Wrapping up the last days

So, just a small update on how we're doing here in India. The weather is pretty hot, its 23:11 here now and im still sweating in my t-shirt in the lobby. But I personally am enjoying this heat, it's such a nice change to the temperature in Holland (no offense ;)). When we left for India over a week ago, the temperature was around 10 degrees. I heard from some friends that the temperature is better now though (around 18 degrees?).

The training is going good so far in my opinion, but I do think it's important that we also talk about how the implementation should go from here on. I am confident though about the users, especially the superusers. They're bringing up a lot of questions and are testing the system in every way possible, which is very good I think. We've still got one day left for MIS and 2 more days for general exercises and practicing.

A few days ago, some guy showed up in the bridge camp and I spoke with him for a while. He was a social activitist, trying to give more attention to child labour. He is currently touring through India on his bike by himself, visiting a lot of places where people are fighting child labour, and attending meetings about child labour. He's covered more than half of his trip now, which consists of driving a total of 18.000 (!!!!) kilometers in 90 days. I have a lot of respect for what he is doing, and it's good to see that a lof of the Indian population is also trying to fight child labour so actively.

I'm actually looking forward to my week's holiday as well. Even though its a major experience being over here, working with these people and seeing these children, we haven't seen a lot of India yet. Most of the time we only see the hotel, the road to & from the bridge camp, and the bridge camp itself. Rob is going back to Holland upcoming Saturday. My flight for Mumbai leaves 2 hours before Rob's flight. I've got a connecting flight to Jaipur from Mumbai, and there my holiday-trip will start.

Expert training

So, I think it's about time to give another update from our situation in India right? We're half way through our trip for Bloom (I'll be going on holiday for a week as well after the work is done for Bloom), and I think we have a pretty good impression on how the trainings are going so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we started out with the CMS Superuser training as planned. Although we had to improvise on our dayplanning a bit, I think our goals for these days were met. The superusers having experience with the 1.2 version of the system actually helped a lot. So, on Thursday and Friday we got started with the expert training. We try to invite the users to open up and to feel free to ask any questions they have, which is having a good effect I think. Because of the language barrier, it's really great that our collegue from Bangalore has such a drive to train these people (actually he used to be a teacher). Even though he joined the project last-minute, he's been able to explain the application to the trainees in notime. Giving the training at the bridge camp is actually very good I think, because you're constantly surrounded what it's all about : those kids. Every time we come to work in the morning, there's all these kids calling our names and greeting us, it's quite funny and touching at the same time.

Yesterday we went to see the movie "Clash of the titans" in the Imax-theater here in Hyderabad. We took an autorickshaw to get there, but we had to stop halfway because the light of this lawn-mower had some issues.


After continueing our trip, we got out and walked the rest on the Necklace-road, which goes all around this beautifull lake with the Budha-statue in it. It actually looks a lot like the statue of liberty in New York, and it was really nice to see the lights over the water and the couples strolling on the streets. After arriving at the cinema, we naturally had a meal in the most famous fast-food franchise in the world (do I really need to write the M-word here?). The cinema actually looked more like a shopping mall that they just happen to place a cinema in than the other way around.

Bridge camps and first day of training

(05-04-10)Yesterday we first went to the headoffice of MVF and met some people that are going to assist us with the trainings that we will give coming the next 2 weeks.

After meeting several people of the MV Foundation, we drove off to a girls bridge camp close to the border of Shankarpally.

We arrived at lunchtime and ate some tipical indian country food, what was really spicy.

After lunch we sat in a circle with all the teachers, and we had a conversation about what the bridge camp stands for and how MVF is supporting them.

Later that afternoon we visited some classes and spoke with some children about how their experiences in staying at the bridge camp.

Before we left, we handed out some presents to the children of the bridge camp and wrote some personal note in their guestbook.

(06-04-10)Today we got up early to go to the boys bridge camp just outside Hyderabad, which is also the location where we will give the trainings.

We got there by autorickshaw, which was a whole new experience for us. The most impressive experience on that ride was the (lack of) suspension on these vehicles.

When we arrived at the bridge camp we were welcomed by the warden of the bridge camp.

After that we visited some classes and spoke with some children about what the are learning in class, and try to give them an indication of how far away the Netherlands are.

After the trainees of the superuser training arrived, we settled down in one of the classrooms and setup the projector and laptop.

At the beginning of the training we had some short introduction, after which we gave the superusers an overview of the new features in the Child Monitoring System.

Tomorrow, we will discuss some more technical details of the Child Monitoring System at the superusertraining.

