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Jagannathan Satya Kothimangalam

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Role: Project Manager

Email: jagannathan.2008@sis.smu.edu.sg

Responsibilities:

  • Oversees project
  • Facilitates project meetings
  • Liaises with stakeholders
  • Manages client’s expectations & project deliverable
  • Assists in back-end development




Individual Reflection - Beginning of the Journey

I have always been interested in developing a desktop application, but never got a chance to do that in any other SIS project. The fact that this project allowed us to explore that was a major motivator. Also, the client gave us a lot of freedom as to how we wanted to design our solution. Hence, we decided to explore Silverlight and its out-of-browser application.

While it is an out-of-browser application and very “cool” to explore, the learning curve is not too kind. Since I have no prior experience with Silverlight and we were looking to explore synchronization, this will prove to be quite a challenge. Combined with the fact that our client is very serious about deploying our application for their use, it puts an additional pressure on us to perform and perform on time. These two factors provide the challenge that we look forward to in an IS480 project.

Since my team has elected me as the Project Manager, I hope to be a good leader and maintain a healthy relationship and camaraderie within the team, while achieving our goals on time. There is plenty of learning that is waiting to happen in the course of the project, since I do not have experience in many of the technologies we are using for this project. Through this project, I wish to be able to improve on being a Project Manager and improve on my technical abilities.

I believe that this project is a great “test-drive” to what life at work is going to be like and the experience of being a Project Manager in a real, life-sized project is just priceless. I am looking forward to the ride and I hope to make it on the other side, with 5 good friends and a lot of memories and experiences. ☺


Individual Reflection - End of Journey
As far as the technical aspect is concerned, I got the chance to be involved with many functions, such as notifications, dashboard, edit companies, view/edit interested companies, etc. I was also involved with generating ideas for the UI, as well as implement small UI changes. Because of this project, my knowledge of C# and Silverlight framework have increased tremendously and I have also had the chance to learn what it takes to make a user-friendly system. This project was a wonderful opportunity to bring our A game, because Lodestone is seriously considering deploying our project for daily usage. This puts extra pressure on us to deliver a near-perfect project, so that ugly surprises don’t spring up later when they use it. This has meant additional testing and continuous deployment for us, to ensure that we develop a (relatively) bug-free system. Performing these meticulous tests and solving all the deployment problems that spring up along the way have enriched me with the experience of working in a real-life project.

Being the project manager is definitely not an easy job, as I have realized in the past 6 months. And being the PM for an academic project is even worse, because I have the responsibility, but not the power (that usually accompanies responsibility). Leading a team of equals (as opposed to subordinates) is much harder, because all of us have 4-5 other modules to take care of and almost all of them have deadlines around the same time. Being a 6 man team also means that there are more schedule conflicts than usual and there are many varying priorities and personalities. It was a challenge understanding the working style of my teammates in order to have a happy team and still get the work done, but midway through the project, we became each other’s source of encouragement and support. This experience has made me a person and let me understand people’s dynamics and what it takes to have a harmonious and effective team. I think this learning is far more valuable than what any other module could have taught me.

In the end, what I have realized is that each member is indispensable to our team. Even though it is frustrating at times, and pressure makes it so easy to point fingers and play blame-games, I have realized that our team would have never been the same without any one of us. Each of us bought a special flavor and special competency to the team, which has been indispensable to the project. I am very glad to have 5 new friends, as a result of this project and I will definitely miss seeing them 5 days a week. 



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