How Should Voice Of Customer(VOC) Process be carried out for New Product Development?

The voice of the customer plays an important role in developing a new product altogether. Well, "Customers First" should be the policy in case of a new product development. As I understand the new product introduction comes from the customer demands or the customer needs. To be specific from a product marketing perspective, the VOC is a must. There can be two categories, the one being the new product introduction (NPI) solely based on the customer demand and the other being developing organization themselves to identify the market place for its new product. May be the customers wanted the product they want for so long since the existing products are not doing well for them and they (customers) need something different product that makes their life easier. In this post I am going to talk about how well a product is going to be perceived if effective VOC is carried out. This applies mainly if the customers are already using your line of products for quite a time and they wanted something different. In this case, more is expected from the customer as to how should the new product be and how the new product is going to help them.

Meet the Key Customers

The key customers are usually the ones who are using your products for sometime. They know what the existing product lacks and what they would want the new product to be. And hence identifying those customers and meeting them in person, talking to them and getting the feedback is very crucial aspect. Understand their concerns. This can effectively happen only if we see their site and realize their situations.

Collect the customer complaints/Feedback

Its true that the customers will be more than happy provide feedback on the existing products released by you if you ask them to do so. I have seen several customers feeling certain improvements in the products or doing certain things in a different way and though they know that what the product lacks they tend to live with them. This will happen mainly because they do not if the features they want in a product will considered, valued and taken forward. In my experience, certain customers had a big list of the pain points dealing with the products and when we started collecting the feedback about our product, there were huge number of feedback coming in from the customers. We felt why did we not do perform this activity little earlier. This tells that the customers will be on the edge of providing feedback, the only thing is that the we need to ask them to provide some.

Understanding the Product Deployment Scenario

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Many customers complain that they face lot of issues deploying the product in their site.  I specifically urge on this point. Without understanding how the end product is going to be deployed, I say that the product development should not even be initiated. There are different types of customers who use our products. For example, certain customers use the product in very low bandwidth of network and they might see the product performing really bad. Some customers may not even have the internet connection. It does not make sense to assume for ourselves that the customers will have all requisites for the product. Well, we can define these in the release bulletin however the all types of customers have to be considered. So the VOC must include how the customers are going to install the software and deploy that in their production sites.

Ask customers the Non-Functional aspects of the Product

The non functional aspects include what should be the performance of the existing product. And more importantly this has to be a very important input for the new product that is going to be developed. There may some frustrated customers with the slowness of the existing product. Especially the performance and capacity aspect of the product plays an important role. Dealing with a slow product takes  time and the time is the cost. Its so obvious that the customers tend to go for  better performing products. So consider what should the non functional requirements of the upcoming product from the customers. 

Getting customer feedback has to be a Continuous Process 

During the curse of developing the product, the initial VOC is not sufficient.The customer may not tell everything that they require during the first meeting with them. This can be best achieved by employing better customer oriented product development methodologies such as Agile methodology. A piece of working software product can be released to the customers for the evaluation and get the early feedback on the product. It does not make any sense to wait until the entire product is developed and then start getting the customer feedback may be during the beta release of the product. The early we get the customer feedback the better is to incorporate them in the design and implement. This is the main reason why many organizations are adapting agile development methodologies.

Transfer the VOC into QFDs (Quality Function Deployment)

All the customer feedback or opinions have to be written as product requirements. So that the corresponding test design is carried out. The test focus will have to be based on what were the customer requirements collected during the VOC meetings with the customers. As I said if the methodologies such as Agile are being followed, the initial product requirements, design needs to be changed so that the corresponding test design gets changed.

 Conclusion

These are just few examples of how effectively VOC has to be carried out. There could be several such items. These will vary based on the kind of the product and kind of customers we are dealing with.  As I have been highlighting the fact that the customer needs have to be understood in the first place during VOC. Any gaps doing so will lead to bad feedback on the product by the same customers that you met. The key challenge is that the customers may not explain each and every thing that they wanted but they can tell them at very high level. Its the responsibility of VOC team to dig deeper into those and ask as much information as they can to make a new product to be successfully accepted our customers.

