Pointless Participation

Yesterday I saw on TV, a protest against the opening of a liquor store. The participants included a minister Dinesh Gunewardena, newly appointed western province minister Udaya Gammanpila and JVP MP Sunil Hundunneththi. MP Handunneththi accused that this is against the “Mahinda Chinthanaya” and “Mathata Thitha”. I could understand the participation of the opposition MP, but I found the participation of ministers in this protest as a joke, that’s right, a political joke. They could directly speak to the authorities, or even the president, especially since anyone could get a discussion with the president quite easily and these days it’s the president who issues directives on everything. They could have presented the same facts they presented to the media at the protest, to the president and got the liquor license cancelled. But they didn’t do that. Instead they made political clowns of themselves.

The memorable days of CRS

CRS, the days I cherish. Let's see how many of us are still at Virtusa. Starting from the left, Rikas is still here. I just heard last week that Dilani is leaving. I saw Thusitha around at Orion. Eranga left ages ago. So did Hashan. I'm still hanging on. Frank left. And Madhura too. Niluksha is still standing strong. Samith, Ranga and Krishanth are gone. I see Nairooz almost everyday. The people who aren't in the picture, Chandima, Prabath and Hisham are gone too except for Mahasen. Not to mention the guy who took the picture, Rasika.

Crucial Juncture in My Career

Ever since joining Virtusa I wanted be a Project Manager. I saw it as a glamorous job. But all that glamour and money has its price to pay. I mean, I think I have an idea of the pressure a PM goes through when he hears one of his key resources is leaving. But then again, no one is indispensable. That and a few more things made me rethink of my career goal lately.

Firstly, early this year when I was about to leave the company putting my pay first and making exposure my second priority, I went to meet Atheek, my role model, the guy I dream I could be some day. He said “where ever you go, don’t lose your core competency, because out of here no one will care a f--- for generalists”.

Secondly, I saw a few PMs losing their jobs overnight. I guess generalists are easily replaceable.

So, now I stand at a crucial point in my career. Will I continue in QA? or, is being a PM that much of a dream deep in me that I couldn’t let go that easily.

Started work in BT Agile Development

After a break of around a month, finally we were absorbed into the BT Agile Development team. Everything is different now, starting from the office itself. I had to move from WTC to Vogue. The methodology is different too, from the traditional process to agile. Then the test technique from manual testing to test automation. We have to use an open source tool called Jameleon where test scripts are written in XML.

http://jameleon.sourceforge.net/

Going agile is pretty much new to everyone. We are the first team to adopt this methodology, which is considered a pilot project. There are very short development cycles of two weeks called Iterations. Requirements are jotted down on Story Cards along with a priority and size. For each iteration, Story Cards are taken from the pool based on its priority where when the sum of the sizes of all Story Cards should not exceed the velocity defined for that Iteration. In testing, test cases are written based on the Story Cards and scripts are written for them. The scary thing is, we are supposed to start writing scripts parallel to the development team starting their coding and both teams must deliver at the end of the Iteration. So, according to what I've heard this is the reason for choosing Jameleon over QTP.
Well, all in all it seems very challenging. Hope I survive.

A tribute to Atheek

Well, a long time after creating my blog, I came across something worth writing.
Yeah.... the dude in the photo is ATHEEK, my cousin bro. He's the reason I joined Virtusa and my inspiration from there on.
Today, the first mail i received was a mail from Chinthi, client services manager of the Aetna account welcoming Atheek as the new quality consultant partner for Aetna.
Congradulations Atheek!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You did it again. Another step up the corporate ladder.

Final day of the CRS QA team

After almost 6 months the work of the QA team of CRS Retail CRM ended on the 24th of November.
Dilani was the first to join CRS as a QA engineer. Two weeks later I joined. Initially we both were working on the Loyalty module of CRM. Eventually Dilani moved on to Campaigns. Later on Eranga and Chandima joined the team.
Chandima helped me out with Loyalty while Eranga helped Dilani on Campaigns.
Later on as the major areas of Loyalty were being completed Chandima left the team. I must take this opportunity to thank Chandima for all the hard work and her dedication.
As time went by the development of Campaigns came to an end and then Loyalty.

Personally for me it was such a great experience. I felt a bit sad when I first got to know that I was allocated to another project, after working in Aetna for the first five months at Virtusa. But as time progressed I realised that it was the best thing that happened to me at Virtusa so far. Apart from the huge privilege of being able to leave office at 6 pm, it was a totally different experience from Aetna.
Aetna being a totally QA project there was no interaction with the dev team. But it was different in CRS, since it was a development project. We were able to work alongside the developers, get to know how they work and their mindset. Another difference was the team size. Aetna had a team size of 100+ and growing at a rapid speed. But in CRS it was less that 20 members. This gave us the opportunity to work closely with the leadership.
All in all it was a fantastic time.