Summary of recent seminars conducted by PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter
| Date | Event Name | Speaker |
| 18 Jan 2010 | Realizing Your Inner Potentials | Dr. Maaney Paul |
| 09 Dec 2009 | Six Thinking Hats | Mr. K.S Mathew |
| 15 Sep 2009 | Change Management and Communication | Mr. Amarnath Raj |
| 30 Jul 2009 | Software Testing | Mr. Harish Krishnankutty |
| 16 Jun 2009 | How to Win Anyone Over in Any Situation | Mr. Sanjay Bhaskaran |
| 15 Jul 2009 | Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) | Mr. Boby Varghese |
| 23 Apr 2009 | SCRUM | Mr. Raja Raja Varma |
| 09 Mar 2009 | Quality and Speed of Execution | Dr. Joseph George |
| 26 Feb 2009 | Dimensions of Culture | Mr. Jin Mathew |
| 11 Feb 2009 | Entrepreneurship | Mr. Murali Gopalan |
| 25 Sep 2008 | PRINCE2 | Mr. Sudhir Kumar |
| 24 Jul 2008 | Management Challenges at CEE | Dr. Rajoo Krishnan |
| 14 Jul 2008 | Innovation, Patents & IPR | Mr. Ajith Kumar PN |
| 17 Jun 2008 | Latest trends in Telecom Network Management | Mr. Jithesh Sathyan |
Elections to the Executive Committee of PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter
The election process for PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter is now complete with all the 5 positions being filled up unopposed.
 | Mr. Sunil Plavians P, PMP PMI Id: 554987 Chairman |
 | Mr. Rajasekhara P. Rajeev, PMP PMI Id: 413866 Vice Chairman |
 | Dr. Vikram Kumar B.T., Ph.D., PMP PMI Id: 362109 Director - Finance |
 | Mr. Anil Chandran Ramachandran, PMP PMI Id: 874358 Director - Seminars & Networking |
 | Ms. Indu T Ponnappan, PMP PMI Id: 587953 Director - Training |
Mr. K S Mathew took a session based on 'Six Thinking Hats' at a PMI Kerala chapter event on 09 Dec 2009
 | Six Thinking Hats is a method based on the concept of “Parallel Thinking” originated by Dr.Edward de Bono. During the session, Mr Mathew highlighted on how the 'Six Thinking Hats' method is used by businesses and organizations all over the world for effective team meetings, decision making, problem solving, proposal/design evaluations etc. |
During the session, Mr Mathew covered various topics like Parallel Thinking, Lateral Thinking, Traditional Thinking versus Parallel Thinking, How to apply Six Thinking Hats and its benefits, casestudies and a mock session using Six Thinking Hats concept.
Mr. KS Mathew, with about 25 years of experience in software industry in India and abroad in various roles, is a trainer and guest faculty for Software Project Management, Software Estimation, MS Project, Software Engineering, Software Quality Assurance and Six Thinking Hats at various professional institutes and software companies. He is an active member of Project Management Institute, Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter. At present, Mr. Mathew is working as a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology, Kochi. View the presenation here.
Mr. Amarnath Raja highlighted the importance of Change Management and Communication by taking the example of Air Traffic Controllers at a PMI Kerala chapter event
 | On one hand change is the most worrying aspect of quality management; but on the other hand change is the way of life in most organizations. In most live situations, change in Computer Application and Processes impacts the entire organization. |
A key factor to success of the Change Management is effective communication between all actors participating in the change. However communication between the 'Tech-ies’ and the 'Business' is quite complicated!
In his talk, Mr. Amarnath Raja covered such an experiment on Change Management and communication in an investment banking company using a mutually understandable media.
Mr. Amarnath Raja is a co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and chief mentor directly responsible for InApp's software delivery services. Based out of our global delivery center in India, Amarnath Raja oversees Technology strategy, Project implementation and Operations management.
PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter kick started its PMP Contact Training programs
After a long gap, PMI Kerala has restarted the contact training program for PMP® certification. This followed the huge success of the Estimation workshop they had conducted earlier. Two sets of training programs were conducted during the months of July and September 2009 at Trivandrum. These trainings were based on the 4th edition of Project Management Body of Knowledge. Both the trainings had participants from across the state and from abroad working in various industries like Information Technology, Construction, Mechanical, and Ecology.
