PRIMA - extended for Santa tracking

Other uses for the PRIMA screen

Since the Prima Project completed we have started finding other uses for the big screen, like watching the opening of the 2008 Olympics Games live!

PRIMA project graduation

As most of the SNS IT development organization has seen in the last few months, the Java Domain has a new (very) large flat screen on the wall. It is part of the results of the PRIMA project which supplies management information about our running projects.

The project was completed by two interns, Lisa and Ikram, during a six month project starting in January 2008. It completed in June 208 and guess what? Lisa and Ikram, have graduated!

Not only did they receive a 9.0 for their project, they graduated on July the 8th cum laude! To top this off they have had their graduation thesis submitted for the Dutch 2008 Thesis Prize, a nation wide competition that only the very best are submitted to. Well done guys!

Lisa is starting her first job next month at DAF Trucks in Eindhoven as an Information Analyst. Ikram will be continuing his studies at the Technical University Delft, hoping to complete a Masters in the next two years (and still available for a part-time job during his studies).

Good luck to you both from all of us at the SNS Bank IT.

PRIMA project final grades

Today was the final presentation and defence of their thesis at the Fontys School in Eindhoven. As you can see here it went pretty well (on the board is their grade, a 9.0) for the PRIMA project, which explains the big grins. ;-)

Graduation is in July but I am glad to see that Lisa and Ikram received a good grade for their work. Lisa will be starting a new job at DAF as an Information Analyst and Ikram will be starting a Masters at the TU in Delft this fall. They both worked hard for this and the results have been more than we expected throughout the entire project.

I want to wish them all the luck in the world and hope their paths will cross mine again in the future.

PRIMA project goodbye party

Turn down the music... turn off the lights... the party is over...

The PRIMA project has completed it's tasks at the SNS Bank and are off into the wide world. It started when I met them in the fall of 2007 at an open evening at the SNS Bank and since that time we have put together an amazing tool. From January 2008 to June 2008 the two team members, Lisa and Ikram, worked diligently within a SCRUM project framework to produce the foundations of a project reporting tool that has already caught the imagination of departments outside our Java team. It has been a great ride and I would like to thank them both for making me look good!

The project team not only enlightened the Java team as to what their project was doing, but they also spoiled us with their food. Thanks for the Gado Gado and Indonesian cake that you see us all enjoying in the pictures.

The 46" LCD screen is on the wall, the projects are being reported, and the European Championships have integrated the PRIMA projects display into our Dutch supporting gear as you can see in the photo to the left.

Even though it was their last few hours, Ikram and Lisa kept up the great work ethic they showed during the entire project by pushing out one last deployment. This contained improvements to make a few more members of the Java team happy and the final photo shows Ikram deploying during the final minutes of his internship.

They have given their final presentation of the PRIMA project to the SNS Bank, handed over copies of their final thesis, and will be making the final school presentation in two weeks at the Fontys school in Eindhoven before receiving their final grades.

I will have to think long and hard about this grade as they both snuck off without washing my car first... ;-)

PRIMA project and sushi?

You must be wondering what the PRIMA project has to do with sushi. Well, let me tell you! After finishing up the application (see the screenshots) last week we headed out into town for some sushi. As you can see, we had some trouble catching any sushi on our plates for the photos, but we had a great time!

PRIMA project final screen shots

The results are in, the students are working hard to finish up their bachelor thesis and presentation slides while we here at SNS Bank IT enjoy their work on the large LCD screen. For your enjoyment I wanted to provide a few screen shots here.

The first one is of the legend, providing the user with an overview of the used components and what the reporting elements mean. A very important one is the algorithm used to determine the over all project score.

The second one shows a listing of projects that have been put into the PRIMA monitor. They show the results of the previously described project algorithm and visual aids for the number impaired! ;-)

Finally, there is a single project overview page showing this projects status. Some components are not showing any data as they are not used in the metrics gathering for this project.

this week. Even so, you get a real good idea of week, so thereThe PRIMA project will do final delivery next will be a bit of polishing done later the results they have achieved with this project.

Kudo's to the PRIMA team!

PRIMA project hits the wall

As of today the PRIMA project has finally hit the wall where it should be. As you can see the long awaited big screen finally made it onto the wall where it is to present project management information. It has been placed high enough that both sides of the work floor can view it rather easily (of course there are a few blind spots), the photo shows it from the back of the room, about 30 meters away.

This is a big milestone for the PRIMA team and you can tell that this visual representation is drawing attention. All of a sudden project members are asking questions about why their favorite metrics are not as high as they should be!

It should be noted that this does not mean the PRIMA project has reached its final production deployment. The project will be running into the first half of June, so what the Java Domain is now seeing can be labeled as the beta version of PRIMA. Each week the team will be adding in new projects to be monitored, refactoring in the comments they are receiving, and trying to polish off the last bits of documentation. Should you want to comment on the PRIMA results, feel free to stop by our department, take a look at the big screen in action, and meet with the team members Lisa and Ikram.

