Day 29-Risk Management

Figure 1: Risk (Leading news paper, 2012)

 According to What is Risk Management (2011) Risk management is "a process for identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks of different kinds". When a risk identified the risk manager will make a plan to overcome or minimize the negative impact on the project/event (What is Risk Management, 2011). There are different standards for risk management some of them are, project management institute, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), The National Institute of Science and Technology,actuarial societies etc (What is Risk Management, 2011). There are different kinds of risks, common risks like earth quakes, floods etc, legal risks like frauds, business risks, security risks and many more others (What is Risk Management, 2011).  

Today lecturer started the lecture by defining the risk. Risk is an action that can have negative or positive outcome (Probability of risk can be positive or negative). As an example If a person buy a lottery ticket he/she can win or lose. Winning the lottery ticket is the positive outcome and lose the lottery ticket is the negative outcome. Risk is a part of every human endeavor. 

Status quo- Status quo is the current standard. If someone goes beyond the current standard then it calls as a risk. Which means challenging the status quo. Ex:- Shops normally open 9.00 am - 7.00 pm. If a shop open 24/7 which means it has gone beyond the status quo and has taken a risk. 

Risks are uncertain, do not know what the outcome can be (positive or negative)

There are three different ways of addressing a risk. They are,

• Risk Detection- Ex:- smoke detectors for detect a fire
• Risk Avoidance- Ex:- air bag, seat belt for human protection in accident
• Risk Acceptance- Ex:- Tsunami - Cannot avoid the Tsunami because it is a natural disaster
• Risk Reduction-  reduce the probability of risk occurrence,  reduce the impact of risk event

Uncertainty Avoidance 
Certain cultures would try to avoid uncertainty. As an example in US it is must to every house must have a smoke detector, sprinklers. But in Sri Lanka most of the houses does not have and it also not a must.
From a research has found out Germany has 65% has high certainty avoidance. 

The Importance of Risk Management for Projects
 Projects are schedule for a certain time period. If any problem rise during the project it affects to the whole project and leads project to a failure. Sometimes project will be able to deliver within a given time period but with errors or incompletely. 
From a research has found out most of the projects fails because of poor requirement identification and without proper project plan and without stick to the project plan.

Risks that projects face
There are mainly two types of risks. They are,

• Strategic Risks
• Operational Risks

Strategic Risks
Under strategic risks there are sub categories they are,

- Project Abandonment- As an example if a person outsource his/her project to a small scale company and suddenly company close due to some financial problem. From this the person who outsource the project has face to a loss.

-Massive over run/over spend- Invest high amount of money for a project and if the project is a failure there is a huge lose this called as massive over run or over spend.

-Loss of Client Confidence- If the developed system do not satisfy customer requirements or if the system full of errors then the client confidence over the development group lose.

Operational Risk
Under operational cost there three sub categories. They are,

- Constant Change /re-planning/inefficiency- This risk can explain by feature creep. Feature creep means requirements will be added middle of the project. Because of this additional requirement whole project plan need to change. In this case development team need to negotiate with the customer and extend the project time period from that project team will be able to give a satisfy system to customer with adding additional requirements.

- Over run/over spend - This has explained under the strategic risks

-Low morale/unacceptable working conditions- This can happen lack of motivation among the members in the project team or low morale. Also due to poor working environment as well.

Risk Continuum

Figure 2: Risk Continuum

Above figure illustrates of risk continuum. Risk continuum helps to categorized different types of risks that can rise in a project or an event.

Close Report- Once the a particular project completed and the report make for the project called as close report.

Risk Management Process
Disaster recovery plan (DRP) helps companies for over come or reduce the negative impact from a disaster. After the huge  9/11 attack many organizations started implement DRPs for their companies.
Risk planning 
             adopt risk management approach/policy

             identify  mechanisms to identify risk factors

Risk identification
               identify tasks

               predict effect on baseline plan

Risk analysis
             assess likelihood of specific risks 

             assess impact of specific risks

Risk response
             plan possible responses to risk occurrence

             develop contingency/fallback measures

Risk action
                implement risk reduction measures

                monitor risk factors

Process should be part of 'Project office'

                  The reason is project office consisted of experienced employees. As ab example project manager. Project manager is a one who has more experience of risk that can rise in the process of a project.

