Day 21 - 28: last week of the assignment and final presentation

#ibmcsc India

Day 21 - 28

At the moment of writing this blog posting, our Service Corps program ended one week ago. Time went really fast. We spent the last days writing down our analysis and (detailed) recommendations. Most of the times we worked in our guesthouse or the local IBM office, with an occasional visit to the Kalakshetra campus. We combined the skills of our team and by using flip charts on the walls of the guesthouse, we created structure in all our findings.

On the Wednesday of the last week (9th of November) we gave our presentation at the Kalakshetra campus to the director (Mrs Leela Samson), deputy director, and the heads of the departments. Ofcourse also Govind was there: in fact the past 4 weeks he was our main contact person. He gave us a great overall picture and introduction to Kalakshetra and did a great job in setting up the many appointments that we had in a very structured way.

The presentation was very well received. There was a very good atmosphere with much interaction: there were many very good questions by all of the attendees which we were happy to answer. The original plan was to give a presentation of about 30 minutes, but it resulted in a very interactive session of about 1.5 hours. We also handed over the document which contained all our recommendations that were too detailed to included in the overall Powerpoint presentation. After the presentation Mrs Samson invited us for a lunch in a very nice restaurant with South Indian food on the next day. The lunch was great and after the lunch we said goodbye. I´ll definitely miss the warmth and friendliness of the people at Kalakshetra and the inspiring place of their campus!

Here are some highlights of our recommendations:

• Upgrade the current IT hardware and software based on the detail recommendation
• Upgrade the current Internet connection speed.
• Centralize requirements gathering for IT
• Make use of current vendors for integration of different application functions
• Establish IT department at Kalakshetra to look after the IT functions
• Utilize existing application to their full potential; application training and making more use of Microsoft Excel for data processing.
• Use incremental and iterative approach when implementing improvements.
• Perform time / complexity assessment for new projects and prioritize.
• Consider off the shelf software which is capable of providing all the necessary functions; University, Library and document management system.

If you would like to know more details: feel free to contact me and I can send the Powerpoint presentation and the detailed Word document.

A big thanks to my team members Quynh and Dilminder for the great team work on this assignment. I think it was a great experience. We were very lucky with having such a great client, and I think we were really able to help them in making the nexts steps in improving their IT systems.

After finishing the work, I took the luxury to travel in India for 1 more week. Toghether with Mike we travelled to Mysore (night train), Ooty (bus), Coimbatore (train), Alleppey (bus and boat) and Cochin (bus). Also I should not forget to mention that I also made a great weekend trip to Goa two weeks ago. We rented some scooters and explored the beaches and the inland of Goa. I will post some photo´s of these trips in the next (and last) blog posting.

Yesterday I left Cochin to travel back to Amsterdam. Unfortunately the airline was not able to make my transfer in Dubai, so I was forced to spend another 24 hours in Dubai to take the flight the next day. Luckily Dubai is a great place to be stuck. I am writing this text just minutes before landing in Amsterdam.

Here are some pictures of the last week in Chennai:

These and more pictures (and their descriptions) are on Picasa.

Again many thanks for reading!

Day 9 - 20: Getting up to speed with the project and becoming a bit more used to Chennai

#IBMCSC India

Hi all,


First of all, let´s start with a group picture taken in Pondicherry at the Bay of Bengal - this is almost 2 weeks ago. Time has been flying....

Rajesh (India), Fernan (Argentinia), Mike (NL), Bas (NL), Dilminder (USA), Christian (DE), Frederic (FR), Joel (USA), Arnaud (FR), Martin (DK), and in front the ladies Quynh (USA), Jana (Slovakya) and Susanna (Sweden). There are 2 people missing: Espen (Norway) and  Ralph (USA) - we have to make more group photo´s...


After 2,5 weeks in Chennai I can finally say we are getting up to speed with our project. We have conducted many interviews: with the heads of the various departments at Kalakshetra and even with their current software vendors. Besides we had some additional tours on the campus to get a complete understanding of our client´s activities. For example we also visited the crafts center, where traditional saree´s (traditional -very colorful cloth worn by women) are still made and painted by hand. As always, the interviews and tours are very open and interesting, it is an amazing place! We also had the honor of meeting the director: Mrs Leela Samson, a very famous woman in India. By the way did I already tell that Hillary Clinton visited Kalakshetra last July?

