Introduction

The BbyB Beacon is an electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements of important events like training programmes, Management Review Meetings, etc.

Contact Information
 Any contributions to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to padmabaliga@bbyb.sdc.int or padmabaliga@bbyb.com

Editorial                                                                                                                    (top)


From the time a child learns to perceive the world, he is taught about individual identity and developing his individual personality. Ten years of schooling serves to reinforce this sense of individual accomplishment, being the best, and coming out on top - individually. We are rarely raised in environments that emphasize true teamwork and collaboration. However, out there in the real world, increasingly a world without borders, where a nurse in UK would need the programming skills of a developer in India to organize her shifts for the week, the importance of teamwork becomes paramount. In a teamwork environment, people understand that thinking, planning, decisions and actions are better when done cooperatively. People recognize, and even assimilate, the belief that “none of us is as good as all of us.”

Information researchers predict that by the year 2010 (that’s less than 3 years away) the world's documented knowledge will double every 11 hours. There’s no way we are going to know even a fraction of all that. Yet, this is the Knowledge Era and it is vital that we upgrade our skills and information constantly. Remaining on top of what we need to know has become one of our greatest challenges. In today's quickly changing business environment, where individual perfection is not as desirable as a high level of collective performance, teams have emerged as a requirement for business success.

The difference between a team and a group is that a team is interdependent for overall performance. A group working together qualifies as a team only if its members focus on helping one another to accomplish organizational objectives. Teamwork can only be productive if the team members appreciate the goals and strive towards reaching them. So it is important that they actually represent the different aspects of the problem and are aware of their own role in the team. The success of teamwork also partially depends upon no single team member feeling substantially inferior to any of the others.

To be a team player, one should have the ability to work with others, cooperate and communicate.

Padma

From The Management                                                                                       (top)
Dear All,  

We just concluded another round of tests to recruit trainees and have recruited 2-3 fresh trainees who will be joining us soon.

       As we had a really poor response to the last stress buster holiday with less than 50% of the staff showing up, we have decided to cancel the Winter stress buster and make the stress buster an annual event.

Regards,
Raghu

Projects News

StaffBank                                                                                                            (top)

We started this month with our bi-annual stress-buster. It was a great team building exercise and everyone returned energized from the trip.

Raghu, Sreedhar and I have been busy getting StaffRoster ready for the Guy's pilot which is going to start on 8th of June.

Arun is quitting Bit by Bit to join Wipro as Senior Software Engineer. Usha was busy taking over ESR, OCR and AutoEmail from Arun. She has also started work on StaffBank .Net version. Besides handing over work to Usha, Arun was also busy with releases of ESR and OCR. Guys and St. Thomas hospital went live with ESR this month.

Dilna has started conversion of ESR module in .Net. Deepak was working on StaffBank on Web at the beginning of the month. He later got involved with LiveUpdate Service for StaffRoster and Email service.

Jomon has been involved in Acuity module for StaffRoster.

Prathibha was busy designing NHSP 231, a change control for adding Bank Charges. Later she started work on a .Net service to upgrade database. Upgrading databases has been a nightmare as sometimes clients miss running a script or sometimes we make a mistake while sending a script. This service will have all the scripts stored in a folder. This service will make sure that we don't depend on clients to run the script in order to upgrade.

Yogita and Om Prakash were working on NHSP 231.

Jayashree was involved with testing NHSP 141, ESR import modifications, StaffBank version for Guys and St. Thomas and NHSP 231. Poornima was testing StaffBank Web version for Camden Trust, OCR, StaffBank version for Guys and St. Thomas and some external errors. Vasudev was involved in testing Staff Roster.

This month four new members have joined StaffBank team. They are Abu, Jaya and Smitha who joined BbyB as trainees and Manu Gupta who has moved from pFACT to StaffBank. I welcome all of them to the team.

Chaitanya for StaffBank

MESaLS                                                                                                                  (top)

The most significant event in this month for Mesals was the User Group during the first week. The event was well attended; 30 users belonging to 20 trusts using various versions of Mesals made it to the event. It was eventually graded as the 'Best User Group' as yet by the users who attended it based on its usefulness, presentations and various other parameters. The presentations included a new version of Pocket Mesals and Mobile device based Requisitioning among other things. Also, the users gave a good feedback for the previous release, 'the fully tested' version 4.01.

The new version of Pocket Mesals is under development now which will include features like System driven Wizards based recording of activities, Wireless transmission of data, Desktop Users Alert on receiving data recorded in Handhelds, etc. Simultaneously, development has been planned for Mobile device based Requisitioning during the first fortnight of June. These features are planned to be demonstrated at the annual NAEP conference during the last week of June.

We released a beta version (of 4.02) to BHP Helpdesk as well as BbyB Testing team on 11th of May 2007 with a new set of features, primarily including Stock Count and Multiple Activities Completion among other things.