At the end of the afternoon we left the bridge camp to go back to the hotel. In the evening we had a walk through the crowded streets of Hyderabad and had some typical Indian pastry.

Written by Rob Smeding

Travelling to Hyderabad

After about 2 months of working on the Bloom project, Rob Smeding and myself got on the plain yesterday to start our visit to India. As everybody knows when you are travelling, you can never know what you can expect. Our flight to Mumbai was all good, and as a surprise our luggage made it as well on the same time! So, with our high hopes up, we got out of the terminal to search for out hotel contact-person. Unfortunatly, we were unable to locate them. The security officer of the airport helped us out by calling the hotel. Turns out the were expecting us at 11:30 AM instead of 11:30 PM, and there were no rooms available left. We arranged for a different hotel, so we did get a couple of hours of sleep before travelling to the domestic airport. Everything went really smooth there, and before we knew it we were standing at Hyderabad airport. The airport is very beautifull, its actually listed in the India top-5 of best airports. Unfortunatly, it's not allowed to take pictures of the airport, so I'll try to take some when we are going to leave from a distance.

From the airport, we got a cab to the hotel. After finally arriving at our final destination (the taxi driver had some trouble finding the hotel first), we also met with our colleague who had arrived this morning as well. Being tired from basically skipping a night's rest, we had a short breakfast and then went to our room to freshen up a bit and get some extra sleep. Tonight we'll be going to get some dinner, and we'll try to start fresh and sharp tomorrow morning.

My first impression up to this point are very mixed and overwhelming, but I'm very happy that our colleague from Bangalore to guide us during our visit.

Dinner at last

Last Monday March 15th we had dinner with the team at the Indian restaurant Sagar Royal in Amstelveen. Also some colleagues that worked on the project last year joined us. The food was very tastefull and the conversations with former participants were interesting.

At this moment the functional designs and the software implementation are almost ready. The testers are busy with their test activities. Also the user manual and the training material are written. On April 3rd a trainer and a software developer will fly to India.

Next Monday March 22th there will be a video conference with India. During this session 3 members of MV Foundation will get a demonstration of the latest CMS version. We hope it meets their expectations!

Written by Fred Schapelhouman

Under construction!

Today, March 9th, we extended the team with two testers in Bangalore, a developer in Bangalore and two testers in the Netherlands. Here in the Netherlands we see each other at least once a week, and I have noticed that we developed a team-spirit within a few weeks. It is very special to notice that the cooperation with our colleagues abroad has the same intention!

It took a little time to get to know the system and to determine what exactly has to be done. For me, as a tester, I have to wait until Functional Design and System Development deliver. We have already tested the bugs that were found in the training session in India last year and a lot of it is solved. In the meantime, I feel like a project secretary doing the test management, a part of the planning, arranging a defect management tool, and arranging a conference call with people of the MVFoundation.

Next week the first new version of the CMS will be delivered. Last week the first Functional Design was delivered! This week there is more to come. In the meantime, our colleagues in India are progressing on a large db to do the load test. In other words; the project is at full speed!

Written by Jolanda Kuiper

CMS: The sequel

Yesterday, monday february 8th, we started the sequel for the Bloom CMS-project in Holland. We started out with a training called "Culture awareness training", which gently introduced us to the Indian culture. The training was, at least in my opinion, very interesting and provided some good insights in both cultural similarities and differences. I am sure that the lessons learned from this training will serve the team well in the weeks to come, and I am looking forward to working with our Indian colleagues. The need for a training to cooperate with colleagues abroad is obvious, but I think we tend to focus less on our cooperation with our Dutch colleagues because of this. Since we are working for such a large company, we meet new colleagues with every project we start on. Luckily, because of the Logica-way we all work, I noticed that the team quickly adjusted to each other, which I am sure will only grow in the upcoming weeks.

The project that we started on yesterday, is actually a follow up for the project of last year. The idea is to implement several important features and optimize the system where necessary. To get a good headstart with the system as-is right now, we got an introduction to the system (both functionally and, in my case, technically) from the colleagues that worked on the project last year. Although it is a lot to grasp, I am confident that we will be able to complement the system as required. Besides this, I am looking forward to the challenge of a new and intercultural project to work on!

Training MVF – A Success ! by Ashok Aritakula

Today, August 3rd 2009, was the last day of the training and yet another training got successfully over.

Thanks to Paul, who kept calm and made sure that training went on in spite of technical difficulties we faced.

