The Interview Day

Today was an important day in our journey ahead. That's because we had the interview of deciding the projects that we requested to do. So this was quite a big day for this subject because the project that we have to do throughout an year will be decided on this day. It should have been a big pressure and a stress as we were the 2nd of all the groups in the schedule. 

Other groups were memorizing of the technical aspects, OOP concepts and stuff for their interview. But we had no intention at all to do such a thing. We believed that interview might not be a thing that is stressful and the panel will not ask questions about technical stuff, but the things we have done and what are our intentions of the projects ahead. So actually we didn't prepare much for the interview. We just got the printouts of the CV's and got some files, put those in and went there.

"එන විහිදයකට BAT කරමු"
was our motto for the day! 

When all the members in the panel came, we were asked to come after the 1st group. So we went and sat down. I don't think it's appropriate to tell what we were asked. But it went well. But I'd like to quote a conversation there when we were asked to tell about the previous year project.

"

Me : I was the group leader in our project.. ... .... ......

Shiran : I was also the group leader in our group.. ... .... ......

Sankalpa : I too was the group leader of the group.

A panel member : Woh what a group.. 

"

So finally we came out and I guess we did pretty OK. So we hope that we would get one of the projects we were keen on getting. Anyway as the Scrum Master of this Leaders' group I really am satisfied about the stuff my friends did out there today. This was a day to remember. 

Bids for the projects

1) National Shotokan Karate Federation (NSKF)

Features: 

·         User Management 

·         Branch Management (Overseas and Local) 

·         Members’ area

·         News Feed

·         Tournament management Etc.

2) Adora Apparels - Web Application

-Types of Operations:

·        Stock Lots

o   Purchasing

o   Sales

o   Monthly summaries

·        F.O.B.

o   Purchasing

o   F.O.B. stock in hand

o   F.O.B. Sales

o   Fixed Overheads

3) My Style International Projects

-Types of Operations:

·      Customers handling

·      CSR projects

·      Promotional Wear / Uniforms

·      Promotional Products

·      Advertising Solution

·      Hotel Products

·      Tailor Made Promotional

Project Bidding and Choosing a framework Story !!!

Yesterday afternoon in the OS lab we saw that SEP projects are listed in Courseweb.

So we decided to choose projects and bid for them as soon as possible. After thinking for more than 2hours we chose 3 projects according to our preference.

We wanted to do a Web application which go with PHP/MySQL. because we were aggressively studies about PHP and frameworks for last several weeks. So we chose 3 projects we can do with that open source technology.

2weeks back we started looking for a good PHP framework. I suggested to go with Laravel 4 because its an advanced framework and around 40+% of people using it to large PHP projects. It was built on Symphony.

The problem was we couldn’t find good reference book to study it. Sankalpa chose CakePHP and Codeigniter. Those frameworks are too small for our needs.

We wanted an intermediate framework which we can play with it and which has a good references online.

After doing heavy research and debating on Viber,

Yeah we have a group on Viber to talk about project.

Our JSPS Group discussion on Viber

Shiran came up with the idea of using Yii. Yeah Yii.

It has everything we need Good reference and it support every technology we need even though It sounds sucks.

So We all 4 decided to Stick with Yii 1.1 framework.Thats how we chose the framework.

in the OS lab we chose 3 projects which we can do with PHP and that framework. We submitted our project bid exactly 3.18pm because according to the Janitha’s opinion it was the lucky time of that day.

When we click the submit button We all 4 said “Saadu Saadu Saadu” in the OS lab.

Hope we’ll get a good Project :)

Scrum Master's Prospective

First of all, a PROJECT is defined as,

 "Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems or work systems that are constituted by teams within or across organizations to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints."

That's by the Wikipedia guys. But what comes to my mind remembering of a project is not pleasant. It's a burden, a stress as well as a mess that requires a severe effort to put up with. So basically what I intended to say was, "I hate Projects". But why am I saying that I hate projects? There's a list of things that made me say that..

• Having to do all the work alone
• Being the only person in the group who knows designing, logical approach etc..
• Having no contribution from team members

Often I tend to say "මේ රෙද්ද තනියෙං කරා නං ලේසියි". So I think I blamed enough so that everyone would feel bad about a project. But, (ya you're right I'm gonna say something good).

