Monday, April 30, 2007

India - A Trillion dollar economy

As the dollar plumetted, I am sure lot of the economists were going "told you so"..As has been well known the strong dollar was not sustainable given the huge US deficits..but quietly behind the scenes a lesser known fact dawned. India has now become the 12th nation in the world to join the Trillion dollar economy club at least at these dollar levels..I had noticed that it was skirting at 900 bil levels for some time but never thot the D Day would come so soon..

Oh well...It has...Another sleeping giant has gotten up...

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Really busy...

Have not been blogging as much as I would like to...Couple of reasons..Getting a project that was originally on a death march pretty much on track and keepin up with the latest in MSFT Tech.

PM has been kinda interesting off late as well...Patterns, Methodologies...I think I like those..

Will blog in detail about some of those soon..

Saturday, March 31, 2007

PMP Certification and Technical Interview Quest

As mentioned in an earlier blog, looks like PM has come to be the most important title/role these days..With that in mind, I am taking some PMP Training classes and intend completing the certification by EOM April. Hopefully should work out fine.

Meanwhile I am also trying to create a small database of MSFT Technologies interview questions that will be helpful to everyone..

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

PMP Training

Hi,
Now Project Management seems to be the flavor of the day everywhere I see. Our company seems to be enroute to creating a pool of PMs who can help other depts manage their projects and processes. I will b out attending the PMP training at Hilton Computers Apr 2 - 6. Having done certain aspects of PM in CMMi I think it should not be that difficult. Lets see..

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Orcas

Having played around VSTS for some time now(Beta 2, Tech refresh and the live one), I would love to see what MSFT has in store for the Orcas version. Apparently chief among their concentration areas are:

I really hope MSFT can live upto its promise.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Case Study with MSFT

Apparently, we (SCI) was the first company that MSFT knows of, that got CMMi certified using the VSTS tool and the accompanying methodology. Interesting!
We have been invited to write a case study based on this...Should be interesting!

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Project Server 2007 and MOPS 2007 POC

Our company is in the midst of doing 2 POCs for these products. Any comments on the gotchas of these softwares would be welcome.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Back from India...

I came back 2 days back and straight in the grind. Couple of interesting developments that happened in India...will write more about them soon.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Vibha

Since the time I had seen Vibha active again about 2 weeks ago...I have been wanting to participate in this org..Nice NGO...Check it out...

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Sharepoint features

Here is an interesting article about new Sharepoint features:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/dustin/articles/5235.aspx

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

So many new technologies!!!

With the advent of 2007 there is goin to be a plethora of applications that will flood the market that need good study.
Chief among them being
Sharepoint 2007
WWF 3.0
VSTS new version
Project Server 2007
Office 2007

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Straight onto Real world

Now that the dept has achieved the Process Quality Goal, I went straight back to some pending work that I had like Working a very critical project that had several issues, getting team ready fpr PS2007 and newer version of VSTS (CMMi framework) as well as some other softwares that are getting ready to release.

Getting interested on reading about requirements gathering since thats one area we still need to work on...so long!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Hurrah! CMM Level 2

Hurrah!! After a lot of hardwork from the entire team, CMM Level 2 was achieved by our department. Microsoft's latest VSTS tool had a lot to do with the initial fillip and then we rolledup our sleeves and did the needful as well.

Hope we can continue the momentum..Now onto something new and exciting!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

D-Day

Finally after going through some grueling sessions, we are at the last day/interview of our CMM level 2 process. It has been a challenging process and although I knew of our team's ability to handle pressure well..I was impressed with the calmness that our team members displayed as they handled the volley of questions hurled at them by the external appraiser..

Hope all goes well today.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

About del.icio.us

I liked the idea about del.icio.us...This had been something that I was looking for in the past year or so...Bookmarks on the web is a great idea.

I have created mine at http://del.icio.us/advait_k

Friday, November 24, 2006

Getting closer to appraisal...

As we get jitters about getting so close to the CMMi Level 2 appraisal, there are some good news as well. Microsoft was inquisitive to know today how we used their methodology template to get Level 2 certification. I have a conference call with 4 people from the Pattern and Practices department and it should be interesting to have an article/ White paper about how SCI IT achieved level 2 using VSTS.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Been a while...

Its been a while since I last posted. The Company CMMi initiative is going really full steam and we hope to meet the Dec 4 deadline for CMMi interviews. T'will b interesting to see how we do to say the least.
Meanwhile I have grown some fancy to newer technologies like :
Office 12
Project Server 2007
WSS 3.O
Windows Workflow Foundation Services
.NET 3.O
Found an interesting blog about Software Return on Investment
http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/archive/2006/11/11/return-on-investment-on-software.aspx

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Sunday, September 03, 2006

CMMi Progress

We have made good amount of progress towards CMM Certification. The biggest obstacle in this process has been the lack of resources as well as getting the Configuration practice officially up. We have been doing a lot of things CM wise but putting it down on paper has been a tough job. Policy,Processes and plans have been updated. Now PMs just need to follow them correctly. Out of the 7 KPAs(Key Process Areas) I think we have nailed down REQM,PP,PMC,QA and CM nicely. The MA and SAM process areas are turning to be a challenge given the time that our team can dedicate towards these areas.
Lets see how we progress...

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Certification

Amid all the issues that we faced during CMMi Certification I think it might b really worth putting all these pts together and post it so that it will help others who want to take this route..