Why do some start up companies fail?

Start ups are new companies being emerged. The idea of setting up a brand new company evolves from a person or a group of enthusiastic people who want to start a business. There are examples that the startup companies have evolved from a single person too. In today's world the start ups may start getting early hiccups and fail to successfully evolve as a successful business. The study says that out of 10 start ups, 3 are likely to fail to setup a successful business. There are several factors that matter here few of which I have mentioned in this post. Negation of these points will be the guidelines for the start ups.

No clear Vision/Mission Defined

This is the first and the foremost factor. The people do not know what they want to do as an organization. This happens because there are thousands of organizations already and have their market share. And these companies have touched almost all the areas of the businesses today. The dreams of founders have to be very clear and defined. The vision has to be very very unique and gets attention of the people. So define clear vision and the mission before thinking to start up a business. The customers always think how I am going to benefit out of your business and the customer has to be convinced.

Selection of Wrong Line of Business(LOB)

The world is changing very fast. Everyone knows this fact. And as I said earlier, there are already companies touching upon almost all the lines of businesses. There is nothing like a particular line of business is wrong and other line of businesses are right though. Its all the strength of initial organization team and their expertize. No business is wrong, however it so happens that tending to have business because a particular business is well doing in the market but the start up team do not have sufficient capabilities required to execute it. Understanding the strength of the initial team is every essential and accordingly the line of business needs to be decided. Having a dream of inventing a new Search Engine simply means that you need to compete with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!. Making a new iPod requires you to compete with Apple. A thorough market study might be helpful to choose a line of business.

Failing to identify the Target Customers

Failing to know who will be using your products will certainly result into failure. Identify the targeted customers for the business.  Once the customers are identified, its crucial to talk to them to know them better and more importantly what they want exactly. It may so happen for the start ups that let us start building the products and people are there buy. This is just an assumption and not realistic. So define targeted customers. 

No Regular Rhythm

For the start ups there can be lot of obstacles on their initial way.  Discouragement is the factor. A real leader or boss will just surpass these obstacles. The team has to strongly believe that the kind of the business their company is going launch adds value the customers in some way. This must constantly be given revised. Challenges must be beaten by having regular rhythm in the selected business and stand up to that business. This makes the targeted customers believe in your business. 

Not having a Strong Online Presence

The online presence is the face of what the company is doing. This has to be very impressive. Define clearly the vision and the mission over the web. Define why should someone want to approach you. I have seen several start up companies' websites with very limited information about their business and not clear what exactly they want to do. Most of the start up companies will have a 'Get in touch with us' or 'Contact us' page where they are going to ask certain information about the user without letting him/her know what they are going to do about that information. If this is the case there are less chances of people giving their information to the start up company websites.  

No Right Location

The area where the business is going to run is another important aspect sometime. Preferably the location has to be considering the kind of your customers that you are dealing with and where the required resources are available to the preferred cost. Mostly the location may not matter as long as you impress your customers.  However the companies need investors, and you can have them by carefully selecting the location. Its less likely to have investors outside that valley than being inside. Have a look at Startup's Location Still Matters 

Disagreement among the People

A good entrepreneur is the one who resolves the internal people crisis. There are chances that certain people from the team being discouraged by the company business and tend leave it up. Its nothing better than having like minded and enthusiastic people before even joining the hands. There has to be common understanding between the people and strive towards the company progress than just throwing different opinions and disagreements about the business and its progress.

Failing to Delight the First Customer

There could be hundreds of reasons why start ups fail, however all those may not necessarily be the failure causes but its your customers. It may not really matter what is the location of the company if start ups manage to make their targeted customers happy for the first time. The customers can be disappointed by several factors such as product pricing, product availability at the right time. Especially for product development company there is something called a 'Market Window' and the product must be released within this window. In case the company crosses the window, there could be another competitor with even better production functionality. Its crucial for start ups to bring their output to the customers at the right time in order to make the customers happy. A word of mouth takes your further.

