Swarup Ghosh

I'm associated with Pacific Computers Data Processing Private Limited. Currently, I'm working there as a senior consultant. My roles and responsibilities involve looking after their two clients, developing an integrated exam management system. So, both are their university clients, and it's a complete process of how they take exams in their universities. It involves more than 55 colleges and students of almost 50,000 students appearing for exams. There are six semesters, and the semesters are mostly overlapping with one another in a year. So, it's more or less a SaaS-based project. It involves various stakeholders, including exam principles, principals of the colleges, university senior authorized persons, who undertake the exam process. So, it's right from examination to collection and saving of the answer scripts, distribution of the answer scripts, reviewed by the examiners, then approved by the head examiners, and then finally, results calculation and publication of the results. It's the whole process that I lead in both the universities. And, we have successfully implemented the system, and it's running successfully for the last two years. Before this role, I was with Avantir Digital Private Limited, and there I worked as a project manager. I led one of their US-based clients, Trade Research. We were a part of the team developing various modules of the system. So, it's also a healthcare project, and there are various nonprofitable organizations who are clients of that organization. It's a multi-tenancy-based system in which various research organizations onboard their system, and they collect various feedback from users about their health issues, symptoms, or diseases so that they can trial various vaccines or drugs. So, I have the experience of leading right from the conceptualization of the project to the final delivery of the project. And, I actually led from the front, and I have technical experience also. I utilize that as well.

So what metrics did you use to track the progress and health of an agile project? Okay. So in an agile project, we need to monitor the deliverables every time. We need to create sprint planning, do daily stand-ups. We need to review a particular sprint after the completion of the sprint, then we do the retrospective. So we need to understand how many story points we have planned, what is the backlog status, how much we have planned in a sprint, how much we are delivering in the sprint. So what is actually the status? What is actually the status of the project at any point of time through the burn down chart. What is the status from the actual plan and the actual from the planned story points we have planned actually and how much we have delivered. So this we can monitor every time through the team burn down chart, so we understand we first plan the capacity of the team, and then we get through the team's velocity, and then we understand the deliverable. So anything left that is moved on to the next sprint as a spillover. So in this way, we actually understand what is the status of the sprint or the agile project at any point of time. Whether we are falling short of the estimated time or we are running behind the schedule or proposed time. So we actually monitor with these metrics.

So describe an experience where you had to facilitate a sprint retrospective. What was the outcome? Okay, so at the end of the sprint, we do a sprint retrospective to understand what we've done well and where there's a chance for improvement. So we understand where we're lagging. We study the process, trying to understand the approaches by the team and whether any best possible approach could be taken by the team instead of following the previous process. We try to understand the action items we decided to implement in the sprint and whether they were implemented. Any new process that needs improvement or any new plan for process improvement that we can implement in the upcoming sprint. So, we actually went through this retrospective in one of our BOPA projects. We understood there are various areas where we need improvement – the UI, infrastructure, automation, and better quality QA testing after development because there are times when lots of errors or bugs are caught in the QA section after the development has been released in the staging environment. So when the QA does their testing, they find a lot of bugs, and then it's moved back to the developer area. We understand this can be further improved. We thought of doing unit testing in the developer area or in the development environment itself by the developers as a better approach in our next sprint.

Describe a 0 to 1 project you managed. What are the key challenges, and how did you overcome them. Okay, so there was a project in the healthcare domain that I had previously briefed on. In that project, we encountered a conflict in the team. There were various team members working on the team, and the issue was with their approaches. Different team members wanted different approaches to the same problem, but there was conflict because the team members weren't agreeing on any particular approach. Although after analyzing their approaches, I found that both approaches were correct, we had to agree on a particular team member's approach. This was because in that way, it would be a team effort. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to deliver the project on time. So, the conflict arose based on one of the features. So, we had a 1-to-1 discussion with both team members. We then agreed on a win-win situation for all by compromising on certain areas. We included one of the team members' approaches because that team member's approach was one of the best. In that way, we resolved the conflict, and we went ahead with the project, delivering the results.

Okay, let's discuss an approach for dealing with team conflicts that could jeopardize an agile project's success. Just to clarify, I've indicated the points that there are a number of conflicts in the team. In that case, we need to collaborate with the team members. It can be one-to-one, and it can be in a group. It can also be in stand-up meetings, and we need to understand the approaches they want to decide on or go ahead with, and whether their approaches are satisfying the sprint goal or the project goal, or the deliverables, and whether the product owner wants the same value in the deliverable, or if it's aligned with the project owner's objective or the business requirement. So in those cases, we do a one-to-one meeting with the team, and then we decide on the best approach that can be implemented in the project. Again, there is sometimes an attitude problem. So, there is a team member not accepting or not liking to work on the team, or feeling that there's a skill gap that needs to be improved. So, for that skill gap that needs to be improved, we check whether the team member's attitude can be aligned with the project objective or the sprint objective. But in that case, if that's not possible, then we shift that team member to another team so that he can adjust in that particular team. Or sometimes, we do a one-to-one discussion. Maybe sometimes that he's not able to concentrate on the project. In those cases, we need to understand his personal problems as well. If that's the case, then in those cases, the team member can be given a leave for some time, and then he can again join the team. In that case, we can do a replacement with some of the other team members for that particular split. So in those cases, we need to understand whether there are any critical tasks that the team member is doing or not. And if his task can be replaced, then we do accordingly. And we can move forward with the project.