I was really impressed to see how interested MVF was in our application. They were questioning each and every feature of the application and were making sure that it is fitting their needs. If not they were making instant request's for modifying the feature.

It was really great to see the real users of this application. I had a chance to meet many MVF Workers and I found that they are all simple and hard working people ,with a zeal to eradicate child labour. For them, seeing us from Logica, was a great motivating factor and when they came to know that we brought them an application (CMS), which can help them do their work faster and better , they were thrilled.

Many of them personally, came to me asking about the usage of the application. The main hurdle during this training was that they were not comfortable with English. But three guys from MVF, Mahindra , Krishna and Amit made sure that they translate instructions in English to their native language. Thats when we also identified that these three people are the ones who can and will take care of the further deployement and usage of CMS in MVF, once we are gone. We awarded them a Certificate as Experts.

Overall, I feel the training was a complete success and MVF is really happy and serious about deploying the application across different sectors.

As I knew their native language, they were very comfortable talking to me and sharing their views with me frankly. And it was really great to understand as what they think about this application , about Logica's contribution and the role they have to play in using this application. What I understood , from their views is that they have now the clear visibility of how they can use this application to make their work better and faster , In their casual talks they already started talking about how to use and where to use. They even planning to change the way they do survey, so that more and more authentic data is fed to the application.

Being part of all this was making me feel really great. Thanks to Veronica and Malti :-).

Even though, this phase of training is now over, I feel this is just the beginning and Logica is becoming really good at it :-).

Thanks,

Ashok

The last blog. On the finalday we had still a busy program: evaluation and discussion about next step, printing certificates, final lunch with everybody, visiting giftshops. No time to publish this blog. Hereby.

Sightseeing and the final training

Sunday we hired a taxi to make a sightseeing tour in Hyderabad: Salar Yung Museum (a.o. fine miniature paintings; I missed the famous musical clock), Charminar and surrounding market streets, Mecca Masjid; and outside the city: Golconda fort. Everywhere you see traditional India: shrines, temples, believers performing rituals. But also modern India: e.g. a motorized station for measuring pollution by traffic gazes. Cars, motorbikes and rickshaws are checked and advised on improvement.

(ceremony for godess Kali)

Monday was the final training day. As in every school class there were very fast trainees, somewhat slower and very slow ones. I myself has learned a lot about giving a training in a different language and culture. For one thing: Dutch seems to be a compact language; when you unzip it into one of the Indian languages (Telugu), then you need somewhat more words. The trainees understood it better and It gave me time to look ahead to the next subject. Looking back I think that as a train-the-trainer project the project was very successful. Some other trainees will need a fresh-up when in the future they start using CMS. Also it was good as a reality test: everyday new points for improvement came up and some questions about ‘should it be as it is now’ were discussed. It was a great pleasure to work together with motivated people

in a very good atmosphere.

(the last group)

A training day: Thursday

9.02 By rickshaw to the office; a ‘kermis’ drive of 10 minutes through the hilarious traffic.

9.20 Installation of the latest version of the application on mine laptop. Start other 5 machines to be used by the 7 trainees. One machine always starts scanning the whole harddisk. Another has always to be rebooted.

09.50 Ready to start; wait for the trainees. Planned start: 10.00.

11.10 Everybody has arrived. They are pardoned: they traveled 150 km and left home at 05.00! So I start with a warm welcome. I am glad that Mr. Mahender (staff of MV Foundation) translates mine introduction. These are mostly fieldworkers, living in poor villages (“a village is poor per definition”).

11.40 Power cut! Suddenly it is quiet: the fan, everything is dead. I cannot let them install the application on their own machine. Go on with 7 trainees on 1 laptop. Some has problem with typing: mine keyboard is different. Others are very quick to pick it all up.

12.25 Lunch around the table. The mild spicy food (very tasty) and the warmth makes me sweat.


13.20 Continue story. Mine laptop runs out of power – I switch to the laptop of Geert Jan. It becomes rather warm in the small room. Sometimes I have problem to understanding a fieldworker: he cannot explain me in for me understandable English what he wants to do – so I cannot help him further. Mahender and Ashok are nearby. I have the feeling I have made myself dispensable.

15.10 Noise again: power returned. Everybody gets started on a machine. When each has done the main thing at least once, I finish the training with the subject: making reports. After that they resume the training on their own initiative!


16.10 Powercut again!! Disappointment - an early halt of the training. The fieldworkers who came from far, stay in Hyderabad and will follow the training tomorrow again.At the end I am not unhappy with the result.