Conclusion

We can list several such reasons why start ups fail. However the key factor to understand is that the core idea on which the entire business is going to revolve around is realistic or not. How the idea bring in the advantages over other existing products. The best idea could be study the drawbacks or the gaps in the existing systems and think how those can be filled by the new business. Its all passing initial hiccups, ups and downs. Once the customers start believing your brand of products, you have won. This is how the company brand promise is built. 

 

What should be the Quality of Regression Testing?

Regression testing is performed to see if any code changes or the bug fixes have caused any side effects in the software behavior. Yes, the software has the defined behavior! Regression testing is also sometimes  referred as testing  impacted areas of the bug fixes. Usually the regression testing is more than testing the impacted areas of bug fixes. The software is tested randomly to see if all the original functionality of the software are working as expected. Some testers define regression testing as an ad-hoc testing. However the regression testing is more than just testing the affected areas. There are certain things to ensure what needs to be tested as part of regression testing activities. In this post I am going to provide some guidelines on how should a regression test be carried out.

Define the Regression Test Suite

This is the first and the foremost requisite. Its usual practice that there will not be any defined regression test suits to perform. Apart from testing the impacted areas of a given bug fix, it's best practice that there is defined regression test cases that will cover all the software functionality at the high level which need to be executed before the software is claimed to be regression tested. The regression test suite should include all the functionality of the software. This is essential because the software or a software product is going to be deployed or will be used by the customers. Its a final software test before delivering the software to the customers.

Test the Functionality Dependencies

The functionality dependencies are to be identified in the first place. The functionality dependencies are treated as if a particular functionality of the software is changed due to a bug fix, its required and essential that what are the affected functionality of the software. Its quite natural in software system that the functionality are quite related. And its a challenge for the testers to figure out affected functionality and test it. This beyond the impacted area testing. This will not happen effectively without taking inputs from the developers, i.e, the persons who fixed the bugs. They are the best people to guess what could be other software functionality that might have been affected due to a bug fix. Usually developers can trace the impacted areas by taking help of the software design. The software design shows the dependencies of the software functionality. 

Update the Regression Test Suite

In a software development, it so happens that the software behavior may get changed. This will mainly happen if software development process is using methods such as Agile, Scrum. The customers feedback is continuously taken and the software or software product behavior is changed as per the customer inputs. And hence its import to keep the regression test suites up to date to the new software behavior. There should not be any communication gaps for this. It does not make sense to execute a wrong regression test case and raising bugs. Its best practice to change the original software requirement (since the customer wanted the software to behave differently than what was presented to him/her) so that the corresponding test cases are updated to reflect the new behavior.

Automate the Regression Test Suite

As we all know, the regression tests to perform takes time. Automating these test cases helps is the best of best practice. Imagine several test cycles due to several release due bug fixes or reopened bug fixes. Every time a new release, build is handed over for testing, the testing team will have to execute all the defined regression test cases. Automating these test cases help to verify the software behavior quickly to see if the original software functionality has not changed provided the automated test cases are up to date. The reason why I am highlighting the fact to update the test cases is because, its likely that its never planned to do so. So any change in the software requirement should result in changing all the affected test cases including the automated test cases.

Clearly differentiate between Regression Test and Smoke Test

Smoke test is very high level testing and may not cover all the software functionality. There could be defined smoke test suite however. If the software is smoke tested, remember its not regression tested. There has to be different test suites for these categories of software testing altogether Smoke test is performed sometimes as tester acceptance test and hence certainly it does not cover all the software functionality.

Conclusion

Basically regression testing is a challenge for any tester. It sometimes happens that even if the entire software functionality is covered under regression test suite, the bugs can still escape! This happens because a particular functionality may not have been tested at granular level and also its impractical. Hence, the regression tester has to be very experienced testing the software and understand the software functionality and guess the areas to be tested. Trusting on automated regression test suites can be  sometimes dangerous. Human interpretation on affected areas of a bug is very essential. Achieve this through sufficient discussion with the developer who made the changes. There has to be communication between developer and tester to carry out effective regression test.