The highlight of these training programs is that topics were handled by qualified PMPs who are also practicing Project Managers in the respective areas. The trainers include Mr. Anil Chandran R, PMP, Mr. Brajesh C. Kaimal, PMP, Mr. Chitharanjan Damodaran, PMP, Ms. Indu T Ponnappan, PMP, Mr. Manoj Krishna, PMP, Mr. Rajeev Rajasekhara Panicker, PMP, Mr. Rinosh Jacob Kurian, PMP, Mr. Sreevalsan Venugopan, PMP, Mr. Sunil Plavians, PMP and Mr. Vikram Kumar B T, PMP. Both trainings received good feedback as evidenced by the 100% recommendation from participants.
PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter conducted 2 days’ workshop on Software Estimation at Technopark
The Kerala Chapter of PMI has conducted 2 days workshop on Software Estimation at Technopark which evoked a huge response from the community. The workshop was attended by about 30 participants from across the state and generated a 100% recommendation from the participants.
Most of the Software Estimation topics that are relevant and popular today including Software Estimation Process, Standard Software Size Estimation Techniques, IFPUG Function Point Analysis, Mark II Function Point Analysis, Use Case Point technique, Object Point method, WBS based Estimation, Effort, Schedule and Cost Estimation Techniques were covered as part of the workshop.
The training was handled by Mr. Anil Chandran R, PMP (Director - PMI Kerala, Project Manager, NeST, Thiruvananthapuram) and by Mr. K.S Mathew, PMP (Associate Professor, Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology, Kochi).
Mr. Harish Krishnankutty took a session on 'Software Testing' at the PMI Kerala chapter event.
In these times of IT budget cuts and near-zero discretionary spend, QA as a function has become a soft target for cost drive-down measures. QA managers and validation service providers are challenged to reinvent themselves to ensure significant reduction in the TCO of applications. To overcome these challenges, QA organizations are adopting different approaches like QA Center of Excellence as a shared service, Specialized Testing CoEs, Focus on Non-functional testing and early lifecycle validation.
In his session, Mr. Harish covered the details of each of these approaches and the experiences of organizations that have successfully adopted these. He also presented a bird’s eye view of the recent trends in the validation industry and a discussion on the challenges that these poses to the managers in the area of QA and Validation. This session was attended by over 100 professionals in and around Trivandrum.
Mr. Harish T Krishnankutty is a Group Test Manager with the Independent Validation Solutions unit in Infosys Technologies Limited responsible for the definition and deployment of new testing service offerings to cater to the ever-changing needs of Infosys’ clientele across multiple industry verticals. He has published several articles and whitepapers on Test Automation and QA outsourcing and has spoken at several national and international conferences.
Mr. Sanjay Bhaskaran took a session on 'How to Win Anyone Over in Any Situation'
Mr. Sanjay Bhaskaran reminded the community on the etiquettes and tips to be followed in the session on 'How to Win Anyone Over in Any Situation'. In this ever changing world, it is absolutely important that the Managers should see human resource as the key to any success and manage their expectations. In this session Mr. Sanjay focused on how a Manager could control and change his/her behavior to suit various situations and always WIN.
Mr. Sanjay Bhaskaran, a PMI Chapter Member and an Account Manager with UST Global, has over 17 years of IT industry experience and also part of the CMMi team at his organization.
Mr. Boby Varghese took the technical session on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Mr. Boby Varghese took the technical session on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for the community at a chapter event held at Kochi. In this session he explained how the enterprise business solutions can be extended or changed on demand and focused on the mechanism for integrating existing legacy applications regardless of their platform or language.
Mr. Boby Varghese, an IBM Rational certified Consultant & Instructor, is a Software Engineering Consultant with expertise in designing, architecting and developing internet, middle tier and object oriented programming for over eight years.
Mr. Raja Raja Varma took a seminar on SCRUM
Mr. Raja Raja Varma took a seminar on SCRUM, an agile framework that enables teams to collaborate effectively with focus on high quality deliverables. SCRUM project is radically different from traditional project management and demands a new set of skills and abilities. In this seminar, Mr. Raja Raja Varma covered basics of SCRUM methodologies and explained how SCRUM can be implemented successfully in an organization. He also covered common challenges faced on SCRUM projects.
