Digitalization and networking are prime forms of 21st century learning.  The world is much smaller and thanks to technology; which made learning more transforming into a globally collaborative enterprise. For example professional, networks allow the scientific community to share discoveries much faster than the others.  

The scientists of Harvard are considering that “sharing discoveries is more efficient and honorable than patenting them.”  This idea embodies the true spirit of a successful professional learning network: collaboration for its own sake.

Educators should aim to be connected to advance their craft; and on another level, they need to use networks to prepare and the teach students and make them ready with the ever changing technological needs; as this will make them available in the changing job market.  However, what is the best way to approach professional learning networks - PLNs?

The recent learning networks are based on the theory of connectivism, or learning from varied social webs.  Connectivism implies to learning that relies on communicating ideas with many people at same time. Professional learning networks facilitate learning through meaningful interactions; the advantages of these networks today are two-folded. In one way, they help to improve the classroom teaching and to develop new projects; and on the other hand, they act as a form of shared intelligence that changes communal perceptions.  

We will see more details on what are the ways to grow your PLN and improve the quality of your interactions; as there are diverse ways to build your network and many new management tools.  

• Always keep the spirit of collaboration as your driving force.Professional learning networks are all about working together, so be mutual and resourceful and never think about what you have to gain or gained, rather think what you have to give and Why? This is the right thing to do, when you are working collaboratively. By buying the process and sharing useful information, your professional network will always grow naturally. While collaboration creates a common ground which allows others to see your interests.Authentic interest builds a solid network.Social responsibility is the best kind of motivation for establishing a PLN.
• Join an online community and share ideas by contacting or connecting to people for direct feedback. As direct feedback is more effective in a community setting. The Communities such as, Classroom versions and The Educator’s professional network provide a meaningful circle of experts.These professional development resources, such as online events are a great place to start your networking and build it.
• The next thing to make your network strong is joining a meet-up group.These meet-up groups are common thread interest groups that connect the real world; and make your life easy to extend your social networks. For instance, science teachers in your city or district might create a group to share their teaching ideas; these meet-up groups take online networks and bring them into the real world. But, if in case you can’t meet online then try using Google+ HangOuts, or Skype. Whereas, some university academics even have virtual labs on SecondLife.
• Be as symbol of light.Professional learning networks rely on open sharing of information.So if you know something, then be open to share it!Start with a specific interest and then start growing your network with other topics as time goes on. Turn out to be an expert in your niche by researching current trends.This will draw larger followers on your network, and help you to provide a novel source of information.
• Ask questions; after all, PLNs are all about learning. But do not ask questions that you can easily research. Try simple searches on TED talks, Wikis, blogs, or news articles before posting a question; as these are the. Try to be specific and think of how a question might generate interest from others. For example, you may want to refer to an article or research study when asking a question. Be specific!This will generate the best answers.
• Be an active participant; as brain power is the main asset of any professional learning systems. So you need to spend valuable time to identify the specific cause to communicate on your profile.Let your knowledge be the specific cause as it helps you grow your PLN. Try updating your niche and stay relevant to it.
• Be polite and acknowledge your contributions to the rightful owner. Show respect for the people in your network.
• Designate a professional and personal account. Be active participate in your social life - Facebook and professional life on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.There can be some intersect, but its best thing to keep it least so things are easy to find.So that certain groups will appreciate different types of content. Do this in ways that are comfortable to you.You might designate accounts for each sphere of your life.
• Create a landing page; as it may be a good idea to consolidate all of your accounts on your landing page.A webpage or personal blog will make it easier for people who like to find you; and it will also create a space where you can showcase the different projects you are working on.
• Engage newbies, having this type of diversity in knowledge always allow you to increase your mentoring skills and keeps the essence of collaboration.A blogger can Collaborate, Communicate, and Create any source to be an active participate and can be proved to be the best professional to people who are seeking for connected learning networks; as PLNS trend to create new projects through the power of active collaboration.

