phone, iPad, Smart Watch, or laptops! I was determined to live this experience to the fullest and enjoy every moment of it. No notifications, vibrations, calls, screens, and social media.

I started my journey on Monday morning at 4:30 AM with no plans whatsoever—just me, my car, a notebook, and a pencil! And let me tell you, it was quite an adventure! I had no idea where I was headed or what I was going to do when I got there. But that is what made it so exciting!

A picture containing road, sky, outdoor, highway

Description automatically generated

As I drove down the road, I started to think, “What to listen to during my travel to ease the way?” I used to listen to my favorite tracks and podcasts to focus on what I liked. At this moment, I started to rethink this decision and the value of this experience. But then, as if by magic, I found a flash drive that contained some of my favorite tracks that I had downloaded years ago! It was like a sign telling me that everything was going to be okay.

Is a win-lose strategy a good choice?

February 6, 2021March 5, 2021Mohamed Sami

In most of our daily conversations and discussions, whether with coworkers, friends, or family members, we argue and exchange opinions and recommendations, and suggestions.

Sometimes, we want an agreement on our opinion and assure that those shared thoughts and opinions are heard and applied. So, we try to persuade and convince others, and we try to minimize the resistance against our opinion for our own interest irrespective of the implied loss to others, or for all of our interests and have a beneficial outcome for all, that satisfies each one’s concerns.

This process of going back and forth discussion to reach an agreement between two parties or more is called negotiation. When you are asking someone to get you a cup of tea, asking your kids to do something or study, proposing a solution to a customer, discussing your job offer with an employer, asking your team to do certain tasks, and lots of other similar examples that we are doing daily without noticing, all are NEGOTIATIONS.

Negotiation is when a person wants another person to do or not do something for him or her.

The Road to Robotic Humans

July 12, 2020July 12, 2020Mohamed Sami

I think I am lucky to have the experience before and after the internet, without and with mobile phones, traditional services & digital ones. There is no doubt how technology has enhanced and advanced our way of living and made doing things easier and achievable than before. The simplest example, you won’t be able to read this article from a different place in the world in few minutes after finishing it and translating it into your language and may ask the computer or your phone to read it for you as well.

My job is to help different organizations realizing these digital benefits and realize their digital road map and make it possible. while in this article, I would like to discuss and think with you about the possible implications on us as humans especially in this fast digital race.

I still remember when I was a 10 years old kid at the same age of my son, around 25 years gap between our ages, two and half decades that I would like to use as an analogy between the difference in the experience of my childhood versus my son’s childhood, especially that he lived only this new Information age and he is younger than the cloud computing. I would like to highlight the digital implications using two different anecdotes and discuss with you how the future may look like and if are we becoming robotic humans slowly!

Business Model Canvas

July 13, 2019August 15, 2019Mohamed Sami

I prepared the below slides for introducing business model canvas mainly for undergraduates while it can help anyone who has an idea and want to realize this idea into a business.

I hope you will enjoy it

Cite this article as: Mohamed Sami, (July 13, 2019). "Business Model Canvas," in Mohamed Sami - Personal blog. Retrieved April 19, 2024, from https://melsatar.blog/2019/07/13/business-model-canvas/.

Types of Technological Changes

July 12, 2019August 16, 2019Mohamed Sami

At a former article, I have discussed the change management theories and practices through reading various research papers that discussed the change management in the organization. Change management is everywhere when there is a new project, new process, new improvements, starting a new business, or even a change of career or joining a new company. As you may know that Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization’s goals, processes or technologies.

Nowadays, these transitions happen every day, new technologies, new job roles, new projects, new strategies, new challenges, and new opportunities are introduced. These transitions need a change framework to ensure proper management of this change for the benefit of the organization and the people.

In this article, I would like to discuss the types of changes to have a better understanding of the change behavior and pattern.

Change management from Theory to Practice

February 2, 2019July 12, 2020Mohamed Sami

Change management theories and methods have been a hot topic for decades in strategic management, change implementation, and innovation implementation. Nowadays, in the information and technology industry, we see trends, such as, the digital transformation, digitization, automation, Digital Experience, and Customer and Citizen-centric approaches that lead to infinite change motives in the organizations and society that lead to new innovations.

