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This
issue of our newsletter will be presenting a series of thoughts
about quality and process discipline in the context of our
global business. It is encouraging to see the business continue
its strong growth even through the traditionally slow summer
days. However, with growth like this, one can't help but
think that the best is yet to be. For my part, I believe
that our aspirations will continue to climb along with our
growth - and I see that as a good thing. When we aspire
for more, then we challenge ourselves to excel, and with
that striving comes excellence.
As
a continuing effort of our innovation programme, we continue
to seek new opportunities in our target markets and we continue
to invest in our internally-generated intellectual property-based
solutions:
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The
Data Quality Management System (also known as - CreditDimensions) |
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Derivatives
Price Capture System (aka - Genie) |
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CRM
Implementation Services (aka - E.piphany) |
There
are others of course, and we are constantly trying to find
new ways to market these offerings and to build recurring
client relationships around these solutions. The results
to date have been encouraging - we see a bright future from
our internal innovation as well as our good client relations.
But, we can never rest on any laurels. Innovation requires
constant work, constant striving to improve and constant
renewal in thought - sometimes we make leaps with a "new
set of eyes" other times its the same eyes that see something
in a different light. So, we have to always be looking,
examining and thinking about what comes next, about how
to make things better. Therein lies the opportunity for
quality management and process discipline. If we apply discipline
to our challenges of innovation, then we can sustain the
follow through which is needed after the initial joy of
creation passes. The creative process comes in small bursts
- process discipline is required to analyze creative inputs
for re-use and to cultivate the IP from a seedling to a
full-grown solution. So, while creativity is like art, the
innovation process more like a factory. We have to be rigorous
in our application of quality to the work that we do, we
have to constantly strive to make things better, and we
have to continually look for the potential for re-use. Once
we find those seeds of promise, we need to find ways to
test our hypothesis, then find ways to generate ongoing,
sustainable solution sets. Sanjeev, myself and all of the
partners are at your service to try to help you in identifying
and cultivating solutions from innovation. But, the road
is long and the challenges are many, so we need tenacity,
discipline and creativity.
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|  As
I sat with my sons to watch the magnificent Discovery Shuttle
Liftoff and subsequent flipping as well as docking with Space
Station, “programmer” in me couldn’t help
but think about the coding that must have gone behind the
scenes and the team of unknown programmers whose work contributed
to this seemingly dream like project. But then I started drawing
parallels between NASA programming and what we do at ebusinessware.
We
both have to have an SDLC, we happen to call it UniRAD. We
both have to have teams comprising of architects / designers,
developers, QA testers, project leads, and tech writers. We
both have domain experts as critical part of the team, more
the team members know about the subject more effective they
are. We both work on mission critical systems where failure
to meet required standards and results can cost heavy which
include money, name, face and more. We both have to have multiple
testing points namely unit testing, module testing, integration
testing, system testing, etc. List goes on!
Imagine
NASA team of software engineers leaving bugs at the end of
their projects in each of their mission critical assignments
for their users “the astronauts in space during
the flight) to find the bugs for them. There would
never have been any achievement in the area of space exploration
by NASA (and as a matter of fact, Russian Federal space agency,
India’s ISRO, Chinese Academy of Space, European ESA,
etc.) but fortunately the facts prove otherwise.
There has never been any proven software bug that has resulted
in disaster of any kind in over 50 years of history of space
exploration programs. 50 years ago, there were no consultants
who had yet coined the terms like “Total quality management
(TQM)”, “Six sigma”, “Zero defect”,
“Continuous improvement (CI)” and had not yet
made millions of dollars by holding seminars and writing books
on these subjects. There were no automated testing software
products either.
Why
would NASA engineers never leave bugs in
their systems time and again while we would? This is the question
“we all programmers of the world” must
ask ourselves at the beginning, during and at the end of our
assignments, I can assure you the quality of our output will
improve by leaps and bounds for each of the NASA engineer
is a programmer just like all of us as proven in hypothesis
above.
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Rajesh’s
arrival to the ebusinessware India office, carrying
a very symbolic just-published book—'The World
is Flat' stirred the conscience of many employees. My
recent return from the annual vacation to Thailand had
already evoked many thoughts at my leisure time on shrinking
of the world and our role becoming more and more comprehending
and evolving.