Challenge

Corporate leaders recognize that market growth is dependent on customer-centric service delivery models which demand rapid delivery of high-quality software systems. However, there are no specific theories to measure the readiness of the organizations to adopt DevOps culture. Today’s customer has become smart, and Organizations are changing their stance for faster application delivery to live up to the customer expectations. But, organizations encountering with operations, process, and development, will in turn heap up challenges in terms of aligning with governance and strategy.        

Assessing success in a business context is acute, but because DevOps isn’t a formal framework, organizations can still have little way of guidance to assess its efficiency. But this can be a little delicate activity when organizations try to measure systems which are output-based or used on some metrics or methods that incentivize behaviors counter to a DevOps culture.       

Why DevOps?

So far it was assumed that DevOps isn’t easy and it can be a struggle to manage and implement it productively. Today there are several approaches made it easy for the organizations that are looking towards adopting DevOps. Through DevOps Assessments Program Organizations can identify, manage, and implement DevOps principles productively.  DevOps has demonstrated serious effectiveness for accelerating software development and rationalizing the interaction of operations and quality assurance (QA) departments. DevOps imposes demands that every organization needs to be ready to address.    

Opportunity

When adopting DevOps, organizations should consider new approaches identifying and implementing DevOps assessment program. Since DevOps is all about building a robust culture to enhance IT service deliveries, this will include deliberation for actionable metrics that are open, transparent and promote collaboration. DevOps is undoubtedly an extension of agile and lean principles. It is a revolution resulting in an evolution of agile that extends the practice of agile development for speedy delivery. From the formation of ideas or concepts to production and overcome the obstacles of the walls between operations, development, and business via co-operation & collaboration practices.    

Let us look at some assessments which help organization for DevOps Transformation

Assessment I: Does DevOps bring value to the business? 

Implementing DevOps practices will certainly bring value to the businesses as this can be a buying point where organizations are leaning towards implementation of DevOps. This is because the software development cycles take years of coding and testing before releasing their product and requires a lot of resources to bring the required output of a product. But, what if when sales are not guaranteed and issues such as defects and bugs are raised once the product is out. Such issues will definitely hit the success of the product and ROI.  This is where the implementation of DevOps principles can answer to the above-mentioned issues.

Assessment II: Is IT flexible enough to support DevOps?

When DevOps is included to a new development cycle, it works differently and supports the developers and Quality departments and drives the resources on a much faster schedule to test and support each new release. To make sure the process runs all smooth, IT Companies must install the latest versions of software releases on one or multiple servers in the data or cloud centers, and interconnecting storage, performance monitoring, supporting databases, and other resources.

The IT corporations should thoroughly evaluate the application requirements, and approve the infrastructure and servers, and perform the deployment for the approved product. Such firm processes work well when the organization's staff works on occasional software releases.

Assessment III: Is the company large enough for DevOps?

To implement DevOps principles an organization should be capable enough to support the processes, tools, and the resources to keep DevOps productive. Balancing the resources and demands of the project can be difficult for small businesses at the initial point. However, Small businesses can often outsource the application development or invest in applications like Salesforce rather than in-house CRM package.

Organizations with 50 to 250 may not be able to adopt DevOps principles. Whereas, Organizations with more than 1,000 employees may have more advantages.

Assessment IV: Knowing Organization’s DevOps strategy?

DevOps is a mix of people, tools, and processes. It is not an exercise or an event to implement it successfully with one software, tool or a plan taken out from a book.   

With a comprehensive DevOps assessment and supporting tools, organizations adopting DevOps can:

• Quickly measure and establish clear business terms with effective DevOps processes like continuous delivery and parallel development methods

• Support cross-functional teams around business value conception and continuous development

• identify capacity gaps and initiate the remediation policies to achieve targets and goals

• Eliminate existing practices that counter a strong DevOps culture to prevent the flow value to the businesses and customers

Conclusion

Every company has its own approach towards adopting DevOps and implementing.  Adjusting and adapting the people, tools and processes to meet the organization's unique goals is the main aim to adopt DevOps. In this process of adopting DevOps, hiring developers who are familiar with DevOps workflows & cycles, organize IT staff capable of accommodating dynamic release schedules, implementing a suite of tools facilitate collaboration between developers, QA, and IT and applying strong business management that can drive DevOps adoption.