Moreover, Change management projects have many different themes, for example, quality improvement, process improvement, re-engineering, reorganization, and organizations restructure. Although most of the organizations are trying to align with new trends and apply new changes effectively, the reported successful applied change projects were few and under specific circumstances and context (Kotter, 1995).

Change management is not only a theory, it is a practice that we can use not only in the organizations but within our daily lives, for example, pursuing a job or an academic scholarship, or even changing family habits. These types of motives, goals, or dreams lead to actions and a lot of hard work to satisfy these motives. I partially agree with (Dunphy 1996) who stated that:

“The basic tension that underlies many discussions of organizational change is that it would not be necessary if people had done their jobs right in the first place. Planned change is usually triggered by the failure of people to create continuously adaptive organizations”
(Dunphy 1996 as cited in Weick & Quinn, 1999)

In order to make people do their jobs right at any organization, their organization should empower them, the executives and managers should prepare those people and align their priorities with the organization strategy, and ensure that those people have the right capabilities to perform their jobs in the right way and to the intent expectation.

Lessons learned from “CONSULTATIVE SELLING” Book

January 1, 2018March 20, 2022Mohamed Sami

The Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels, 7th Edition by Mack Hanan is mainly targeting sales representatives to provide a specific and consistently successful approach and techniques for better sales.

I read the book and I found that it very helpful and useful for sales representatives.

Personally, I have met a lot of salespeople who are selling without knowing anything about the customer needs, challenges, or strategies and they are selling products features without presenting the true added value of these products. I think you may have faced the same, especially with the infrastructure and equipment vendors.

The book offers some useful techniques and tips to enhance the selling process and make it a value-driven process for both the customer and the seller. I think most of the big companies are using similar approaches and techniques mentioned in the book with different flavors.

I tried to summarize the key points which I think are important to others while I do recommend reading this book. Here are the key lessons I learned from this book

Trade-off Analysis Technique – Make the decision easier

September 23, 2017November 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

In our daily tasks, personal or work related, we usually face a situation that we have a variety of alternatives and there is a need for a decision process to pick one of them and to decide what will be the best to choose with a certain level of confidence.

These decisions can range from changing your job, selecting a candidate for a job vacancy, choosing the right software development life cycle, buy vs build decision or others. The common between all of them that they are decisions and they need a decision process.

In this article, we will discuss the process of trade-off analysis, and an example of different alternatives we need to select one of them. Read more →

Essential tools for productivity at workplace

September 4, 2017November 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

Everyone uses different set tools every day at his/her workplace to finish tasks faster, organize the work, and collaborate with others. Each moment new apps and tools are created and it is becoming harder for us to select the which one to use and which one offers the basic required functionalities which enable anyone to interact and use it easily and retrieve our data at any time.

I would like to share with you a list of tools which I’m using mostly every day in my workplace and personally to organize things, explore new ideas, or even brainstorming. The good about these tools that they are free, portable, and compatible with all kind of devices. I hope you will find them useful.

Digital Transformation – Just another thought

July 7, 2017November 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

In the last couple of years, the fancy and sexy terminology the “Digital Transformation” has been used widely throughout most of the industries and become a trendy word. Over the past decade, we heard other similar words, for example, Digitizations, Information Era, Information Age, Digital Society, Information Society, Digital Business and more and more.

In my perspective, I see Digital Transformation as another marketing terminology more than a new science or knowledge. Read more →

Countries and Industries array

January 24, 2016July 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

Many software developers actually need some standard ready-made lists to be used in their applications, some of these lists are Industries and countries.

I added here an array list of standard industries categories and an array list of countries names.

I hope this will help 🙂 Read more →

Cloud Deployments Models

January 8, 2014November 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

I created consolidated slides to illustrate the cloud deployment models. I hope that you will like it.

How to Create Database Connection Easily?

February 25, 2012November 10, 2018Mohamed Sami

This post will explain an easy way to get any database connection string. So, you can use this string to connect to your database using any developing Language. Read more →