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Tips for Freshers to get into an IT Company

If you are a fresher just out of your engineering degree and looking for Software Jobs, this post could be of some help for you. Most of the students will be on the edge of getting a job by any means once they finish engineering degree. These are the students who are not looking for higher studies but to get an IT job soon. There are lots of software companies that will offer you a job. However many students forget to check what  kind of business that the company is doing. I thought of sharing some guidelines as to how to choose a software company for your jobs. This is very important to know sufficiently about a company that is offering you a job because your future is going to be decided by what kind of job you do and what technologies you work for. Before telling that just let me put some ideas on how an interview process will happen for a fresher.

Tackle the Interview

The interview questions for freshers will most be based on your academics subjects and what is mentioned in your resume. You will be asked to write some computer programs to asses how well you write the program logic. Before technical round of interview, there can be aptitude and group discussions round. As par as group discussions are concerned, just speak and express you views, opinions on the topic given. The opinions could be negative or positive, do not hesitate. This will help you clear the group discussions round. The technical round focuses on the technologies that you have studied. So its important to mention the technologies that you are interested in in the resume before any IT companies approach you for the job offer. For a fresher the recruiters look for the candidate's ability to learn new technologies. Express your ability for learning new stuffs.

Choose the domain

Usually the technologies revolve around the computer programming languages that you are interested in at the initial stage, however there will be something called a 'Domain' the company is working for. Its so good to study about various domains available today that IT companies are working on. The examples of some domains are (1) Banking domain, (2) Telecom domain, (3) Medical/Healthcare domain, (4) Building Automation Systems domain etc. The IT companies are divided into product development companies or software services companies broadly. You as a fresher can ask these questions at the end of their interviews. Certainly the interviewer asks 'Do you have any questions to ask?' for sure at the end of the interview. Take advantage of this and ask about company domain and the kind of the business that the company is dealing with.Today, the engineering branch you have chosen do not exactly correspond to these domains. Not everything you've studied can be applied at your jobs. I say this is a gap in the engineering education system.

Know the company

The initial salary is the secondary thing if you liked the company and what the company is doing and more importantly how the company is performing . You can find these details by going through company website or asking your friends who are already employed in the company. So do not just go by the salaries that the company is offering you, but its reputation, good track records and that promises a secure job for you. So do some home work on the company profile before appearing for the interview. This also helps in your interview.

Once you are In

Once you selected the company of your interest, usually most of the companies will have corporate training before assigning you to the actual products. Make the most of your trainings, more importantly enjoy your trainings. Its a good opportunity to learn and gather more information about the company business. Study about the company business more than what is being tought in the trainings. This will help understand about the kind of the business that the company is performing and more importantly ask questions to the trainer.

I have seen many instances that the hired employees will be on the 'bench' with no work. If this occurs to you,  I encourage you not just sit on the bench but ask questions and try to get the projects. Do not every be happy that you no work especially when you have freshly joined an IT company. Manage to get into a project that teach you a lot about the software development and kind of the challenges involved in that.  You can utilize your free time to explore more on the technologies and learn more. The fact is that the learning remains with you and helps you when you actually start on a project.

Make friends

Build good relationships with your co-workers. Go for a cup of coffee with them and share with them your opinions and you are surprised  to see lot of interesting stuffs coming from them. Learn from each other is what is the corporate policy is all about. The employees in any company are a blend of different cultures and that's what companies love to have. A mix of people that have different cultural backgrounds.  Just enjoy that culture and more importantly learn from each other a lot.

The first impression is the best impression. In your first endeavor in the company, do the best of you. Try to differentiate from thousands of people out there. Once the company that has hired you recognizes your technical capabilities, then you are almost done. You will start getting good comments and the better opportunities in future.

How to make most of our day!

Its very important how you start your day. How you start your day talks a lot about how you spend your all the day. In this post I am putting my thoughts how best we can start our day and make the most of it.  The first and the foremost thing is to get up early. I like early mornings and watching the sunrise and this is best of all the stuff we do in our day. Getting up early in the morning has several advantages, a fresh air to breath, calm environment to think about the day before anyone starts thinking. I personally believe that if we start the day late, we are going to loose so many things. So making habit of getting up early is so nice!