If a project is properly handled, and if there are capable talented members (which we do) and if there's a proper approach; I don't think that there will be anything stopping a project to succeed! (In the group member prospective).

This project is special for me. Myself (Janitha), Shiran and Sankalpa are from the same school (Richmond College Galle), did AL's together same year in the same stream (Mathematics) and entered SLIIT together but different places.  Sankalpa and I were the founding members of RITS (Richmond College IT society) and I were the secretary there. And in the 3rd and final year we are all back together with another good dude; Poorna and we finally got to do a project together. 

Myself, Shiran and Sankalpa were the Project Leaders of of the previous groups that we were in. So there was no concern about who the leader should be in this project. Everyone has an even capacity of doing a project exceptionally well. I wanted Shiran to be the peoject leader but his excuse was "අත බෑ ඒ.. අත බෑ...". Haha fair enough I said...

Anyway the goal is set. We need to do a given project throughout a period of a whole year and should give everything we have in order to get a good grade in this. We still haven't got the project that we have to work with. But once we get the project, I'm pretty sure that we would do it quite well considering the capabilities of the members in this team. 

I got to say it's a privilege for me to be the leader (Scrum Master in Agile terms) in this project that we are about to do. Everything won't be perfect, but we all will be trying our best to keep the mistakes to a minimal level. This concludes the Scrum Master's message..

- Janitha Senevirathna 

The Setting

Now all four of us undergraduates and end of the day we all will have to move the industry and we will have to satisfy our customers with their software requirement needs. We have learn few programming languages and will learn some more. Client or the company we work for may not interested in what programming languages we know rather than getting their work done as they want. So if we are not capable enough to cover their requirements as the wish they will find some one else who will do what they want. Today there are programmers, software engineers every where and its a huge competition. So being in this situation we are looking forward for the 3rd year project which will lead us to gain industry related experience. On the very begging I thought to go around with a quick overview,

1. These days the industry is mainly focus on Agile Development methodologies and mostly the SCRUM.     
2. C, C++, Java, PHP, Objective C, Python are popular in the industry with HTML, CSS, Javascript.(Popular Programming Languages )
3. The frameworks.
4. Cleanliness of the code. 
5. Always when you are the programmer there will be your lots of people in-front of you in the hierarchy who will forcing you to get the best out of you on the project.  

With all I would like to tell you a small story what our lecture told. 

The Pig and Chicken

A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.

The Chicken says: "Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!"

Pig replies: "Hm, maybe, what would we call it?"

The Chicken responds: "How about 'ham-n-eggs'?"


Understand who is chickens and who are pigs when you work with modern approach like SCRUM. We will have more posts on SCRUM approach.

Welcome ! The begining..

Welcome to our new official blog JSPS Project 2015. In this post I'm going to explain the purpose of this blog and what we are going to do in the future.

Who are we?

     We are 3rd year students of SLIIT (Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology), who are following the Curtin university, Software Engineering Specialization. Our group consist of four members namely,

1.    Janitha Nirmal Senevirathne (Group Leader)
2.    Shiran Sudharaka Ekanayake
3.    Poorna Sampath Jayasinghe
4.    Sankalpa Udaranga Pathmalal

Now you can understand how the name JSPS Project Came up.

Why are we here?

    As 3rd year Curtin Software Engineering Students, we are supposed to do a group project which will run all along the entire year. In this project we are supposed to work with a real client and we have to come up with a fully functional Software System to satisfy the clients' needs at the end. That is a long time approach. Therefore we are using this blog as our official communication media and as a memory of one of the greatest milestones in our lives.

Story So far?

   Today onward me and the other three members of my team will post our progress, Technical Information related to project, and interesting stories and incidents which we faced through out the entire process.

                    The first step of this project was initialized 5th of January 2015 as it was the day we appointed our group members and appointed the leader (Scrum Master). Since we follow the Scrum Agile approach during our process lets' use the word SCRUM Master instead of group leader. All the four members of our team are skillful, friendly and very resourceful people as I believe. Therefore we are planing to do a one of the best project this year. Initially my name was suggested as the Scrum Master. But I reject that proposal as my hand was injured at that moment. :p Then Janitha was selected as the Scrum Master and we are waiting to get our project title and requirements. Yet we didn't get the project title we are using this time to fulfill our technical and programming skills these days. 

Hope to meet you with a new post in near future..