Must be applied to each Project

                         individual objectives/features of project

                         ‘ownership’ of risks by project team members

Maintain a risk database

                       Include all the risks that face during projects. So in future project teams can go through and avoid the risks that can happen in the projects. Risk database include followings,

identifier
keyed to task etc. on WBS by reference
title/description
of risk and to what task(s) it could apply
potential impact(s)
in quantifiable terms (time/cost/quality) if possible
risk owner
tracks/protects against risk
risk actions
what actions planned
action log
record of avoidance/reduction/acceptance actions taken

Link(s) to quality/monitoring process

                           Feed back to project plan

Risk Identification

• Must be a precise definition
• Must be capable of being measured
• Must have measurable impact

There are certain things to look in risk identification they are,

weak commercial background

• uncertain funding/justification
• too much competition

imprecise objectives/charter

• uncertain objectives/deliverables/acceptance criteria
• penalties for delay/under-performance

unhelpful clients/users

• too powerful client(s)
• uninvolved/uncommitted client(s)

unfamiliar/innovative technology

external dependencies

all tasks on critical or near-critical paths!!!

What need to watch out in risk identification...

• key member(s) of staff on many critical tasks
• project manager(s) on critical path
• ‘external’ dependencies without good contracts
• responses which take to long to ‘ramp up’
• unfounded assumptions about threshold resources
• reliance on ‘silver bullets’ & ‘white knights’ 

After risk identification lecturer discussed about silver syndrome.

Silver syndrome occurs when the project team too much reliance on methodologies or technology and this too much of reliance of methodologies and technology leads to a risk. Because project team cannot fully depend on the methodology or technology to solve all the problems that identifies in the project.

Analyzing Risk

There are three types of question need to ask when analyzing a risk. They are,

• Primary question
• Secondary factor
• Tertiary factor

Primary questions are the ones or aspects which depend on the successfulness of the project. Secondary and tertiary factors are which encounter from the primary question.

Risk Assessment

In risk assessment seek for the which have high probability of occurring and which have large impacts if those risk occur

These risk can be measured as followed.

-Probability of risk occurring

-Impact on project

-Urgency of the risk

To identify or measure risks project team can use risk assessment map. Below has showed the risk assessment map.

Figure 3: Risk Assessment Map

From above mentioned risk assessment map can identify which have more probability of risk occurring, which have high impact and which risk need to take urgent actions. As example risks that are categorized into high like hood of occurrence and larger probable scale of impact are the risks that need to take actions as soon as possible.

Risk Ownership

Risk owners are the ones who take responsibility of a particular risk.

Risk owners need to have,

• Sufficient task knowledge/expertise- The knowledge to solve a particular risk because risks are vary from the situation that take place.
• Necessary resources/time to monitor risk- Able to gather necessary resources in-order to solve the risk
• Sufficient authority to carry out risk action- Need to have permission to solve the risk.

Risk owners responsible of ,

• Contributing data to risk assessment exercise
• Reporting status of risk
• Preparing  responses & actions for risk

Risk Plan

• In risk plan need to define the scope of the project and mention the risks that can be occur during the process of the project
• Need to mention different types of actions if a risk took place in the project in-order to reduce the negative impact on the project
• Deliverable of risk management in a descriptive way
• Theses situations can arise in projects,

-Risks arise, are ‘managed’, monitored & ‘archived’

-Some predicted risks never arise & are ‘cancelled’

-Unpredictable risks arise, are assessed & added to plan

Learning Outcomes:-

Today the lecture was about risk management was very useful. There are different types of risks it can can be environment, business, projects etc. Every risk need to manage. At this time risk management plays a very important role. Most of the well-known companies have risk managers. Risk managers are make plan if a risk take place in the company to over come or reduce the negative impact. Risk management need not only in organization it can be in an event, project etc. In projects risk management is very important. In project risk cannot be taken because projects are doing for certain time period. If a problem comes during the project it affects to the whole process of the project. I understood that risk assessment map as very useful component in risk management as it helps to identify the risks that have high impact and the risks that need to take quick actions and etc. From identifying those project team can reduce the negative impact that can be on project or avoid certain disturbances that can lead to a total failure. I also understood the role of risk owner like what he need to do if risk occur in the project or how to avoid the risk and the responsibilities of the risk owner. From this lecture I understood the process of risk management and how to overcome from a risk that can occur while doing a project. I see this lecturer as very important lecture since risk can happen any moment specially while doing the project. I am looking forward to use risk management techniques to use in my future projects and specially in my final year project.