Write down what are the things that you want to do in the day. Writing down helps a lot. We can just think lot stuffs in our mind but putting them down on a paper makes difference. By writing on a piece of paper of what you want to do in day, reminds you to do that. Otherwise we just think and leave it!, Its true.

Click a photo! Yes, take some snaps in a day. Very less people realize how this is advantageous. Its just another brand new day. Nothing must be thought about what happened yesterday indeed. Taking a snapshot makes you very active and inspires you to do new things. So, just click a photo. You may not be carrying a Cannon Camera with you, but I believe every one has a mobile phone that has a camera in it. So, just click the stuffs that interests you, if you do not find any interesting stuffs, find one and click!

In my opinion each day is different. It does not make any sense to live a day without any inspiration just because our yesterday was not good. Simply not! It does not matter how was your yesterday but the question is 'how was the day?' That's today. Just remember that. Its all our responsibility and pleasure to make our day by any means. At the end of the day we must be able say some interesting things to our friends, of course there are interesting stuffs everywhere, only thing is that we need to find them!

Just smile! no matter what difficulties you have!! I believe every one has their own difficulties and no one wants to talk about them but just forget about them and hence always smile for your brand new day which speaks a lot and carries a lot of meaning. Everyone must have read the saying 'Smile costs nothing' right?

Listen to what other people are saying to you and make the conversation as enjoyable as possible for them even if they are telling some unhappy things that they might have encountered. Yes, it true, every one wants to be happy and that's what we are all meant to be irrespective of what we do in a day. Help people as much as you can, it will come back for you in one day. Its great thing to help people around than doing anything else or giving a high level speech.

Have some secrets for yourselves which makes yo go energized all the time and makes your friends curious about it. Never leak them to your friends! The secret of living life is to have some secrets for yourselves. Indeed everyone has a secret of their own life according to me. If your friends ask you about your secrets just smile!!

Take time to talk to your loved ones! The time you spend with your loved ones is the one and only thing that nothing in this world can substitute. Life is full of busy schedules I know. However have time to speak to your close friends and loved ones. There are simply no great things that we can do for our loved ones but to have some time for them.

Treat every one on you way as your friend, no matter what is their designation! In fact treat your boss as your friend, do not worry about other end. Especially I don't like the bosses that show up that they are 'BOSS', not! At the end of the day, we are all employees and human beings that work for a company if in case you are working for some company.

Share more! whatever it could be, share that with people around you, it brings lot of advantages for you. If its something that's bad, it makes you forget that or if its something good, it brings smile on others' faces!

So, make the most your day!

Tell me how was your day? I would be more than happy to reply to you!!!

Promoting Indian Agriculture

I have been thinking about writing about agriculture in India for long time. Let me go ahead and put some thoughts on the same in this post. As every Indian knows that agriculture is the backbone of India. And India is the country that exports the agriculture products to many countries today.  And hence taking advantages of today's technologies for agriculture makes lot of sense. Its very essential for the Indian Government to help Indian agriculturists to do their best. As I understand very less technology companies think towards this area. Here I am letting everyone open to comment in this post, put their ideas on agriculture as to what can benefit our formers today. 

Today, its more on Government to come forward towards forming, but the various companies. The software giants write many articles on India Forming, however, how much its applied to forming is what is not cared about. What  demotes a former is irregular rain fall. Well, as far as rain fall is concerned no one can predict.It depends on nature. I am telling this because in certain areas of India, there is no water to cultivate, at least not at the right time. This is the major hurdle where a former gets disappointed to cultivate major crops that yield some profit. However the government has not been able to raise investments in marketing infrastructure for formers till today. Its very essential that the rural infrastructures are improved greatly to harness the Indian Agriculture. 

In my opinion, non of the regions should be ignored. Its true that certain areas do better forming and certain areas do not do. It may be because of water problem, no proper irrigation systems. No proper education on forming. As today, the formers rely on government to facilitate the opportunities in forming, its the government which has to pay attention in each and every agriculture areas in India.

Everyone knows the milk prices, in spite there is huge milk production in India, there is still a shortage of it and hence every year the milk prices go high. The milk production has to be given more attention and promote people for producing more milk. The government has to give more subsidiaries and encourage people for the milk production.