Mesals development team was busy finishing the changes to be released in ver. 4.02 and fixing the bugs / minor changes reported by the BbyB Testing team and BHP Helpdesk. The Testing team was busy finishing the Test Cases for the changes included in 4.02 and testing of the changes / bug fixes included in this version. The version will be released to clients by 15th June.

Naveen for Team MESaLS

pFACT                                                                                                                   (top)

Hi All,

On behalf of the pFACT team, I take pleasure in welcoming Jyothsna as a Trainee Tester to our team.

Regarding the project, Sukanya, Pravitha and I have been working on the next patch release, while Phani, Sephali, Lakshmanan and ManuGupta are working on the Integrated version of pFACT under the guidance of our Project Manager Mr. Jayaraj.

This month we will have 2 patch releases, one for SQL and one for Oracle. Both will be released probably by this month end.

The integrated version of pFACT is also going on at full speed. The Setups for the Integrated Version are already completed and have been given for testing.

The testing team was very busy with testing the fixed issues, writing test cases for the enhancements and the Integrated Version.

Sumathy for pFACT

Sepia                                                                                                                  (top)

It has been a very busy month for the Sepia team. This month we had some issues from Dorset and Dudley which have been sorted. We have released 2 patches (Ver3.09.00.a and Ver3.09.00.c) to Dorset and one patch (Ver3.09.00.b) to Dudley. BHP has sent some more enhancements which include design changes and 2 new reports. We are waiting for the client's response; once it is received we will start with the enhancements. Regarding Sepia Help updation, the Introduction part is over and Sepia Print Help is going on. Looking forward to the month of June and hoping it will be a great time for Sepia team.

Sanuj for Sepia

Other News                                                                                                        (top)
Varun vrooms into ‘space’

Padma’s son, Varun, had an exciting time these holidays when he went to Alabama, USA, to participate in a Space Camp for young teens. Part of a large group of students, he was at the NASA Space Academy from May 6th to 12th. The students were trained to take part in space flight simulations, build and launch rockets, and were exposed to 4Gs and zero gravity. They learnt to grow plants in space and also took part in a host of other exciting, related activities. Varun says that his most cherished memory is an encounter with Dr. Von Tiesenhausen, the man who designed the Lunar Rover for the first moon mission.

Stress Busted!

On the 5th, 6th and the 7th of May, thirty one people from the extended BbyB family went on the annual BbyB excursion, this time to the Amblee Resort, located near the historical city of Srirangapatna, on Mysore Road.

With Amblee being just two and a half hours away from Bangalore, everyone had the advantage of starting off late in the morning. Travelling in six different vehicles, we reached Amblee around 1:30 in the afternoon on the 5th. Having the entire resort booked for us, everybody, with the exception of the couples, had the luxury of a room for themselves, with 4 empty rooms available for any couple who wanted to sleep separately after a fight!! After settling down in our respective rooms and freshening up, everybody convened for lunch by the riverside. The special attraction at lunch was Devaki's son Sandeep, who was on such a trip for the first time. A long nap followed lunch.

        

As the sun began to set and the evening cooled down, some of us took a nice dip in the pool. With the pool not being too deep, even the likes of Vijay, who didn't know how to swim, were in, enjoying themselves. As Jillee floated on his back from one end to the other, Lakhsmanan, Ramasamy, Deepak, Vijay, Jomon, Sanuj and others started a game of throw-ball in the water. When it became dark, everyone crawled out of the pool and took a nice bath, before coming down to the pool-side again, where the next program on the agenda was about to kick off, literally, the introduction and initiation of the new employees. As Sephali, Manu Gupta, Dilna, Ramasamy, Jomon and Phani introduced themselves to everyone, each was asked to sing a song. Having the disadvantage of being male, Ramasamy, Jomon and Phani were also given the special welcome bumps, with Chaitanya being in full form.

The initiation was followed by a round of Antakshari which, for the first time, was played by dividing everyone into four groups, rather than the usual two groups. While the team of Yogitha, Dilna, Sephali, Manu Gupta and others were hardly audible, despite having a song for every syllable, it was the team of Vijay, Ram, Lakshman and Jomon that was crowned the “dons”, having made their way to half of “donkey”.

As people started fumbling and faking songs, it was clear that while the heart was willing to go on, the stomach was not. So, not giving Vijay's team the opportunity of becoming complete donkeys, we called it quits and started dinner. After dinner, in what turned out to be one of the best moments of the trip, Jille strummed his guitar while singing Hotel California, Summer of '69, Runaway Train and Sultans of Swing. After this nice after-dinner treat, we made our way back to our beds for a good night's rest.

The next day was a busy day for most. After, breakfast by the pool side, a few of the BbyBers planned a trip to GRS Fantasy Park. While they had a nice time there, others who were still in the resort chilled by playing badminton, shooting pool and just lazing in the sun.

As the day wore on, lunch was served by the river-side. The speciality for lunch was the birthday cake for Sephali, whose birthday it was on the 6th of May. After the usual cake cutting ceremony (which included Sephali getting a piece of the cake smeared all over her face), the next agenda was an evening trip to Mysore, so everyone who was to go had a quick lunch and got ready.