References:-

Leading newspaper. (2012). Risk. [Online]. Available at: http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/21/risk.jpg 

[Accessed 20th September 2012]

What is risk management. (2011). Definition of Risk Management. [Online]. Available at: http://www.whatisriskmanagement.net/ [Accessed 20th September 2012]

Day 28- Project Plan

Today lecturer started the lecture by mentioning the facts discussed in the previous project management lecture. Today lecturer mainly focused on the project plan which is very useful for project management. Lecturer mentioned characteristics of a project as,

• Clear time frame- Clear time period with starting date and end date
• Clear budget- Make a budget which can enough to gather requirements for the project
• Over all goal-What are the things try to achieve from the project

After that lecturer discussed about four phases in project. They are,

• Initiation
• Planning
• Controlling 
• concluding

figure 1: Project Management Triangular (123rf, 2012)

When it comes to project management above mentioned four pillars are very important. Because when work according to these four pillars the development team can have an effective output. After that lecturer discussed about project management triangle which represent quality, cost and time. Lecturer mentioned that quality also named as scope by some authors because quality and scope both represent what client expect from the project. Because of that lecturer told it does not matter of substitute quality with scope. 

After that lecturer started to discuss about one more important aspect  in project management which is the risk management. In the risk management what does it find out the risk that can be arise during the project and get prepare with the solutions for the problems. Then when the problem arises development team will not be faced any risk because they already had come up with the solutions. To explain about risk management lecturer took the example of Virtusa. The people at the bench always ready to substitute when a member of a project face any problem and had to leave the project. People at the bench also have the idea of what happen in the project since they have good internal communication through the PEGA system.

Then lecturer discussed about some software development methodologies. First lecture discussed about SSADM. Lecturer stated that SSADM is a well structured methodology. Also lecturer mentioned that SSADM is a document driven methodology which means many documents involves in this methodology. Lecturer also mentioned the main disadvantage of this methodology as the project does not focus on the development level of the project. 

Lecturer discussed about the Gantt chart. Which plays a main role in the project management. The work break down of the project, reflects in the gantt chart. It also identifies the time allocated to the each task and identify the task dependencies until the predecessors complete the task cannot be completed.

After the brief discussion about Gantt charts lecturer moved on to PERT charts. Lecturer started the discussion with mentioning the principles in PERT charts. They are,

• In last node LCT (Least completion time) = ECT (Earliest completion time)
• Dummy nodes always start with 0

After that lecturer explained main areas that discuss in PERT charts.

• Critical Path- Significant of the critical path is cannot delay any activity, if one activity got delay then it is going to affect to the whole time period.
• LCT- Total time period of the entire task
• Slack time- Idle time. Which helps to have some more time in certain tasks. Because some tasks need more time without affecting to the whole task. 

Lecturer mentioned there different time estimation ways like Cocomo and functional points. From these can identify the how much time will need to complete a project.

Then lectured carried lecture to the topic of project manager. The project manager's task is to guide the project management team and make sure to complete the time within allocated time period and budget. Then lecturer discuss about project log sheet. Project log sheet useful when conducting meetings with the project manager or supervisor.There are different areas need to be in a log sheet they are,

Figure 2: Project Manager (Civil Engineering, 2012)

• Things that is going to discuss with the supervisor
• The things that discussed in previous meetings
• Actions that is going to be taken for the discussed things

After that lecturer stated that how to prepare for the supervisory meeting

• Project Plan - Whether you are in  the schedule or how far have u gone or are you below the schedule. What stage currently in etc.
• Prepare set of questions need to ask from the supervisor
• Have a proper knowledge about the content of the project
• Clear doubts that have with the project

Lecturer gave an activity to students. It is PERT chart. The lecturer gave a scenario and asked students to draw a PERT chart for that.

Activity:-

Draw a PERT chart for the given scenario, find out the critical path and calculate ECT, LCT and Slack time.

Figure 3: Scenario

Figure 4: PERT Chart

ECT=53

LCT=155

Critical Path=A,C,E,H,G

Slack time= 130-53=77

Learning Outcomes:-

From today lecture I understood the importance of the project management and the project plan. The four phases of project project importance in-order to get an effective output. The project management triangular helps make sure the project is managing with the scope of the project. I understood the task of the project manager. Before the lecture I did not have a proper idea about what is a log sheet and importance of the log sheet. Now I am aware of what exactly is a log sheet. I refreshed my knowledge of PERT charts from the activity done in the class. I also understood the main components like critical path, LCT,ECT and slack time. of the PERT chart and how useful those components for managing the time period of the project.