There is sufficient water however its not evenly distributed. Many areas still lack proper irrigation systems. There are many rivers but the river water is not efficiently used for irrigation purposes in all the areas. Only the areas near the river get benefited out of river water. The government has to take new projects in supplying river water as many areas as possible may be through canals, lift irrigation etc. Most of the times, the river water just flows and joins the see. Why can't the same water be utilized in all the forming areas wherever possible? The river water is the only source especially in drought situations.

Few things that I would want Government is to have sufficient crop loans and more importantly insurance for the crops. Constantly identify new opportunities in forming and have subsidiaries for the formers to encourage them and take advantage of new opportunities. Have good market infrastructure to get the better prices for the forming products. This will encourage formers to do more than that they usually do. Its also true that, there are very less people who want to do forming. This is en-dangerous too. Its essential that more and more people should be encouraged to do the forming. To be frank my long term goal is to do the same.

I encourage the readers to put forth their ideas as to how India can grow more from historical agriculture.             

How to pass driving test in India?

In order to get a driving license, you need to pass a driving test held by RTO (Regional Transport Officer ) for the type of vehicle that you applied for.Getting Driving License will be very simple if you follow certain rules. The officer in charge will look for how follow the rules such as wearing a seat belt and how you start the engine, what speed you drive etc. In India it so happens that there will be hundreds of people waiting for the driving license in a day and the officer in charge have to test all those. Usually the police officer will sit beside you while driving along with some more people at the back seats. In this short article, I will show some guidelines which you can follow while learning driving your vehicle and get the driving license in this short post.

1. Obtain Learner's license. This usually involves answering to orally asked questions by the RTO officer. The questions will be mainly traffic signals. Have a look at all the traffic signals before appearing in front of RTO officer.The learners license lost for six months. You can drive your vehicle still by applying 'L' board on your vehicle until you get a permanent driving license.  For this you will have to provide your address proof, passport size photos and filling application form 4 etc. Complete these initial formalities.
2.  Try to get a lot from the driving instructor. Ask as many questions that you may have regarding driving and get the most of driving. Because, some instructors teach you driving in detail, however some instructors tend to ignore teaching all the aspects of driving. So ask questions.
3. Wear your seat belt first! Adjust your seat according to your comfort. And release the parking break.
4. Do not drive fast. Yes, take the vehicle in your control, the officer will not be looking at how fast you drive anyway! Drive moderately at your comfort following lane disciplines.
5.  Know Road signals very well. You may have to explain them to the RTO officer!
6. Know what basic things need to be in your vehicle such as vehicle insurance, road tax, emission test report of you vehicle. And know what you need to do in case of accidents.
7. Learn driving the vehicle reverse. It is most likely that the officer will ask you to do this. Proper driving in reverse is required while parking your vehicle or at any time. So practice driving the vehicle reverse. Its easy to drive the vehicle straight, we can see what's there ahead, but its little tricky driving your vehicle reverse. This comes from practicing.
8. Usually driving license issues is valid for driving in the state where you issued the driving license. However the license can be transferred to drive in other states, for this you require "All India Driving Permit"
9. Driving license will have an endorsement in the license. For any accidents because of driver's fault, a ticket will be issued and and endorsement in the driving license will be done. Sometimes it will lead to penalties
10. You age limit matters!. For example, for a motor cycle capacity below 50cc have minimum age limit of 16 years.

Its all us who need to be careful while driving. Driving license can be obtained anyhow. We hear lot of road accidents right? Its all because of negligence driving. In India, we need to be very careful while driving even on highways. We never know who will come on the way! So, happy and safe driving!

What branch to select for an engineering degree?

This is the question that was asked to me a lot by students who were about to take their engineering degree. Well, if its me who can decide your areas of interest then, I will go ahead and tell you "do this" and "do that". Basically the students are not clear on what they want to do and what is their area of interest. I find it difficult to suggest an engineering branch for the people who ask me this question. I would say that selecting a branch is more of your interests. Understand about what the branch subject is all about and compare what your interests are. It does not make any sense for a third person to suggest the branches. I would say that if some have this question, then probably they are wrong. They do not know themselves yet. In the first place they should not even be asking this questions to people because they know themselves than any body else.