Today’s corporates often evaluate DevOps potential and insert it by slow degrees, developing proficiency and skills with teams working on small and less prioritized projects. Then they steadily involve these skills and tools to work on critical projects over time to bring the overall success of the product or software.

For many businesses, phone plays major part in daily operations.  This is because businesses need them in order to call out and to be in contact with vendors, business associates, and

Clients or Customers are also valuable in any business; as they open a door of communication by allowing them to contact the business at any time during its hours of operation. As important as the phone is, it is just as essential that in every businesses you should know the difference between what is good and what is bad phone etiquette.

Everyone who are directly involved with people and phone should know and understand how they need to interact with clients and business associates over it. This will either portray them in a positive light or a negative one as it depends how good you take them. This may happen with the people who are bad phone or call etiquettes or who are poorly trained employees, managers, or business entrepreneurs. Telephone uses have an extreme negative effect on their businesses when they don’t handle the calls properly. For this reason, it is very important that every company should focus on training their associates properly on good and bad phone practices.

When Is A Call The Right Way To Communicate?

The method of communication should be direct and appropriate to the audience, nature and the situation of the message be very clear to the person on other side. As we are aware that a call is the best way to communicate whether it is personal, professional or a business calls. Other period your task will be best accomplished with an instant message or SMS. And, even sometimes email will also be the best way to go.

Do’s

• Make sure that all the attendees attend the business call on time, and if it conference call then they keep their personal gadgets on silence and be clear on the meeting.
• When answering your business phone it is essential that you pick it up in three rings.
• Advise your recruits that the second or third ring is the ideal time to pick up the telephone.
• The person who is allowed to answer the phone should start with a positive greeting such as “Good Morning,” “Hello,” or “Good Afternoon,” etc. Following the greeting the person should proceed by saying his or her name and the name of the business or organization that is being contacted.
• Put on a smile before placing or answering a phone call.
• For clearness, the telephone should be held a distance of two fingers from the mouth when it is a hand set.
• Speak in a clear tone using a mild voice which neither too loud nor too low. Words should be enunciated and maintain your pace that people are able to understand what is being said to them.
• Ask for permission when you add to put someone on hold, get the permission first and give him or her option to leave a voicemail message. When taking them off of hold thank the caller.
• When a caller is speaking, listen to what he or she has to say without interruptions.
• Always return phone calls when you have promised for a return call. If a time frame was given then the caller must make every attempt to return the phone call as quickly as possible within that time frame.
• While transferring the call, inform the people on other side about the transfer; it is also important to explain the need for the transfer.
• Before transferring a call, confirm with the person to whom the call is being transferred; and this person’s name should be given to the party who is being transferred.

Don’ts

• Wait for the person, who is answering the telephone as he or she should never answer on the first ring. So as callers do not expect this and will be taken off guard.
• Make sure that you are not on any activity while you are planning for business calls.
• Do not answer the phone when you are eating, chewing, or drinking.
• When on any emergency, and if you must leave the phone line, then never leave the line open; instead place the person on hold and check back with him or her frequently – preferably every 45 seconds.
• Never use the words like, “I don’t know” when talking with someone on the call. The ideal response to a question where there is not a definite answer is to say “I’ll check on that for you.”
• When talking to a client or a customer never say anything that can be taken as impoliteness. The person who answers the phone should always talk to the caller in the way that he or she would like someone to speak to them.
• Do not use slang when speaking to a caller. Swear words should be avoided, and may be illegal under certain circumstances, according to Federal law.
• Don’t even argue with a caller.
• Do not transfer a call without informing the person on the phone and asking permission to do so.
• When ending a phone call, do not hang up the phone without a positive closure such as “Thank you for calling,” or “Have a Good Day.”