References:-

1234rf. (2012). Project Management Triangular. [Online]. Available at:  http://www.123rf.com/photo_11066583_rendered-concept-of-a-project-management-triangle.html 

[Accessed 17th September 2012]

Civil Engineering. (2012). Project Manager. [Online]. Available at:  http://civilengineerlink.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/project-management.jpg 

[Accessed 17th September 2012]

Day 27-Software Development Methodologies

Fardani (2011) has defined Software development methodologies as "structure imposed on the development of software product and software development methodology includes procedures, techniques, tools and documentation aids which will help system developers in their task of implementing a new system"(Fardani.  2011).

Today lecture was done by Ms. Manesha. Ms. Manesha started the lecture by stating that a software development methodology use in software engineering as a framework used to structure, plan and control the process of developing an information system. In software development main goals is to give a quality output which satisfy the client. If the product is not quality it is definite that client will reject the product. Because of this development team make sure work according to a plan in-order to give a quality output. In-order to that development team need to come up with a proper plan, for the plan need to gather requirements and need to come up with a  proper design in order to develop the system. These steps are common to any project, whatever the company, project or context follow these steps. But there are steps which are cannot to use in every projects and there are steps which can do paralleled and which cannot do paralleled. In this case development team need to follow a methodology. 

Most of the projects due to mainly because of two reasons. They are because of gone beyond the budget and not keep in to a schedule. The best example is Chaos report. According to Chaos report less than 20% software development projects are successive in Sri Lanka. Which means more than 80% of projects are failed and they have found out the reasons for these failures as problems that has mentioned above. 

After that lecturer mentioned the main thing need to do before using a methodology is to analyse whether the methodology is suitable for the PROJECT NOT for the system. Also lecturer mentioned most of the students   do mistake when choosing a methodology to the final year project. What they do is without looking at limitations and constraints of the project try to come up with a methodology to the project which is wrong way of doing a project. First of all need to find out what are the constraints, limitations and problems in the project then only need to select a methodology for the project. This way is heading to a effective outcome of the project.

After that lecturer stated there are various characteristics which are can use to define a project. They are,

• What is up Against
• The uncontrollable Constrains
• Time Limits
• Milestones to Achieve
• Progress to Achieve
• Availability of Resources
• Knowledge
• Skill Availability

Then she started explain different types of software development methodologies.
Structured Methodologies
In these methodologies phases are structured. The best example for the structured methodology was SDLC (System Development Life Cycle). In SDLC there are eight phases they are, planning, feasibility study, analysis, design, implementation, support and security and maintenance. 
All most all the methodologies based on SDLC because SDLC is the only methodology which is covered all the work in software development process.

SSADM(Structured (Structured System Analysis and Design Methodology)
SSADM is a document driven methodology. It involves in lots of documents. SSADM is an old methodology which focuses on feasibility, analysis and design. SSADM does not focus on development of the system. Phases in the SSADM are,

• Feasibility Study
• Requirement Analysis
• Requirement Specification
• Logical System Specification
• Physical Design

Feasibility Study
In this phase define the scope and evaluate it. Look at the domain of the problem and check how to solve the problems.
Requirement Analysis
Look at the client's requirements for the project and focus on each and every section of the system in-order to fulfill customer's need.
Requirement specification
focus on both functional and non-functional requirements.
Functional Requirements:- Requirements that should be in the system. If the system build up without this requirements the system will not solve the problems and system will be a failure.
Non-functional Requirements:-
These requirements are not must to the system. But with these requirements can improve the system. Without these requirements system will not be a failure.
Logical system Specification
In this phase logical solutions will be defined. All the diagrams will be drawn in this phase. Some of the diagrams are DFDs, ERDs etc.
Physical Design
Focus on hardware which will be useful in-order to implement the system.

Techniques used in the System
Logical data modeling-  Explain the logical design of the system- ERDs
Data Flow Modeling- Describe the data flows of the system-DFDs
Entity Behavioral Model- Entity Life History Diagram (ELH)

Limitations of the SSADM Model\
SSADM only focuses on client requirements or mostly on document. This methodology does not focus on the development phase of the system.