Within our team we have some good discussions about how to shape our recommendations, and we are preparing for the final presentation and are putting together a detailed document with our findings. Our team consist of an IT infrastructure expert (Dilminder), a programming expert (Quynh) and a consultant / packaged solution expert (that´s me), so we can combine a broad variety of expertise and learn from each other. Next week we will give our final presentation and I will share the main recommendations in this blog.

In the meantime, in the weekend and the evenings, we had some nice trips, this time for instance to the silk and temple town Kanchipuram

Some other experiences:
- Happy Diwali! Last week Wednesday we celebrated this "Festival of Lights", (one of) the most important yearly Hindu festival(s). It is a very noisy festival with lots of fireworks. And the houses are decorated with lights. Of course we also joined the festivities by having a big dinner with the entire group. And we fired some extremely big Indian fireworks rockets.
- The monsoon season has started: this means lots of rain. There are two monsoon seasons in Chennai: this is the second period that lasts from October to mid-December. Mostly during the night, but on bad days it rains a lot and stays quite dark during the day. It really feels like a tropical place and it is always humid.
- I have met Victor in Chennai, who works for IBM Bangalore. He works in the India team as part of the project that I am in since July 2010. He will actually come to NL himself in December. We had a great evening in Chennai last Sunday and look forward to welcome him in NL.
- I did some research on "Kip Madras": "Chicken Madras" in English, a well-known recipe in The Netherlands. Conclusion: here in Chennai (Madras) there is no such thing as "Madras sauce/curry". In fact this was invented in England. Besides Chennai is first of all a hindu place of South India, and therefore the food is generally vegetarian, so traditionally you won´t find chicken here. Many restaurants are purely vegetarian.
- Chennai has very strict laws on alcohol. There is not really a nightlife (11.30 PM is closing time), and only the larger hotels are allowed to serve alcohol, in most local restaurants you simply won´t find it!
- Twice a week we start the day with 1 hour of yoga lesson at 7 am in our guesthouse.

Furthermore: after the daily taxi drives to Kalakshetra and the many auto rickshaw drives that we took, I think I understand the rules a little bit by now:

- Drive on the left side, but you can use the right side as well whenever you need more asphalt.
- Buses and trucks are more important (read: dangerous) than rickshaws and motorbikes so you give them a few inches more room
- Honking is a service to other people to let you know that you are coming. Typically everybody will sound their horn every 10 seconds to make there presence on the road known. It sounds great on the street.
- Flashing your headlights is also a service. It means: I will go first, you should wait.
- You "use as much road" as possible: meaning driving in the middle of the road, and only avoiding your oncoming car when he is really close.
- There is no such thing as having priority. Cars may approach a road from any side and with any speed, as long as they are first
- Obeying traffic lights is not needed when there is not much traffic.
- There is no stress, it is just go with the flow.

That´s it! Some photo´s below, and as always more photo´s on Picasa.

Bas

Day 4-8: Started working at the client

#ibmcsc India

Hi all,

Last Tuesday, my team mates Quynh, Dilminder and I had our first appointment with the client. We were picked up by a taxi and went to the campus of Kalakshetra. We received a very warm welcome and we had a fantastic tour on the campus: it is a little paradise. Kalakshetra is an institution for classical music, dance and fine arts typical for the South Indian region and especially the state Tamil Nadu. In 1936 it was founded by Rukmini Devi. In 1993 Kalakshetra was recognized of being of national importance and taken over by the Indian government. It consists of a college, 2 schools, multiple libraries, a research and documentation department, and more. Complete information can be found on Kalakshetra´s website. Walking on the campus is the campus is a very inspiring activity: people are dancing in groups, receive music lessons (singing or instruments), painting, or simply talking to their teacher (guru) alone or in small groups, without using any technology during the lessons, as it always has been.