Your CV plays a vital role in explaining you better without your presence. This is the first step that makes you through to reach the right door. Once your CV reaches out the right place it’s up to you to impress the recruiter and prove that you are really worth of the position offered. Here are the key points which will help you make good impression from the get-go.

What makes you visit this interview?

You need to be very active when you have this type of question asked. The interviewer wants to see how serious you are about this position and how good you have prepared yourself.  Research well before you hit the interview panel; your homework on the company will help you to stand out of the crowd. Be very clear why they need to get in to their company and the reason you are looking for new job should also be very impressive.

Why should I hire you?

This is the universal question asked by any interviewer. Before you starts explaining yourself list all your skills and how they will be directly applicable for the company if they pick you. Project your achievements from your previous employers, preferably quantified sales, and savings on paper clips. Do not focus on what you want to get out of this job you are interviewing for, as this should be only all about you and what they will get if they hire you.

Are you a Team Player?  

When you get this type of questions, you have to well prepare yourself and explain how well you can work with the team.  Elaborate yourself and give the best examples of your team achievements and recognition you have received. Tell how strong you are alone and how well you will be equipped when you are with a team as per requirements.

Why are you unique?

It’s the time you have to praise yourself before the interviewer. While doing that give specific examples that you have achieved greatness in the past and tell them if you have solved any serious issue for your company’s biggest client. Whatever nice and tangible achievement makes you special can be memorized and get ready to deliver it when prompted.  

What’s the best time to start?

This is the final question which gives you a hint that you are probably doing well. Be very clear and indicate how much you are expecting. So that the interviewer can calculate how much money they can make from you and when to begin doing so. Do not look so desperate, which will not help you any way. Indicate that you will be flexible and that there will be a way to work out both the financials and start date, should you get to that stage.

Finally, what is your experience of these five questions vs. small talk in interviews?

Stress in any and every organization has become common today, but excess stress can interfere your personal and professional life. This can be a cause to break down your professional network which will in fact impact on the productivity and spoil your physical and emotional health. Your ability to deal with it can mean out of the difference between success and failures.

It’s not in your hand to control everything at your workplace, but this doesn’t mean that you are powerless – when you are struck in any difficult situation. Finding ways to manage workplace stress or looking out to opt out of hat job will not be that helpful as it will give you temporary relief, but rather focusing on one thing will always be within your control.   

For workers anywhere, the financial system may feel like an emotional move with layoffs and budget cuts which result increased fear, insecurity, and high-level of stress.

Your emotions should be communicable as stress can impact the quality of your interactions with others and sometimes many people lose their prospects because of this. The better you manage your stress, the more you'll positively influence those around you, and the fewer others stress will negatively affect you.

Let us look at some more tips that will help you to come out of stress and help yourselves to grow professionally and personally.

How to Manage Job Stress   

There are many ways to reduce both your personal stress and the stress you get on the job side. They include:

• Take responsibility for improving your physical and emotional well-being
• Avoid pitfalls and stay away from negative attitudes which add stress to your work
• Improve your communication skills to ease and advance your relationships with the higher management and coworkers

Recognize warning signs of stress at workplace

When you feel stress at your workplace, you lose confidence and become irritable or introvert. This is the first reason which will make you less effective and less productive in your job. Thus, it also makes your work less rewarding. When you start ignoring the warning signs of stress at your workplace it leads to bigger problems. Chronic and intense stress can also lead to physical and emotional health problems.