RUP (Rational unified Process)
This methodology made for UML. Because UML users found out UML has certain benefits which helpful to effective analysis and developers can map up the user requirements easily for the developing system. There are four main phases in the RUP. They are,

Figure 1: RUP Methodology (cs.nmsu.edu, 2012)

1. Inception
2. Elaboration
3. Construction
4. Transition

Activities or indiscipline take place in RUP are,

• Business Rule Modeling
• Requirements
• Analysis Design
• Implementation
• Test
• Deployment
• Configuration and Change Management
• Project Management
• Environmental Analysis 

Above figure illustrated of RUP methodology. As shown in the figure bulk of work will be done in the inception phase. In the elaboration phase two iterations have taken place. Normally iterations happen in prototyping.

Prototypes- There are mainly two types of prototyping they are, evolutionary and throw away prototyping.
Evolutionary Prototype
Evolves in final output.
Throwaway Prototype
Doing for get the approval and get requirements correctly.

Agile Methodology
As Ms Manesha stated Agile is not a methodology. It is just guidelines. These have build up on iterative and incremental development.

Agile Manifesto
-Individuals and iteration over process and tool
-Working software over comprehensible documentation
-Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
-Respond to change over following a plan- Does not stick to a plan, when there are changes in the project, change the plan and do the corrections.

 After giving a explainable discussion about Agile, lecturer started discuss about methodologies in Agile.

SCRUM Methodology 
As mentioned in oberig (2011) SCRUM methodology is "iterative incremental framework for managing complex work (such as new product development) commonly used with agile software development. Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach."

Oberig (2011) explained more about ACRUM methodology as "Of all the agile methodologies, Scrum is unique because it introduced the idea of “empirical process control. That is, Scrum uses the real-world progress of a project — not a best guess or uninformed forecast — to plan and schedule releases (Oberig, 2011). In Scrum, projects are divided into succinct work cadences, known as sprints, which are typically one week, two weeks, or three weeks in duration. At the end of each sprint, stakeholders and team members meet to assess the progress of a project and plan its next steps. This allows a project’s direction to be adjusted or reoriented based on completed work, not speculation or predictions"(Oberig, 2011).

Figure 2: SCRUM Methodology ( Oberig, 2011  )

Oberig (2011) has stated "Philosophically, this emphasis on an ongoing assessment of completed work is largely responsible for its popularity with managers and developers alike. But what allows the Scrum methodology to really work is a set of roles, responsibilities, and meetings that never change. If Scrum’s capacity for adaption and flexibility makes it an appealing option, the stability of its practices give teams something to lean on when development gets chaotic (Oberig, 2011)."

DSDM Methodology (Dynamic System Development Method)
Heavy methodology which includes,

• Feasibility Study
• Business Study

Sequence of Iterations

• Functional Model
• Design 
• Implementation

Spread the word (2009) explained DSDM as "Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) is a framework which provides a controlled but flexible process for delivering new and better systems. It involves effective use of knowledge with tools and techniques for development of prototypes which allows achieving efficient and fixed project delivery timescales. This methodology allows development of robust systems in private, public, business and education sectors. This framework provides an ideal basis for a development and implementation process involving human resources, technology and the processes that bind them (DSDM Consortium, 2007). (Spread the word, 2009)"

Figure 3: DSDM Methodology (Spread the word, 2009) 

Learning Outcomes:-

From today lecture I learnt different types of methodologies and how to apply those methodologies in projects. Before the lecture I thought Agile is a methodology but during the lecture I understood it is not a methodology but it is set of guidelines. Also I understood the different methodologies has in agile. They are SCRUM and DSDM. I also understood when and what to use these methodologies. When discuss about SSDM it is a well structured methodology which focus on customer requirements but the draw back in the methodology is it does not focus on the development stage of a project. I finally learnt that all these methodologies are build on SDLC because SDLC is the only methodology which covers the entire software development process. I am looking forward to apply one of this methodologies in my final year project and I make sure to be careful select a appropriate methodology which suits to my project not for the system.

Finally lecturer mentioned things consider when selecting a methodology.

• Scope
• Deliverable
• Constraints - Only up to requirements
• User Involvement
• Most important Nature of the project - Focus on what kind of project no the software and things need to do in the project.