Today there are several engineering branches that a student can opt for and this should not become a reason for a student to get confused though. I encourage students to think about this and more importantly think about their future. It depends on what they want to be in future. No one goes by the words that the third person says but its their interest to choose the subject for their engineering degree. When I had to select a branch for my engineering degree, I did not ask anyone. I just followed my interest and that's what everyone has to do. They just need to follow their passion!

Okay, that's all good, when students decide what branch they are interested, the next and immediate question is what college to choose from and what university. Well, this question makes sense because the students may not very well know all the colleges since there are many Engineering Colleges today. The only way is to ask as many people as they can and get inputs from them who actually studied in that particular Engineering College. I personally say that do not go by the popularity of engineering colleges but actual facts. Some engineering colleges just go by the popularity which they might gained by advertising their college.

If you want to be a computer geek as most of the people are doing so and you believe yourself that the computers are your area of interest, then the options you have are 'Computer Science', 'Information Technology' etc. The popular engineering branch in India that most of the students want to go for is 'Electronics and Communications' and as I have seen these branches gets filled very soon.

There are many other engineering branches such as 'Electrical Sciences', 'Industrial Production', 'Instrumentation Technology', 'Mechanical Engineering', 'Civil Engineering' etc which are equally important from engineering perspective. All these branches will not live without the help from each other. For example, a civil engineer sketches an architecture of a building that is used by a software industries. He is the person who knows the strength of the building. A mechanical engineer designs to manufacture a mechanical device that's used by all the engineers. I mean, what I am trying to say is that all kinds of engineers are required and essential. No engineering branch is bad. An engineer is an engineer that's all.

So, define your passion before asking what engineering branch to choose for engineering degree and follow that. Regarding selecting a reputed engineering college is concerned, you need to really do well in the entrance exams. All engineering colleges do have entrance exams the selection process will be held based on your rankings in the entrance exams. The first and foremost step to get an engineering branch of your interest, study well for entrance exams and get good rankings which helps to get top ranked engineering colleges.

I have seen many students getting discouraged about the engineering branch that they have decided and selected. This should never happen. After studying one or two semesters of selected engineering branches, the students tend to change their mind and develop interest in some other different branches. This mainly happens because their friends talked about a particular branch that's doing good and easy for getting a job. I will not recommend this. Again you are not believing yourself. Do not ever change your decision just because somebody told you something. Just stick to your interests. Don't bother about the people who constantly keep saying about this branch is good and that branch is good. Simply no. I have seen many students changing their branch in between their engineering degree, may be by paying the college to do so. Do not do that, as I said all engineering branches are equally important.

Once you select a branch and stick to that just concentrate to study on that branch subject. Do more than what is being tought in your engineering colleges. I personally believe its not all about getting high rank or good marks in your engineering exams but to thoroughly understand the subjects. Remember you need to apply your learning to the this world one day. Do not ever be upset because you did not get good marks in your engineering degree, but treat that as gap and study more. I am not sure if the exam question papers set keeping the real world problems or not. You are not going to loose anything by scoring low marks unless you are confident that you know the subject well.

Last but not the least, know your teachers well and build good relationship with them. Discuss your problems with them and get advise. You have to be a go getter person. Remember there will be thousands of students and professors will not be able to give attention to each and every student. This is you who have to go forward and ask as may questions that you have on the subject being taught. Catch your teachers offline you did not get a chance to ask questions in the class. Believe me the teachers will not only answer your questions but also give lot extra tips on how you can understand the subject better.

The objective of studying an engineering degree is to get a good job finally. Recruiters look for talented engineers. It does not really matter what engineering subjects you have studied. But it does matter that how you perform in your interviews. I have seen many examples that a Mechanical Engineering Student getting a software job. Recruiters basically look for your passion for learning new things, just show that and be open for learning any new things. Just start feeling comfortable doing that and success will be yours and you will get your dream job!

I hope by now, you are clear and do not have the original question. Happy Learning!