While taking Rajesh on a drive through Gurgaon—the
hub of IT sector in India — |
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I
could see his amazement on the mushrooming of glassed tall
buildings specially “made to order” for IT.
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He
was enthusiastic, but somewhere down the line I could see
some concern in his questioning eyes and he said, “To
sustain this growth, we need to do a lot of smart and hard
work” which provoked a lot of thought process.
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After
I completed reading the book, 'The World is Flat', I
realized at my inner conscience that all of us are very
fortunate to be born in an age in a century where the
world is becoming a global village. Where, sitting in
a conference hall, we talk to four different countries,
where in the early morning we catch up with Singapore,
afternoon with London and evening with the US.
It has definitely increased the momentum, the speed
and the growth which is directly proportionate to responsibility,
productivity and reward for each one of us. Nonetheless,
the concern remains like that of Rajesh, which I thought
of sharing with you in this newsletter. Our dream of
achieving the success, making ebusinessware as one of
the most cherished |
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in the world. And this can only be achieved by our persistent
effort and taking measures on the following: |
| 1. |
An
aggressive hunt for more knowledge and creativity. |
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Balance
between values, both human and financial. |
| 3. |
Commitment
towards the cause for which we come to work together. |
| 4. |
Two-way
communication and information-sharing. |
| 5. |
Truthfulness
towards the organization’s motto. |
| 6. |
Mutual
support towards collaboration at all levels. |
| 7. |
Never
say die attitude. |
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Ability to measure input and output.
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Our
endeavor to bring quality in whatever we do, will take us miles
ahead. Remember we need to take part in this scenario in the
best possible way so that someday when someone like Friedmen
comes to India, visits Gurgaon, reaches the ebusinessware office,
watches the commitment of our young engineers, witnesses our
processes, sits in our conference rooms and looks at our hanging
video cameras, uses our IP phones, he will say “Wow”.
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Dear
all, this day is not too far. It is very near waiting
for all of us. We have to walk towards it and be part
of what the world holds for THE BEST. Lets work on our
competitive strengths: |
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Innovation. |
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Leadership
and management. |
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Proven
global delivery model. |
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Comprehensive
solutions. |
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Commitment
to superior quality of delivery. |
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Process
execution. |
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Long-standing
client relationships. |
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Ability
to scale. |
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Somewhere
I had read:
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“I
hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand” |
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Singapore office welcomed ebusinessware Group President
and CTO Sanjeev Midha on his visit to the city on June
13, 2005. During his four-day visit, Sanjeev’s
agenda included meeting clients and updating prospects
with ebusinessware’s latest service offerings.
An important part of Sanjeev’s itinerary was meeting
the staff and their families in Singapore.
Among
the existing clients, Sanjeev, along with Sameer Randive,
met the CSFB team. The client representatives expressed
their appreciation of the ebusinessware team’s
efforts, work ethics and their strong contribution to
the risk management project.
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From
left to right : Sanjeev, Ramesh, Sharad, Ramakant
and Gurpal. |
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From
left to right : Manish, Kanushree, Anita, Mahua,
Sanjeev, Ramakant, Gurpal, Vasant, Ramesh and Sameer.
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| Sanjeev
and Sameer also worked on developing future strategies
for the Singapore office and launching a new marketing
initiative from Singapore for Global Marketing.
On the evening of 15th June, a staff dinner was arranged
at a local Indian Restaurant where Sanjeev spent time
with the Singapore team members and and vice versa.
Sanjeev spoke with them individually to understand their
motivations, both personal and professional. He lauded
the team's excellent efforts at the client site and
encouraged members to continue contributing strongly
towards the company growth. |
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In
the last week of June, this year, Edward Hoofnagle, Group Chairman
and CEO visited London. Accompanying Ed on this visit was Sudhir
Dhingra, Director-Financial Data Operations. Ed and Sudhir had detailed
discussions with ebusinessware’s alliance partner Adsatis,
represented by Michael Smethurst and Steve Shute.