References:-

CS.NMSU. (2012c). RUP Methodology. [Online]. Available at: http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~jeffery/courses/591/lecturenotes/rup-graph.gif [Access 13th September 2012]

Faridani, H. (2011). Software development methodologies. [Online]. Available at: http://www.gtislig.org/HamidFaridani_GuideToSelectingSWMethodologies_SOC_PDD_20110305.pdf [Access 13th September 2012]

Oerig (2011). SCRUM Methodology. [Online]. Available at: http://oberig.com/scrum.php 

[Access 13th September 2012]

Spread the word (2009). DSDM Methodology.  [Online]. Available at: http://spreadthewordz.blogspot.com/2009/10/dsdm-is-it-coming-back.html [Access 13th September 2012]

Day 26-Industrial Tour to Virtusa

Company Profile

Figure 1: Logo of Virtusa(neccfoundersgolf,2012)

Virtusa is a large Information Technology (IT) company founded in 1996 in Massachusetts. Virtusa is a company which provides IT consultation, technology and out sourcing. Virtusa caters customers from different industries/fields. Virtusa has customers from banking and financial services, insurance, telecommunication and from many other fields. 

Introduction of the Company

After visiting to the company, all the students gathered to a hall. Before starting presentations two past APIIT students came and gave a brief introduction to Virtusa,what they are doing, what they have experienced and what they have gained in their career.

Figure 2:  Mr. Shehan Warusavithana  (Facebook, 2012)

After that it came time for the main presentations. First presentation was done by Mr. Shehan Warusavithana. Before discuss about Virtusa , Mr. Shehan gave a brief introduction about himself. Currently Mr. Shehan is a director in technology in Virtusa. He has joint Virtusa as a software architect and has given a good service to the company with the knowledge and experiences that he gained nearly for nine years. Then he started the discussion about Virtusa.

Virtusa

• US company
• Virtusa has main off shores. They are Sri Lanka, India and US
• 5650 world class professionals
• 89 active clients who are giving millions worth projects.
• Listed on NASDAQ (US stock market)
• FY 2012 Revenue: $ 277.8 million
• Operating income: $ 23.9 million
• 10 years revenue CAGR (Compound And Growth Rate): 32.47%

Industries in Companies (Clients)

• Financial- Citi bank, BFSI, J P Morgan and Chase & Co., Paypal
• Media and Information- National geographic, Thomson Reuters
• Communication- CISCO, Qwest
• Technology- Pego, United technology, IBM
• Health care and life science- Blue Cross, Carolina
• Others- McDonald

Awards

• Steve Award For Human Resource
• HRM (Human Resource Management) Award in 2010
• Agile Awards
• Boston Gold Award

Responsible Corporate Organization

Virtusa has engaged into social service activities

• Developed 75 IT labs in rural areas
• Over 120,000 campus students has gained benefits from the training
• Supported national integration  - Rehabilitation of ex-LTTE combatants
•  "Akura" school management system
• Founding contributes to "Sahana" in the after month of the 2004 Tsunami.

Domain Expertise

• Telecom- 30% revenue
• Banking and financial 60% revenue (approximately)
• Insurance - Growing rapidly
•  Heath care- Growing rapidly
• Media and entertainment

Projects handled by Virtusa

Below has mentioned some of the main projects handled by virtusa.

• E-gateway system for British telecom
• Help track the life cycle of air craft components for Pratt and Whitney
• Cheques scanning and depositing system for J P Morgan and Chase

Current Projects handle by Virtusa

• A fall tracker for patients and old people for Philips

Companies Training Programs

• On boarding
• Personal engineering excellence
• Technical skills
• Soft skills
• Team building

Career and Growth

• Learning environment
• Mentor and buddy system
• Maintaining portals like social media- vT, vTube, Vinger

Benefits that Employees get from Virtuse

• Basic Salary
• Car Allowances
• Quarterly bonus
• Parties
• Entertainment clubs etc.

After the very descriptive introduction of the Virtusa Mr. Shiham Nawaz started a new discussion about BPM practices that carries in Virtusa.

Figure 3:  Mr. Shiham Nawaz(Face book, 2012)

BPM stands for Business Process Management. BPM has come to the industry with the changes of the business. Early days mainly focus on the business now it has changed and now focus on the customers and employees by adding quality and reducing the cost of the product. This is all about BPM.

According to Mr. Nawaz, When discuss about BPM, BPM engineers are the ones who are done the main role in this. There is a high demand for the engineers, from this technology adds demand on the engineers because of that different versions will be invented in different programming languages. Which means everything (all the process) include in working environment is automated which called 5th generation and Mr Nawaz stated Virtusa follows 5th generation which they use a software called "PEGA". It works as a portal. In PEGA discussions,chat and other communication processed included which is useful for interaction among employees when handling a project.  Mr Nawaz stated for BIT students it is good to start the career as a business analyst which is the role of act between client and the programmer and identify the customer requirements and inform the programmer. Mr Nawaz said because of that it will be useful if a business analyst has the basic knowledge about coding which will help to explain customer requirements to the programmer. BPM mainly focus on the business quadrant.  The performance of evaluation done in Virtusa based on following factors. They are, time, cost, quality and customer orientation.