Signs and symptoms of excessive stress at job  

• Feeling nervous, irritable, or depressed
• Indifference, loss of interest in work
• Trouble Focussed
• Muscle tension or headaches
• Stomach problems
• Social withdrawal

Common Causes of excessive Stress

• Fear of Being Laid Off
• Working for Overtimes Due to Staff Cutbacks
• Pressure to Meet Rising Expectations
• Increase in No Job Satisfaction
• Pressure to Work at Most Favorable Levels Every time

Improve your personal Life

When you are unable to manage stress at work, improve your personal life, as it adversely impacts your health and makes you stress-free. When your own needs are taken care of, you will be stronger and resilient to stress. The better you feel, the better you’ll be equipped to manage your work stress without becoming overwhelmed.  Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean that you overhaul your total lifestyle. Small to small things can lift up your mood, increase your liveliness, and make you feel that you’re back in the driver’s seat again.

Start your day with positives and always take things one step at a time, as this helps you to make more positive lifestyle choices, and you can soon notice a decline in your stress levels, both at home and at work. Get into regular exercise as it is the first stress burner; listen to good and soothing music, read good books, eat your favorite food which will not only increase your energy levels but help you to take the physical stress. To be positive in every situation is always suggestible by experts; so start adapting it. Break up your activities and do what you like most first, last but not least have a sound sleep as this will help you to wake up with a fresh mind and start your day with a refreshing way.

Prioritize & organize your tasks to cut down job stress

When your work and workplace stress threatens you, there are simple steps to regain control over yourself in some situations. Always be the first to adapt the ability to build a sense of self-control in stressful situations, as this will help you to be well-received by your managers, coworkers, and subordinates alike, and which also lead to good relationship building at your workplace.

Improve Emotional Intelligence

As we discussed, every job today is very stressful, retaining a large measure of self-control and self-confidence by learning and practicing emotional intelligence has also become very important in today’s lifestyle. Emotional intelligence is the skill which helps you to manage your emotions in positive and practical ways and use them properly. When it comes to love your work and increase the productivity, emotional intelligence matters just as much as intellectual ability. By adapting this skill you can communicate with others and draw people to you, one can easily overcome differences, fix wounded feelings, and learn how to defuse tension and stress.

Break your Bad Habits

Many of us take job stress and make their jobs worse with negative thoughts and behavior. Breaking out your stress at your workplace will never help you, but it makes your job more complicated. Thus to get rid of such situations one has to turn around these self-defeating habits so that you can very easily be able to handle the situations.  

No project, situation, or decision is ever perfect, so trying to achieve perfection on everything will just add needless pressure to your work and day. Setting unrealistic goals and struggling to reach them is setting you up to fall short. Always aim to do your best, so that no one will ask for more than that.

Be on time and do not run late, set your clocks and watches fast to give yourself extra time. Do not make your desk mess, throw away the clutter; and make sure that you are aware where everything is as it saves your time and cuts stress. Make to-do lists and plan your day to make feel less overwhelmed.

Learn how managers or employers can reduce job stress

The manager should play the major role as to keep stress levels in the workplace to a minimum. As they can act as positive role models, particularly in times of high stress. If the manager can remain calm in stressful situations, it is much easier for employees to also maintain their calm.

In addition, there will be many organizational changes that managers and employers can make to reduce stress in the workplace. That include:   

Improve Communication

Communicating effectively at work can help you to improve the teamwork; decision making will be easy with problem-solving techniques. That means not just by understanding the words or the information being communicated, you can also understand the emotions the speaker is trying to communicate within the group.

Consult your Employees

• Give workers opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their jobs.
• Consult employees about scheduling and work rules.
• Be sure the workload is suitable to employees’ abilities and resources; avoid unrealistic deadlines.
• Show that individual workers are valued.
• Offer rewards and incentives.
• Praise good work performance, both verbally and officially, through schemes such as Employee of the Month.
• Provide opportunities for career development.
• Promote an “entrepreneurial” work climate that gives employees more control over their work.

Develop a Friendly Social Climate

• Offer opportunities for social interaction among employees.
• Setting- up a zero-tolerance policy for harassment.
• Make management actions reliable with organizational values.

Lastly, always remember that Prevention is better than cure