On
the card were updates of data service offerings from CreditDimensions
(CDI). |
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It
was a fantastic opportunity for me to work from our India
office after over two years. It was great to meet the entire
India team and put faces to the voices I kept talking to
on the phone. A lot has changed as expected - changed for
the better. During my visit I tried to meet with all Project
Leaders at least twice as a group and many others individually.
Through these sessions the idea of Process Innovation initiative
was born that is in line with the Innovation 2005 theme
that Ed chalked out. I will talk about this a little later
in this article.
I
took that opportunity to meet with the entire team –
all five floors and deliver the presentation that showcases
some of our best practices and ideas. A quick recap is in
place for the messages I wanted to and tried to deliver
to all of you at the India office.
Support
Sales and Marketing Effort
All
of us need to support the Sales and Marketing effort in
whatever way we can. Writing case studies and one-pager
summaries, reviewing existing marketing material, providing
interesting ideas for our client presentation, improving
content on the website, anything that suits your skills.
Why not put a little effort into showing off our hard work?
Moreover if we want to work on more interesting technologies,
why not support the Sales team to get more projects in these
areas? We have already seen results where the E.piphany
marketing material (one-pager summary, two-pager case study
and a detailed case study) was put together in record time
with help from the ECMS team. Can we see more of such examples?
I shared a spreadsheet with all of you after the presentation
that has an Executive Summary for each Practice and detailed
Case Studies for each project. That is a good starting point
to start coordinating with your Practice Manager –
Partner.
The
World is Flat
I have left a copy of this interestingly titled book at
the India office. We no longer have the privilege in India
of being the only destination of choice for offshore IT
work. We have to grow up on the value chain before others
in this level playing field take us over. I think the message
was loud and clear – no longer plain vanilla ice cream;
need to create innovative sundaes! We can all act by taking
a simple step of following our Top 5 Key Process Areas.
I have shared more about this in the Process Innovation
section in this article.
The
Tipping Point
A standard human response to implementing any new idea is
– how can I do this alone? A book I mentioned by the
same name is an interesting read and can show you with concrete
example something many of you already know – every
long journey starts with a single small step. There is no
need to wait for an initiative to be formulated by someone
in the management team to bring about a change. I believe
in the power of intention. All it requires is a small group
of individuals to bring an excellent idea to a point where
it tips and gathers momentum for larger user involvement.
We have already seen this with simple ideas like putting
a small project code in the subject line of all our emails.
More such ideas can lead to small gains in productivity
to all of us. This leads to my next point.
Productivity
= Prosperity
Many of you were surprised with the simple real life examples
on how a more productive people attract more prosperity.
This applies to individuals, companies, even governments
of nations. How can we be more productive and automate our
unit testing? How can we automate every such task that we
are bored doing! Remember the equation.
Forums
and Discussions
This is something I keep talking about at every possible
opportunity. Many Project Leaders also enquired about method
to enhance discussions and conversations across the five
floors at the India office and across the continents between
our other offices. We have many different channels to facilitate
this – Mailing lists like ebw-ThinkTank and Discussion
Forums on UVS. Yet again, why limit us to these? Does anyone
have any new ideas? We need to further promote candid discussions
and take them in the right spirit to improve. Remember the
world is flat and we cannot afford to be complacent sitting
at our cozy desks!
Process
Innovation
Lastly, the Process Innovation program that all Project
Leaders participated in now needs to be supported by each
one of us. The idea is simple – We have great processes
defined and automated – now is the time to start following
at least the Top 5 across the board. If you recall, we created
five teams of Project Leaders and each team has a mission
to evangelize one of these Top 5 Key Process Areas using
innovative means and ways –
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Timesheet Process - Kapil, Vivek, Sudhir
Dhingra and Richa. |
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Issue Tracking Process - Abid, Shuchita,
Susanta and Kedar. |
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Project Planning Process - Sajjan,
Amit, Brijesh and Sameer Khanna. |
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Automated Unit Testing Process - Sumit,
Nikhil, Tarun, Pawan and Rajesh Kumar. |
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Vacation Planning Process - Prashant,
Vineet, Shailendra and PL Arora. |
Ashu
will keep us informed on the progress these teams are making
by way of concrete quantitative metrics. E.g., Number of
defaulters reduced by what percentage; how many projects
now have an updated project plan and a weekly status report
etc.
