CDOT

Final Assignment
PMC 250 Outline Analysis & Internship summary
Rikin Shah - 050 335 132
4/20/2014

Rikin Shah 050 335 132 PMC 250

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Internship Process Report
CDOT - Centre For Development And Open Technology, where I get opportunity to work with CDOT
team. Working with Mr. Ralph, who is a Project Manager, and his team turn out to be quite learning
experience for me. When I came to know that I will be working with a team who is developing
something related to 3D experience, I find myself fortunate to be part of it.
Date and Time -
Every Monday starting from 10
th
Feb, 2014 upto at least 4 weeks were in planning for research phase of
this project where I was playing a role of testing engineer to find out the testing scope of the project.
We CDOT team had our meeting schedule on Every Monday 10.30a.m. at its location which is in
Seneca's campus itself.
Project Scope -
Project is all about data visualization in 3D. client has a big data as big as 10K data points at a time to
display. Objective is to show the data in 3D as well as in 2D dimensions based on the search term and its
corresponding data points from the searched data point.
- There are several web pages or a user interfaces developed by the team using which all the functions
can be carried out. Objective is to give best user experience to the customer so that navigation becomes
self explanatory. Standard browsers such as Firefox, Chrome are in scope for now.
- As it was project of 4-5 weeks including research phase and preparing demo for client in order to get
actual project work by showing them our work, scope was very limited and well defined.
Resource Requirement -
We were total of 6 members in the team including me and Project Manager.
2 of them were Andor and Cathy, who are senior developers and working full time while 3 of them were
Seneca's students Nadia, Mark and Sam, hired by client to work in their project on part time basis.
All of them had their own laptops to work on and a conference room was used to hold a meeting on big
screen with all the networking facilities available.





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Stake holders Registry -
Name Role Responsibilities
Mr. Ralph Project Manager Project Management
Client meeting, Carry out team meeting and project status
meeting, Other businees process
Jordan Client Gives the requirements and changes , Attends team meeting,
Review the work
Cathy Senior Developer Implementation and guide for juniors
Andor Senior Developer Implementation and guide for juniors
Nadia Developer Implementation/Coding
Mark Developer Implementation/Coding
Sam Developer Implementation/Coding
Rikin PMC Intern Taking MOM, Coordinate with team to define testing scope


Analysis of PMC 250 course outline
Point 1 - Critically assess various approaches to project management
For this Project, we as a team were working with Agile approach for Software development.
All the work is reviewed by client in the meeting and gets approved or rejected or changed as per clients
need. So the changes will be taken place and team adopts the new change which is a main base for the
Agile.
Another thing which states agile is Plan as you go. We plan out next week's task in the team meeting
and further planning will be done in next meeting as per project progress.
We use Email for the communication purpose to any of the team member. One time one team member
was out of town so we did voice call with him for the meeting.
There was no special project charter or SRS document for the project but I did prepared specification
document at the end of internship for the reference of all the functionality.





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Point 2 - Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats presented in various project
environments
SWOT analysis for 3D Data Visualization Project
Strengths -
- Sufficient budget
- Client Jordan was always happy to happy to help with the scope and requirement definintion
- 2 Full time developers who apparently equipped with the skills required
- Local client so that any help or discussion can be made quickly by Email or in person.
Weaknesses -
- 3 student developers, hard to get maximum with part time developers
- Tight Project deadline
Opportunities -
- We had chance to grab the project by preparing a perfect demo application in given time
Threats -
- Demo may fail if run in browser due to any random technical error
Point 3 - Analyze project activities
There were several activities going on with the project
Meetings - We had regular team meetings on Every Monday at 10.30a.m. at company location where
we discuss about the tasks completed and remaining.
- Team member one by one shows their work and client review them. Client also gives comment on
changes and other requirements, If any required
- I use to take MOM for the meeting and send it to Ralph by end of the day or on next day.
Planning - Mr. Ralph and Client Mr. Jordan also attends the meetings so they do planning for the next
activities in the meeting only.
- As I said, this is not a big project and its a 4-5 week research phase, project schedule or Charter is not
yet developed. All the planning activities carried out in meeting and plans and tasks till the next meeting
are decided.
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- I was also working in parallel to define scope of the project testing and prepared one document with
everyone's output in it
Development - As per the changes given by client and defined requirements are being done in the
development activity.
Team members have their own laptop and they can work in CDOT's premises if they want.
I also see students can work from home and then shows their work in meeting.
Monitoring and Controlling - Manager and client together reviews the work developed by developers
and gives appropriate comment.
Testing - As this is the research phase no testing activity is required for now.
As decided with client, Team has prepared one video with voice which covers all the functionality of the
project. This video will be shown to customer and then further business will be discussed, if project get
approval.
Point 4 - Assess situational challenges, project practices and progression
Challenges -
1. Rendering of lines was a challenge for the development team while working with large set of data.
When large data call is made CPU and GPU usage gets high frame rate which was difficult to handle.
2. Selection of layout for the 3D visualization was quite difficult task.
We had several styles for visualization such as neo sphere orbit but it was client's call to decide one of
them.
Point 5 - Identify best practices of project management
Team Work - CDOT as a team were working fine. Members of the team were supporting each other and
dependent on each other because of their work allocation.
There is always dependency on other department when they finish their work you have to start your
own. Same thing I have noticed in my internship. One developer was dependent on the other and vice
versa. They complete their task on time so that other person can merge his own to it and then ready to
show to client in the meeting.
Trust - Project manager had good amount of trust on his team member. What I have seen in the
meeting is, team member show their work and manager approves the work with proper comment or
changes, if required. More planning for the next meeting is done and then it was up to developer how
he wanted to complete it. He/She can complete it at home, at school, at company location, as per his
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convenient time. All he wanted is work to be done on time so that commitment of scheduled work is
taken care.
Project Status -
I think it was a success. Reason behind success was we had more strengths than weakness and less
challenging work. I believe it was a very small research project which is carried out within 4-5 weeks. so I
don't see any major reason that could have made it unsuccessful.
Moreover, CDOT client had a presentation in month of April and it went good so it states that the
project in which I was working was a success.
Important things I learned -
Preparing Minutes Of Meeting Document -
I was given a task to prepare minutes of meeting document for each team meeting. It was a different
experience than preparing a document of study assignment as it was live project. I have referred to
some of the templates on Google and some of the work from PMC course helped me a lot.
Preparing testing scope document -
Thing I have learned is coordinating with team members by Email o r in person.
I have sent an email with the copy of testing scope document which was prepared by me to get their
input.
I use to sent them email and used to chat on Gtalk for requirement understanding which was a good
experience with the live project environment.
In the end with all the developers comment and final input from client, I had prepared a document
which covers all the functionality to test and sent it to Project Manager.
Punctuality -
I have noticed that all the team members, Project Manager and even client shows up on time.
On meeting day, 10.30a.m sharp everybody will be in conference room to meet. This punctuality mark
shows the importance of time and I understand that I need to be on right time at right place to get the
best out of it.