Mr. Raja Raja Varma, a Certified Scrum Master and a Senior Project Manager at UST Global, was trained in SCRUM by Pete Deemer and is the official trainer for SCRUM and Agile practices at his organization. As CMMi process champion, he is instrumental in the successful adoption of Agile practices within the CMMi framework.
Dr. Joseph George took a session on 'Quality and Speed of Execution' at the PMI chapter event
At this seminar Dr. Joseph George explained how project management plays a critical role in the context of quality delivery and imbibing quality as a core element of projects and organizations. The session was consucted on 09 Mar 2009 at the Travancore Hall at Park Center, Technopark, Trivandrum
Dr, Joseph George, Director-Strategic Planning and Implementation at PMI Kerala Chapter is currently working as Delivery Head NeSTIT-Cochin, managing delivery of Enterprise Applications software services. He is a project management consultant and has gained wide knowledge and experience in Information Systems, Software Engineering and Software Project Management through his research and industrial experience. He worked as Head of IT and Business Computer at STIC INTI Group in Bangkok and Director-Project and Operations of a US based Software Company in Pune before leaving to Bangkok. He is also a member of many professional bodies
Mr. Jin Mathew took a session on 'Dimensions of Culture' for the Project Management Community at Kochi
Culture influences our behavior, intern our character. With onshore/offshore and global delivery models, IT/Project Management professionals work very closely with different nationalities/cultures across the world. This session is intended to introduce some of the cultural differences which influence our day to day project activities and 'Brand India'. The session was conducted on 26 Feb 2009 at MP Hall, Thapasya Building, Infopark, Kakkanad
Mr. Jin Mathew is the Portfolio Director, Large BFS Project, TCS. He has got 10+ years of IT industry experience. He has earned his Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science. He also has many professional certifications which include PMP, PRINCE2 and ITIL.
Mr. Murali Gopalan delivered a talk on 'Entrepreneurship' to the Project Management Community in an event organized by PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter.
A successful entrepreneur is the passionate individual who seizes the opportunity, motivates a team and mobilizes resources. On 11 Feb 2009, Mr. Murali Gopalan, the Joint Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Sr. Vice President of UST Global delivered the talk on 'Entrepreneurship' which focussed on the area of how project management plays a critical role in the context of building an organization. He talked about the traits of successful entrepreneurs and the simple techniques they adopted to create value for themselves, their shareholders and employees. Understand the reasons why some entrepreneurs fail and avoid the mistakes commonly made. Entrepreneurship need not necessarily mean that a new organization is formed. Entrepreneurs create value to the organization they work for and are recognized for their leadership qualities
At UST Global, Murali has focused on building an innovation culture in the company during the year 2008, resulting in the collection of 9,000 ideas from its employees. Murali led the operations of US Technology in India, the Indian subsidiary as its Chief Operating Officer from Feb 2000 to Mar 2006. Murali is also a Founder Charter Member of the Kerala Chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley http://www.tie.org) and Founder member of GTECH, the Group of Technopark Companies in Trivandrum.
There was a huge turnaround for the session and the Travancore Hall at Technopark was fully packed with approximately 200 participants.
PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter welcomes the new members to the board
PMI Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter welcomes the new members to the board. We express our heartfelt thanks to the outgoing Board members C Damodaran, Pradeep Kumar and Manoj Krishna. Their efforts have been instrumental in the success of our programs over the past two years. The annual election was held shortly thereafter and four positions were filled. Coming onboard are new Directors Dr. Joseph George, Mr. Sreevalsan Venugopan and Mr. Jayakrishnan P S. They are joined with newly re-elected Director Mr. Rinosh Jacob Kurian. Thank you to all who stepped forward and offered to serve on the Board.
We thank Mr. Prasadu Varghese, who served as the Election Officer (2009) in successfully completing the election process. We also thank each one of you who participated in the election process.
For those of you out there that weren’t interested in a Board spot but would still like to lead one of our programs, we’d love to hear from you! Contact us and let us know what you’d like to do.
Declaration of election for the post of 'Director - Strategic Planning and Implementation' for the Executive Commitee of PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter
Dear Member,
After verifying the nominations, it is found that we need to conduct elections for the post of 'Director - Strategic Planning and Implementation' of the board of PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter. The candidates are
Your name="____"::Your PMI Id="____"::Candidate name="____"
Please remember to send the mail only to this ID elections@pmikerala.org as only this will be considered towards a vote. The results will be announced on 12 February 2009.