Mysore, being the culturally rich city that it is, had a lot to offer. However, the lack of time meant that a lot of the must-see sights had to be bypassed. On leaving the resort, the group first visited the Shiva Temple in Srirangapatna. This was followed by the drive to the Mysore Palace. As luck would have it, it was too late to go for the tour inside the Palace. So, a little crestfallen, the group proceeded to the temple on Chamundi Hills, which raised everyone's spirits.

After the uplifting visit to the Temple, the group drove back to the Palace since no visit to Mysore on a Sunday can be complete without seeing the awe-inspiring sight of the Palace lit up in the evening. A picture perfect view, this was indeed a sight to behold, more than making up for not being able to take the tour of the Palace.

Back at the resort, those who didn't go to Mysore lazed in the afternoon before enjoying a long evening swim like the previous day. Once everyone returned from Mysore, plans for another round of Antakshari fell through when it started raining cats and dogs before dinner. As the rain showed no sign of abating, dinner was shifted from the pool-side to the club house. A quick dinner was followed by everyone retiring for the final night at Amblee.

The final day of the long weekend meant that we had to leave for Bangalore. After breakfast, we left the resort marking the end of yet another eventful outing with the BbyB family. For those of us for whom this was one of many such trips, we were completely relaxed with the weekend away from work. For those of us for whom this was the first trip, it was an unforgettable 3 days. The next trip cannot come soon enough!

Sreedhar

Training and Education                                                                                        (top)

Abu, Jaya and Smitha were trained on Visual Basic and SQL Server in April. They are now working on StaffBank project.

Saksha, Sushma and Jyothsna were trained in Testing in April. Saksha is now working on the projects Sepia and Mesals, Sushma on StaffBank and StaffRoster, and Jyothsna on pFACT.


News From Abroad                                                                                             (top)

I was in the UK during the first week of May to discuss the new version of StaffBank with Chris Lee (Senior Partner of BHP), who is in charge of the StaffBank project. This version of StaffBank will be using the new 'Push' technology which is more in tune with the call centre environments in which StaffBank is used. The current version of StaffBank assumes that the operator is fully aware of the process and hence is able to assign priorities to tasks quite easily. We find that in practice this is not happening and we are proposing to change the way StaffBank functions. StaffBank will be aware of the process and the priorities and will 'push' out the tasks to the operators.

Raghu

Weekend Jaunts                                                                                                  (top)

Mudumalai meaning ‘ancient hill’, is one of the famous wildlife sanctuaries in the country. It is located at the Nilgiri Hills, and is a continuation of the Bandipur National Park, but is situated in Tamil Nadu. In fact, it borders 3 states – Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This reserve was the first sanctuary in South India. The terrain is extremely varied with hills, valleys, ravines, watercourses and swamps. The Mysore-Ooty highway runs through the Park, following the course of the Mayyar River, which separates Mudumalai from Bandipur.

       

This sanctuary can be reached from Mysore which is 95 kms away or from Ooty which is 65 kms away. There are regular buses from Ooty, Mysore and the neighbouring towns to the sanctuary. The best time to visit the reserve is in the months of September to May. However, heavy rain is common in October and November and the park may be closed during the dry season.

       

                                

Mudumalai is a great place to recharge yourself and tune into nature. While it abounds with wildlife, and one can see gaur (Indian bison), chital (spotted deer), wild elephants, langurs and predators such as tiger, leopard and the Asiatic wild dog (dhole), its natural beauty is something else. The Mayyar River in this region forms a series of spectacular cascades along its meandering course. The greenery in the forest is mind-blowing and to just pass through it all is sheer bliss. The ecstasy and that feeling of oneness with nature really cannot be described in words; it must only be experienced.

The cool, green jungle ambience is complemented by enormous luscious trees and creepers getting denser in the distance, teak and bamboo thickets, mixed sounds of birds constantly calling out to their mates, endless curving roads with a vehicle or two passing by now and then … and, of course, the spectacular aerial wildlife – eagles, hornbills, woodpeckers, mynahs, parakeets, orioles – a bird-watcher’s paradise.

        

The nearest towns are Masinagudi and Gadalur. The entire sanctuary can be covered by the sanctuary's minibus, jeep or on trained elephants provided by the forest department. The sanctuary offers inexpensive forest bungalows inside the park at Theppakadu (an elephant camp) and at TTDC's Youth Hostel and rest houses in Masinagudi. There are also mid-range hotels in Masinagudi and expensive resorts in Bokkapuram, 4 km south of Masinagudi.

                                                                                     Contributed by Sunitha Rao

Birthdays                                                                                                             (top)


The Beacon wishes Lakshmanan, Ramasamy, Deepak Kini, Sunitha Rao and Raghu Shenoy a very happy and cheerful birthday and lots of fun and frolic on that very special day.

Here are a few snaps of birthdays celebrated last month.

Sephali's Birthday Snaps

                  

Pravitha's Birthday Snaps

                  

Rejith and Sabin's Birthday Snaps