As you can see, some people have found other uses for the big screen... we are not sure what the limits are, but you can be sure we will be pushing this new big screen to the limits! ;-)

PRIMA project gets the big screen

The PRIMA project has been waiting for this moment pretty much since they started. The 46" LCD screen has arrived!

We thought it appropriate for the team to pose with their new gadget, so you can get an idea of the size of this thing. It is just incredible to run an application on such a large screen.

Unfortunately the building custodian was unable to hang it on the wall for us as he thought the supplied bracket was too small. This has caused some problems, as I was forced to ask for a pickup of the bracket by the supplier. We did not want to wait and I was planning to pick up a new bigger one this weekend, but found out that the bracket was just fine. The mounting points the custodian wanted to use are not even mounting points... so I am planning to sort this out on Tuesday with him (or hand it up myself!).

In the mean time the entire department pretty much wanted to see the application live on the new screen, so as you can see they all pitched in to at least put the screen up on one of the central cabinets.

The picture is amazing with a very large resolution. As you can see the reactions were pretty much a collective dropping of the jaws! ;-)

The project is in its last month of development, with things moving along rather nicely. The team is planning this last Sprint to include new functionality and then they will use the remaining week(s) to polish up the PRIMA applications robustness.

The best way to sum up the reactions is with a quote from one of our Information Architects. He saw the new screen, watched in awe for a bit as it cycled through a few screens, and stated, "Damn, we could use this in our department... how can we get connected to this thing?" What better compliment could you ask for?

Finally a shot of the project overview page, showing three test projects and the results of the PRIMA evaluation algorithm which uses diverse project metrics to derive an overall score. This is then visualized in both a bar graph, a number, and finally for all the managers out there it shows faces with a representative (crying, pouting, smiling, thumbs-up) expression.

PRIMA project stirring up some excitement

The PRoject Information Monitoring Application (PRIMA) had their kickoff in January and I presented their first iteration results here in February.

Since that time it has been quiet on the blogging front (well, they have been blogging away, but I have been holding back) as I was waiting for a good time to bring out a progress report. Now is the time!

The last weeks have been about pushing out the results of their work to the rest of the department. We arranged for a machine to run their application, setup the application to run centrally in the department on a normal monitor, and when that was not enough we stole one of the larger gaming LCD screens to put up in the department. It was needed to impress the big boss and convince him that a very large LCD screen would be perfect to put on the wall for the final application.

It was rather funny to watch the reactions of our colleagues once they noticed we had setup PRIMA centrally without telling anyone. The just started to appear from everywhere to come take a look. As you can see it started slowly with our departmental boss showing it off to some of his contacts outside of our department, then all of a sudden it was a massive group from our own department flocking to check out the new flashy build information, and finally it was presented as a live demo to the big boss of SNS IT Development. He summed the results up pretty well when he said we need to put this up on a VERY big screen and that we were to order it as soon as possible.

Our departmental chief was as happy as can be that Lisa and Ikram were able to impress the big boss so much that he immediately sent Lisa and Ikram off to shop online for a very big LCD screen (we are looking at around 46" LCD screens, really gonna be beautiful)! In the next weeks Lisa and Ikram hope to take delivery on the new screen, continue to add functionality, and basically keep impressing everyone with their progress on the PRIMA project.

One side note, the centrally displayed PRIMA application has stirred up the imagination of everyone. This has caused input to start rolling in on what is confusing in the displayed information, what might be missing, what they might like to see added, etc. It is rejuvenating to see the enthusiasm it stirs up and it is hard to imagine what the reactions are to be when the planned functionality hits the screen over the next 2 months.

PRIMA project is drawing interest

The internship project I am mentoring here at my work has started to take off. The PRoject Information Monitoring Application (PRIMA) has finished it's first Scrum sprint iteration and they are doing pretty well.

As you can see here in the picture, the two guys behind our interns are taking in the project (imagine the "Oooh, Aaaah's") while enjoying some snacks.

Since the Kickoff they have been working hard and you can follow their progress almost daily at the PRIMA blog. Feel free to comment their posts as they search for their solutions.

A small screenshot from one proof of concepts shows that in a short time they have been able to understand the existing software architecture, employ various tooling, and generate their first output screens. This is promising progress!

PRIMA project kickoff

PRIMA stands for the Project Information Monitoring Application that the two interns, Lisa and Ikram, pictured here are doing for us at my work.

The will be spending the next six months working on this project to provide diverse project information such as test coverage, build information, and anything else we can think up over the next few months. This information they will be pumping, flashing, and beautifying for a large flat screen display to be mounted centrally in our department. Both developers and visitors will have a nice graphical view of our projects and progress. It is a very high profile project which we will be trying to give the necessary publicity within our offices.

I am very excited to be mentoring them through this project which should end with them writing their thesis to graduate with a bachelor in Software Engineering from their HBO in Eindhoven. We will be using Scrum as the development methodology and they are entirely free in their choice of frameworks as the application will be running in our department. No architectural restrictions that normally apply to a bank environment.

They will be keeping a daily project journal on their PRIMA blog.