Regards
Prasadu Varghese
Election Officer (2009), PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter
Elections to the Executive Commitee of PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter
Dear Member,
I am Prasadu Varghese, appointed by the Executive Committee of PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter to conduct the elections to the following vacancies in the executive committee as on 31st Dec 2008.
- Director - Administration
- Director - Strategic Planning and Implementation
- Director - Communication and Publicity
- Director - Conferences
If you are an existing member of the chapter you are eligible to stand for elections as well as vote for your candidate. Following is the schedule
| Name | Your name |
| PMI ID | Your PMI ID |
| Nominee | Nominees name |
| Nominees PMI ID | Nominees PMI ID |
| Position | Position the nominee is nominated to |
2. Publish the list of nominations and positions on the website www.pmikerala.org on 5th February 2009. If there are more than one nomination for a position, election through email will be conducted. In that case, elections will be announced on 7th February 2009.
3. If election is announced, members can send in their vote indicating the position and name of the candidate by email only to the address elections@pmikerala.org. The last date for receiving email votes will be 5 PM IST on 11th February 2009.
4. The results will be published on 12th February 2009. Please note that the nominations and vote are to be sent only to the id elections@pmikerala.org, and those sent to any other id will be treated as invalid.
Regards
Prasadu Varghese
Election Officer (2009), PMI Trivandrum Kerala Chapter
Session on PRINCE2 by Mr Sudhir Kumar.
PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a process-based method for effective project management. PRINCE2 is a de facto standard used extensively by the UK Government and is widely recognised and used in the private sector, both in the UK and internationally. The method PRINCE2 is in the public domain, offering non-proprietorial best practice guidance on project management. PRINCE2 is a registered trademark of OGC.
The key features of PRINCE2 are: :
- Its focus on business justification
- A defined organisation structure for the project management team
- Its product-based planning approach
- Its emphasis on dividing the project into manageable and controllable stages
- Its flexibility to be applied at a level appropriate to the project
PRINCE2 provides benefits to the managers and directors of a project and to an organisation, through the controllable use of resources and the ability to manage business and project risk more effectively. PRINCE2 embodies established and proven best practice in project management. It is widely recognised and understood, providing a common language for all participants in a project. At this seminar you will get an overview of this methodology.
For registration, please send a mail to info :at: pmikerala :dot: org with the subject as 'Registration for PRINCE2'
Dr. Rajoo Krishnan took a seminar on the Management Challenges at CEE.
The activities of the office of the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations are centered on multitude of students seeking Professional Education. The Entrance Examination and the Centralized Allotment Process for admission to Professional Degree Courses (Engineering/ Medical) are the most important events in this area. Stakeholder management in a time bound manner is very important to ensure success year after year.
While taking this seminar on on 24 July, 2008 at the Malabar Hall, Technopark, Dr Rajoo Krishnan touched upon various knowledge areas of project management with reallife examples which was compeltely outside the boundaries of IT project management. Some of the topics include :
- Management Challenges
- Maintaining Transparency in Transactions
- Stakeholder Management
- Time Management
Session on Innovation, Patents & IPR
Mr. Ajith Kumar P N, PMP took a seminar on Innovation, Patents & IPR for PMI Trivandrum – Kerala Chapter on 14th July 2008.
The semianar covered various areas like Innovation, Patents & IPR and difference between Innovation and Invention.
- Why Innovation is important for corporate organizations
- Success story of innovative companies (innovative products/solutions and revenue through royalties/IPR licensing Ex; Google, 3M, IBM, Samsung etc.)
- Why patenting is important and how corporates generate revenue out of licensing their patented solutions
- What are patentable inventions and non-patentable inventions
- Process involved in patenting in India and other countries
- Setting up Organization strategies for innovation
The speaker, Mr. Ajith Kumar P N, who is working with Logica Pvt. Ltd. as Delivery Manager, heading the global innovation, patenting & IPR initiatives of the organization. He is managing a unit involved in R&D and driving the innovation in the domains of Intelligent Transportation Systems, GRID Computing, Energy & Utilities and Telecoms. He is a PMI certified PMP and the inventor of 15 patents. Prior to joining Logica, Ajith was serving Samsung Electronics as Project Manager for various telecom projects/products of Samsung mobile handsets and was leading Samsung's Innovation initiatives for defining the next generation mobile/wireless networking standards of the international organization "Open Mobile Alliance" (www.openmobilealliance.org) (OMA). He is the former editor of Instant Messaging XDM Technical Specification of OMA. Ajith represented Samsung for 12 international conferences of OMA during the period 2002-2006. He has presented more than 80 technical/business contributions to OMA to finalize upcoming technologies.