How do you balance the need for speed in delivery with the necessity of building for scale? So, when we're developing any project or feature, we see whether we're following a constant pace. We're not speeding up things, but we're following a constant pace. And we're also following the best practices that have already been created in the project. For example, we're creating microservices in the architecture. We're following the principle that all features or development should be in that feature and accessible through API. Services can be accessible through API. Scalability means whether the architecture we're assuming or the architecture we've implemented has the provisions of auto scaling. As the provisions of auto scaling mean when there's a peak, the system needs to be auto scaled. So, we need to check whether we're following the functional requirements and also the nonfunctional requirements along with the functional requirements. This means the system should be in such a state that at times of need, it can be scalable, maintainable, and available. So, whether all the parameters offer perfection on today's modern system, we're following standard principles in developing the system. So, in that case, along with building the system at a constant pace, we're also testing the system. We're also following the principles or guidelines of a properly secured system, along with scalability, availability, and maintainability of the code or the system we're developing.

How do you lead a daily stand-up and ensure its effectiveness? Okay, so in daily stand-up, we do a regular daily stand-up in which we are very specific about the point of discussion, like what actually we have done yesterday, which is in sync with the Sprint goal and what we are going to do today. So any dependency or bottleneck in the things or in the task followed by various team members, so how we are going to resolve those tasks. So that will be a short discussion, but that is an effective discussion in the daily stand-up in which we are going to resolve all the issues, all the impediments that are present in achieving that particular sprint goal. So that will be a very short meeting in which every team member stands up and provides their feedback, provides their status. Also, not exactly status means the part of the work they have done yesterday and what they have chosen to do today and is there any bottleneck? Is there any challenge, is there anything pending from the client side? Any clarity which the product owner needs to give to the team? So these things are what has to be discussed in that particular 15-minute stand-up. So this has to be very specific, very short, and very clear from each team member's point of view and it has to be very clear from the project point of view, from the sprint goal, whether we are achieving that particular sprint goal or we are aligned with that sprint goal which we are going to achieve for that particular sprint. It needs to be very specific and comprehensive discussion. So no extra, no detailed discussion, only brief and short and very comprehensive discussion.

What is your approach to managing a project budget within an agile framework? Okay, so my approach to managing a project budget is like we calculate the number of hours the team is working on, and the number of hours the team is working on the project, and the cost of the manpower per hour. So we are calculating how much we have reached toward that budget, and then we are calculating every day how much work that is supposed to be completed, and then actual work done. So we compare those, and we can understand whether we are moving within budget or we have exceeded budget. And any extra or surprises that come in the project, maybe due to delay due to the project team, maybe delay due to the team member being sick or not coming for the work. So arranging another team member or adding more team members if the project is in delay. So that cost also we need to include in the budget, that needs to be checked with the budget, means the actual cost whether they're exceeded their budget we have planned for these number of backlog items, which need to be delivered in a couple of sprints. So in that way, what we do is, we have to be proactive, like we can understand we can quickly replace any manpower or any material requirement, maybe that's an asset, whatever the asset, like laptops and all, anything like travel requirement, like boarding, discussions, meeting, arranging various types of meetings. So all those, there are fixed costs, maybe variable costings are there. So whether anything is exceeding as per the planned budget. So any actual budget is, actual cost is getting higher than the planned budget. So whether that unknown factor is there, whether we understand that unknown factor is not getting more and more or giving surprises to the project budget. So in that case, we are actively monitoring all those, the actual cost, and we are checking all those. The actual cost is in line with the budget.

How do you track and manage dependencies between multiple teams working on a large agile project? Okay, so in that case, I'm giving a reference from my previous project. That is a health care project. And, so in that project, there are many features that need to be done in parallel. So whether it is customer onboarding, whether it is vendor onboarding, so whether there are many data-related features. So in that case, there are various teams working. And, so there is a dependency since the project is built on microservices, and the various services can be done by various teams, and can be independently deployed. But at the same time, when there are integration testing done by the QA, there are a lot of times where one feature of one team is getting pushed on the production server, and there is conflict with the other team pushing their feature on the production server, and the whole system is not working as per the required scenario. So in those cases, what we do is, it is planned that every time, like, in the weekend only, all the teams will release their feature to the production. So before that, there will be an off-site testing by the senior QA team as well as on-site testing from the client side. So before moving all those things to production, that is planned in the weekend only, so that if any mishaps happen, it can be corrected on the weekend itself. And, before moving on to the Monday and working day.

How do you align agile project management practices with the regulatory compliance requirements? Okay, so in agile project management involving various teams and various stakeholders or customers in various parts of the world. Each state or each country has its own regulatory compliance. In that case, we need to understand in which global areas this software is going to be deployed. And based on that, we need to understand and their requirements. Like in the US, there is a requirement while deploying this healthcare project, they need to be very clear on the HIPAA regulatory compliance. Deploying any project to any part of the globe, their compliance requirements have to be very clear. The project needs to be deployed based on satisfying all those compliance requirements of the specific countries or states globally when it's a global project. Even customers, the software needs to be very clear of the customer sentiments who are going to use it globally in the software, in the system.

In various agency environments, we see a need for specific or fast time-to-market. To meet this requirement, we must understand how to automate most tasks in project development, ensuring they follow modern project development principles while providing high-quality software with many features. In agile environments, software and modules can be developed, allowing for quick changes. With multiple teams working on a project in a microservices environment, each microservice can be independently developed and deployed on the production server without affecting others. To succeed, project management must follow modern guidelines, and the system must be robust, without bugs. The QA team should also follow automated testing guidelines or use automated testing tools, enabling the system to be developed with a great time to market, bringing an advantage to customers and helping them succeed in a competitive environment.