Other
important things I cherish about this trip are Abid Sahab’s
sher-shayari (Urdu Poetry), Gunbir’s Jaya Jaya Shiva
Shankar (Hindi Song), Brijesh’s new-comer mandatory
performance at the dinner and most important of all is the
efficiency and planning that all teams demonstrated in organizing
lunch sessions at fantastic places. We now need to extend
that planning expertise to our projects. Keep up the good
work and remember the two things that you cannot go wrong
in this company if caught practicing – Process Leadership
and Meritocracy!
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Following
the close monitoring of adherence
to EIS Project norms, by the project
teams, The HR Department announced
the winning team for EIS Awards (Timesheets).
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from this, the department also announced
the awards for |
| 1. |
Star
Performer of the Month July 2005 is
Goldie Sehgal. |
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Employee
of the Month July 2005 in US is Aseem
Narula. |
| 3. |
Employee
of the Month July 2005 in INDIA is Rajesh
Kumar. |
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Employee
of the Month July 2005 in SINGAPORE
is Sharad Mohan. |
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| 1. |
The
India team members also wished farewell
to Shalabh Agrawal
who left for the US to join ebusinessware’s
prestigious project Primus. He will
be a part of the onshore team to handle
the new challenge to build a trading
system to encapsulate the complete
life cycle for a hedge fund investment
for the client. |
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| 2. |
Ebusinessware
team bid adieu to Hemant Gaur who
left for the US. Hemant
took up his new assignment in a leading
US investment bank project to develop
an engine that will handle diverse
email formats and extract trade information
to automate one of the bank’s
processes and improve overall efficiency.
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1. |
A
warm welcome awaited Rajesh
Abhyankar on his
latest visit to India. His
guidance to teams as part
of the run-up to two crucial
deliveries was greatly appreciated.
He also initiated the constitution
of groups, comprising team
leads, to take charge of five
crucial project development
aspects under UniRAD. |
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| 2. |
Gurpal
Singh was welcomed by the
India team on his arrival in India.
He interacted with the senior management
during his stay. |
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The
India team also extended a warm welcome
to Sandeep Singh.
His visit was aimed at facilitating
knowledge transfer among the teams
of several prestigious projects. The
teams interacted extensively with
Sandeep throughout his stay. |
| 4. |
Shrikant
Dixit was welcomed back to
India office. His return was marked
by knowledge transfer in
a prestigious project. |
| 5. |
Asheesh
Sharma was welcomed by the
team on his visit to the India office.
During his stay valuable sessions
of knowledge transfer among the SAAS
team members were conducted. |
| 6. |
Contact
Management System team member Shanu
Sharma too shared her knowledge
and project-related developments with
the E.piphany team members. |
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India
team also welcomed back Shailendra
Mathur on his return from
the US after successful completion
of knowledge acquisition of the Out
Brokerage Repository Applications
for an Insurance client. |
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On
the completion of his knowledge gathering
for the Credit Derivative Swaps project
in the US office, Lovkesh
Joshi was welcomed back to
India. |
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| 1.
Parth Sarthi Ghosh |
2.
Sameer Khanna |
3.
Mursheed Alam |
| 4.
Brijesh Sharma |
5.
Siddhartha Srivastava |
6.
Chetan Arora |
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The
training imparted by Offshore Faculty and Onshore visiting
Directors, Sandeep Singh and Rajesh Abhyankar in May-June
2005, were enriching sessions for the participants. These
initiatives were broadly divided into: |
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Hibernate : Hibernate
concepts including Object/Relational Mapping with Hibernate
were explained to 21 participants attending this session.
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Java
: This
included Core Java and JSP/Servlets. A total of 20 participants
attended the Core Java session and another 11 participants
attended the JSP/Servlets session.
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UniRAD
: UniRAD’s
five Phases including Project Handling using CVS and Tutos
were explained to 24 participants.
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Finance
: Finance
Basics, Financial Markets, Time Value of Money, Financial,
Instruments, Fixed Income Securities and other Finance concepts
were explained to 16 participants.