Seminar on Latest trends in Telecom Network Management
PMI Trivandrum – Kerala Chapter held a seminar in association with Technopark on 17th June 2008 to discuss the latest trends in the area of Telecom Network Management.
With evolution in technology, new and improved networks are coming up in the market and the legacy Network Management Systems are not scalable to manage these next generation networks or its elements without considerable re-work. The capital and operational expenditure in managing these NMS solutions keeps on increasing.
Mr Jithesh Sathyan presenting the topic during the seminar
This session started with a discussion on the basics of telecom network management and ended with the latest in network management. Some of the items that were discussed include:
- Legacy NMS, Next Generation Network Management
- Converged or Unified NMS
- Telecom Management Standards and
- Past, present and future of telecom network management.
The speaker Mr. Jithesh Sathyan, a Technical Architect at Infosys Technologies Limited, holds the first granted US patent for his organization and has filed 7 patents in India and the United States. Being active in several technical forums including DMTF, OASIS and TMF, Mr Jithesh helped the attendees to identify various strategies for cost effective telecom management and to clarify various queries the telecom equipment manufacturers and service providers have on the future of network management like
- How to make current legacy solution scalable to support new networks with minimal re-work?
- How to manage multi-technology networks?
- Is converged network management only concerned with multi service, multi technology and multi vendor environment or does it also involve multi domain?
- How to reduce the overhead of using different management solutions currently in use for the numerous networks and services?
- What is the current level of maturity in telecom management standards, how much of these standards can be adopted and how easy is it to adopt the standards?
- Will it be beneficial to merge or acquire a specific NMS product development company?
- What should be the functions available in a Next Generation Network Management product?
PMI India Centre Grand Opening Event and PMI India Centre Launch, in Delhi, on 24th and 28th March 2008.
The PMI India Centre grand opening event was organized at the Pool Lawns, Hotel Taj Mahal on the 24th March 2008 at 7:30PM. The participation was by invitation and many senior executives from organizations in Delhi and Bombay attended the event. The Team India leaders were invited for this event. Apart from the grand opening of PMI India Centre, PMI also felicitated Dr. E. Sreedharan, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, with the PMI Eric Jennet Project Management Excellence Award.
Mr. Phillip Diab, Chair of the PMI 2008 Board of Directors, welcomed the audience and also introduced Mr. Raj Kalady, the Managing Director of the PMI Organization centre Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Gregory Balestrero, the CEO of PMI felicitated Dr. E. Sreedharan and presented a memento to him. Greg highlighted the achievements of Dr. Sreedharan during his career with the Indian Railways, Konkan Railway Corporation and now with the Delhi Metro.
Dr. Sreedharan thanked PMI for considering him for the award and also wished PMI great success in India. The event concluded with a dinner organized in the pool lawns.The India Launch of Project Management Institute Luncheon meeting was organized at the Longchamp, The Taj Mahal hotel on 28th March 2008. The meeting was on invitation and attended by many senior managers from organizations in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. The chapter leaders from all chapters were invited for the event. Chapter leaders from New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmadabad and Trivandrum attended the event. PMI Pune chapter couldn’t attend due to their annual elections. PMI Hyderabad chapter representative joined later as his flight got delayed. Staff from PMI GoC (Global Operations Centre) as well as the PMI Global Corporate Council members also attended the function. PMI Global Corporate Council consists of the following companies Accenture, Siemens, Boeing, International Institute of Learning, IBM, BAE Systems, Huawei Technology Co, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, SAP, Transfield Services
PMI Vice Chair, Ms. Yan Ping Chen welcomed the audience as well as introduced the PMI to the audience. Greg acknowledged the contributions of Team India and the chapter leaders in India to spread PMI. He also introduced Mr. Raj Kalady to the audience. Mr. Raj spoke about the major changes undergone in India over the last decade and emphasized the importance on Project Management skills and skill development in India to take India to the next level.
The luncheon was a good networking event and lots of senior executives interacted with PMI chapter leaders and GoC to understand PMI as well as to get involved and derive value from PMI.