Entities of BPM

BPM adds value to,

• Customers
• Customers' customers
• Employee

BPM helps Project team for,

• Separates business logic from technical aspects
• Exposes another layer for business functionalities
• Brings business domain knowledge by analyzing and modelling
• Brings technology knowledge by architecture and design 

After the effective discussion about BPM students were taken to the board room to give the experience of how the Virtusa handles projects. For explain about working environment of projects they use their current project of A fall tracker for patients and old people for Philips which is currently in the process of implementation. 

The discussion started by the project manger of the Philips project. The project manager started the lecture by stating the information gathering tool use to this project. The tool was work shops which also known as hot houses. Hot houses is techniques which process, clients and the development team gather to an official place for a particular time period (it can be hours or few days) and discuss and gather customer/client requirements in-order to implement the system. The main benefit of hot houses is development team able to capture customer requirements within a very short period of time when compare to other fact finding techniques.

Figure 4: Project members of Philips Project

After that project manger showed the project work flow or the project plan of the project. In the project plan there were three stages. First stage include 2 use-cases, second stage included 12 use-cases and final or the third stage included 31 use-cases. In between each stage they have given gaps. The purpose of that is to contact client and update the work and if there any changes to made they can do within the gap allocated. According to the project manager there was a mistake that had done which was they have allocated 2 use cases at the beginning and in the final stage has allocated 31 use-cases which is not very efficient. Because in the final stage there are lot of work to carry out. But the project team has managed to over come from that and complete the project on time. After that members of the development team talked about the project areas, technology that has used in the project. Members also mentioned about the PEGA system. PEGA platform has built on J2EE framework. This PEGA platform makes the work easy as it provides effective interaction between the project team and other employees in the company which can contribute ideas to the project and also in PEGA platform most of the coding work auto generated which makes the work easy. 

One of the members mentioned about the process of development as follow,

• Architecture Level : Discusses about the Technology, Maintainability, Scalability
• Design Level : Discusses what are the interfaces and software components
• Low Level Design (LLD) : Designing use cases and coup with little coding
• Development: Checking the quality of work done by peer review and lead review
• Quality Assurance
• Tracking Risk issues and Mitigation issues

Learning Outcomes:-

From the industrial tour I got more information about the Virtusa, working process of it etc. Before visit to the Virtusa I was aware of the company since there are many past students in APIIT currently work in the Virtusa. Also from the vacancies that had published on various job vacancy websites, news paper articles and etc. I have heard about good and bad, both sides of Virtusa. After visiting to the Vitusa all my doubts were cleared and got a better awareness of Virtusa. From the first presentation presented by Mr. Shehan I got a clear about what exactly Virtusa is. Because I thought Virtusa is a Sri Lankan company which caters only within Sri Lanka but from the presentation I got to know it is a company that expanded all over the world. I also got a clear knowledge about how Virtusa treats employees, facilities and benefits that gain by working in Virtusa. The working environment of Virtusa has two sections as in on shore and off shore. There are three main off shores they are Sri Lanka, India and US. Offshore is the place the development of a project carries on. On shore means some of the employees go on meet clients and gather clients' requirements and send information/data to offshore which helpful to develop the system. From the second lecture I got a better understanding of BPM. Because before this presentation I only had heard about few things about BPM. The area of BPM was new for me when I attend to the presentation of the presentation and now I know what is BPM, what are the areas it covers, how useful it is. From the presentation that took place in board room I got a understand of working environment of the Virtusa and about the PEGA system work in the company. One of the main thing I learnt during that presentation was hot houses. I was not aware about this fact finding technique before. From this industrial tour I got understand about the working environment and how the industrial projects differs from academic project. Finally I must mentioned this tour was very effective and I gained good knowledge about different areas in the industry.  

References:-

Facebook. (2012).The Business Information Technology Batch at APIIT visits Virtusa. [Online]. Available at:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.10151007146530887.417824.249912980886&type=1

[Accessed 6th September 2012]

neccfoundersgolf. (2012). Logo of Virtusa. [Online]. Available at: http://www.neccfoundersgolf.org/uploadimages/6/virtusa-logo-cmyk.jpg vitusa image 

[Accessed 6th September 2012]

Day 25- Referencing

Today we had very important lecture, it was about referencing. Referencing is important when doing an academic project.