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Eclipse
and ANT : A
total of 12 participants attended this training session.
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VBA
Training : A
total of 8 participants attended this training session.
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Quality
Assurance : The
emphasis was on the need for automated testing in projects
using Rational Robot to all 12 QA participants.
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The
Technical Training Schedule for the quarter July–September
2005 will include Struts, Java Script, RDBMS – Oracle,
JSP-Servlets, Quality Assurance, UniRAD, Finance, Basic Programming
Techniques and Object Oriented Analysis & Design, OS and
Application Behavior, Hibernate, Eclipse, Cruise Control and
ANT. |
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The
months of June and July have been very eventful for us at
ebusinessware with several successful project deliveries completed
and multiple new projects added to our fold. Our endeavor
to improve our processes has also met with success during
this phase. The following projects provided the opportunity
to improve upon our processes in delivery as well as project
management.
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The Fixed Income Derivative Application has been put into
parallel run. It has been very well accepted by the client.
This successful delivery has resulted in a new project being
awarded to ebusinessware, almost three times the size of the
original project. We would like to congratulate the team for
its hard work and persistence.
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The
Forms Development project, undertaken by a very young team,
is reaping huge appreciation from the client for the innovative
ideas and quality being delivered. We look forward to the
completion of the project in right time. |
| 3. |
We
were also able to integrate
E.piphany in the client's environment after
some hard work by the teams at both the end. It required a
lot of coordination and the team came out successful.
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Learning
on the way... |
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Projects where we have not been able to define the success
criteria from the very beginning tend to extend beyond our
expectation. We all need to be very vigilant during the initial
phase of our project to ensure that we have defined and understood
the success criteria.
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New
Projects: |
| 1. |
We
have been awarded two new projects. One of them involves the
enhancement of an existing application on Hedge Funds in Java
technology and the other, relates to improvement of performance
of a C++ based application. New teams are being constituted
for these two projects. |
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The new Project-Fixed Income Derivative Application2 is in
the initial phase. Team building is already underway. We expect
to complete this project in the next nine months. This is
a dream project for all of us due to the kind of complexity
and technology involved in it. Our faith in our team has made
us confident that we would be able to sail past it without
problems.
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Training:
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| 1. |
In keeping with our schedule of implementing quarterly training
plans for our offshore center, we are glad to announce that
at least 60 per cent of the offshore team has gone through
at least one training course in last six months.
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| 2. |
We
plan to introduce at least two new courses in the next quarterly
plan. One of them would be on Project Management and would
be aimed towards project leads. |
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Singapore
– Vasant Kumar, Project Lead
With more than six years of experience, Vasant’s
core competencies are in core Java, JSP, Servlets
and Oracle. Vasant joined ebusinessware more than
three years ago and has been working with prestigious
projects since. Vasant’s strengths -- strong
programming and problem-solving skills -- led to his
recognition as a project Lead in India. Vasant is
currently a part of the ebusinessware risk management
team in Singapore, which caters to the exclusive development
needs of Risk Management client in Singapore. Prior
to this Vasant was the Team Lead for a prestigious
client. A B.Com graduate, Vasant has completed
his MCA from IGNOU, New Delhi.
Vasant’s skill sets include Java (Core, JSP,
Servlet, EJB, RMI), JavaScript, Delphi, FoxPro, C,
and Visual Basic coupled with Exposure in PERL. |
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Star
Performer of the Month July, Goldie Sehgal
Goldie, a young member of the India team, has been with
ebusinessware for two years. He joined ebusinessware
as a trainee in the Electronic Application project.
His steady and laudable performance was instrumental
in his career growth to Software Engineer. At present
Goldie is in charge of an EA project involving the migration
of around 800 forms of the existing application from
Adobe Version 4 to Version 7.
Goldie’s specialization is in core Java, Servlets,
JSP, Java Script, JDBC, Install Shield (6.2.2) and Configuration
management. He completed his BCA from IGNOU, New Delhi
and his MCA from Dr. D Y Patil Institute of Management
& Research, Pune. |
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Management behavior is the singlemost important factor
in communicating the Total
Quality Process. The company's senior
executives must make an uncompromising commitment
to implement 