The goal of our assignment at Kalakshetra is not to provide help on dancing, music or arts (in they will keep doing this in the old traditional ways), but to help with their IT infrastructure of the supporting departments. The institute has internet, a network, servers, and various applications for all kinds of administrative tasks, that has grown organically the past few years. We will provide advice on the IT architecture and strategy of Kalakshetra´s management.

Therefore everyday we travel about 30-40 minutes to the campus in the south of Chennai. On campus, we interview people from all departments, and make our analysis. Last Friday we spent the day in a local IBM office in Chennai, to process our information. By the way: Bangalore and Hyderabad are IBM´s biggest sites, but even in Chennai alone there are more than 5000 IBM employees and growing (almost as many IBM employees in this city alone compared to the Netherlands)!

I will tell more on our work at Kalakshetra in other blog postings the coming 3 weeks.

In the weekend the entire group decided to visit Pondicherry (former French colony), Auroville (an international city/village: "dedicated to human unity") and Mamallapuram (ancient temple complex), about a 3 hours drive south from Chennai. We had a great time and saw many interesting things. Living, eating and traveling in Chennai / India is an amazing experience. And all of this with a temperature above 35 degrees, humid, with some occasional rain, but almost all the time bright sun shine. To conclude, again a few photo´s:

More new photo´s on: picasa

Thanks for reading!
Bas

Day 1-3: Arrival and first 3 days in Chennai

#ibmcsc India 14

Hi everybody,

I'm there, safely arrived in Chennai! On Saturday night at 03.00 AM I landed at Chennai airport. My colleagues Mike and Quynh were in the same flight from Dubai. Jaya was waiting at the airport and she arranged a ride to the hotel.

First of all, what did I expect in Chennai?

• Hot & humid weather
• A very big city with congested traffic and air pollution
• Illness due to food
• A very challenging assignment at my client.

So, how did this turn out?

• Weather: indeed, HOT!!! Chennai is one of warmest cities in India. 35 degrees and very humid.
• Big city, congested traffic and air pollution: absolutely true, but taking a ride in a rickshaw is also very fun to do and is very well worth the smell of exhaust gas.
• Food: no problems at all (so far). The local South Indian cuisine is very nice: much rice, coconut and nice, light bread. And the drink called "lassi", which is a bit like sweet yoghurt: very nice in this hot weather. I enjoy trying out the food with advice of the local representatives.
• Today was the kick off of the consulting assignments and we all met our client representatives: it all looks very challenging but also very promising.

We have a great team up here, it is nice to meet IBMers from all over the world. In total the team consists of 11 IBMers and 4 employees of John Deer, who are participating in our program in order to learn and set up a similar program for their company as well. And the local representatives help us answering all our questions. The entire group is split in 6 sub-team, each connected to its own client in the city. Together with Quynh and Dilminder, my sub-team mates, we are connected to our client Kalakshetra.

Some things about Chennai: the city, also known as Madras, has about 4 million inhabitants, and the total agglomeration has about 8 million people. It is the capital of the region Tamil Nadu in South-East India, and lies directly on the East coast off the Bay of Bengal. If you want to know more, check wikipedia. IBM has offices here, and is growing extremely fast in this part of India, while helping the local industries/companies that are growing very fast as well.

Today, Monday, I and my "sub-team-members" met the representatives of my client, Kalakshetra, and institute for arts and dance of the southern India region Tamil Nadu. Tomorrow we will actually visit their site. I will tell you more about my client and the assignment later this week.

To conclude, some of the first pictures:

More pictures (and a short video) can be seen here

Thanks for reading!

Bas

Day 0: Bas to Chennai - Introduction

#ibmcsc India 14

Hi everybody,

Welcome! I created this blog to tell you more about my experiences in Chennai, India, from 14 October to 12 November 2011.

I am an IBM employee in the Netherlands. Some time ago I was informed that I was accepted in IBM's Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program, a program that helps providing IBMers with high quality leadership development while delivering high quality problem solving for communities and organizations in emerging markets.

If you want to know more about this program, visit this special IBM website, which also contains a link to this blog.

By the way this year IBM exists 100 years. If you want to know more of this, I can highly recommend this 13 min. movie on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4 in which IBM's history (since 1911) is explained in a very cool way.

Next blog I will write something more about Chennai!


Bas van Dijke