Figure 1: Referencing (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2010)

As stated by Newcastle (2008) referencing is "When you research a topic for an assignment you may use ideas or information from a number of sources, including books, articles from journals or newspapers and websites to support your own work. Referencing is a way of showing what sources you have used, giving credit to the original authors (Newcastle, 2008)." 

Why do we need to reference is it a must?       

Yes it is a must to reference the the ideas got from different books, magazines etc. According to Newcastle (2008) there are some reasons to do reference,

         1.To avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original source of an idea, piece of information or resource.

             2. To support your work with the authoritative work of another author.

             3. To demonstrate your knowledge and familiarity with a topic that you have researched.

            4.To help readers of your work to find the original source of information or ideas that you have used.     

Lecturer stated that we need to follow Harvard referencing style for referencing and citations. Blow I have discussed all the points that discussed in today lecture. Lecturer started to teach referencing by explaining the different ways of citations that can use in a document.

One citations belongs only to a one sentence.Which means one citation valid from one full-stop to the next full-stop  Below has mentioned some of the examples,

1. According to Pattinson (2007)............. .
2. The problems that has identified in this system.......... (Pattinsopn, 2007).
3. If a student need to refer to big paragraph student can follow below citation style.
first 1 and 1/2 lines and last 1 and 1/2 lines should extend and the content should be intended as follow figure.

4. If there are multiple citations for same idea need to cite all the references,

Fernando 2010; Sliva 2012; Perera 2011

Lecturer stated one common mistake done by students was do not include all the references which citations included in the document and sometimes has include links in references which has not used in the document. Lecturer said that we need to be avoid mistakes like this. Lecturer discussed more about citations he said that references and citations will not included to the word count and lecturer advised students to use Microsoft Word, Word Plugging which helps to filer the word count of the reference and citations and give the final word count of the document. 

There are different ways that can use a citation beginning of the sentence. But always need to have author's surname and year when citing.

• As stated by ABC (2012)

• According to ABC (2012)

• As per ABC (2012)

• As said by ABC (2012)

• As mentioned by ABC (2012)

• As told by ABC (2012)

• As reflected by ABC (2012)

• As depict by ABC (2012)

• Based on ABC (2012)

• As pointed out by ABC (2012)

• In companion to ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) describes that

• Based on the  investigation ABC (2012)

• As proved by ABC (2012)

• As said by ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) agreed that

• ABC (2012) makes the point that

• ABC (2012) says that

• As criticized by ABC (2012)

• In comparison to ABC (2012)

• As ABC (2012) wrote that

• As noted by ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) argued that

After that lecturer discussed some golden rules where can follow when citing and referencing.

1. Don't always stick to one particular frame to introduce references. Better to have a variety or mixture of them.

2. Don not quote (Copy Paste) more than three lines. If its direct copying use inverted commas also do not copy pate (quote) more than three lines.

3. Always Paraphrase. State multiple citations. 

4. If you cant find the year it should state as "n.b"

5. Try to avoid anonymous author. If its a site state the site name or the organization name that site belongs to.

6. If the year is not available based on the reference content try to find the year. If not can use "circa" which means approximate year for the content. Ex:- As Peter stated (2012 C)

7. Citing Interviews/Emails - Have to mention as personal communication by including as "Pers.comm". This need to mention after the name of the interviewed person. This style can use for the emails as well. Example (Fernando, R., 2012, pers.comm., 4th September) 

8. If there is a word to word copy it should placed within the inverted commons.

Learning Outcomes:-

I found lecture as very important for me I learnt new areas in referencing like in citing and references. Also I found some of the ways that I used to cite was wrong and now I know what ways are the correct ways to citing. The number of citations use in the document reflects the percentage or how much of research has done the student. The golden rules that given by the lecturer is very helpful it is like a summary of the today lecture. I am looking forward to use the tips that given by the lecture to referencing and citing and make sure to avoid the mistakes that I have done in referencing in the documents.

References:-

Cape Peninsula University of Technology. (2012). Referencing. [Online]. Available at: http://ixion.cput.ac.za/library_2/infoLit/referencing.htm [Accessed 4th September 2012].

Newcastle University. (2008). Referencing. [Online]. Available at: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/Resources/Divisions/Academic/Library/information-skills/foundation-portal/referencing-whydo.html [Accessed 4th September 2012].