Introduction

Time duration	April 2016 to November 2016
Location	UAE & Saudi Arabia
Organization	SERCO Arabia
Project	Riyadh Rail Build Operations
Position	Project Management & Business Solution for Maximo Application

[CE 1.1]

This career episode relates to project titled “Riyadh Rail Build Operations’’. The project was done during my tenure with SERCO Arabia.

Background

[CE 1.2]

Microland is a privately-owned IT Services company headquartered in Bangalore, India. It was founded in 1989 is the first Hybrid IT infrastructure provider in India. It’s revenue as of 2017 was USD150 million. The company employs more than 3,800+ professionals across its offices in Europe, Midle East, North America, and India. Microland portfolio of services includes Digital Networks, Digital Computing, Digital Application, Digital Workplace and Cyber Security.

[CE 1.3]

The client, Serco is a UK based public services provider and the transport business unit of SERCO was awarded the complete turnkey project of building the Riyadh Metro Rail infrastructure for lines 1 and 2 of the railway system. The duration of the project was 24 months.

SERCO employed Microland as its System Integration partner through competitive bidding process for -

• Setting up its ICT infrastructure including Data Center, network, CCTV and technical contact center
• Installing the Computerized Maintenance Management System as the backbone of the business is based on MAXIMO
• Developing a Document Management System based on SharePoint.

The actual duration of project for Microland was 12 months to complete and handover the ICT components to SERCO.

[CE 1.4]

The ICT project awarded to my company was turnkey and encompassed both infrastructure setup and system integration. The infrastructure scope addressed sourcing hardware/software, configuring and installation of the same.

The System Integration included two components -

• Installing and integrating the CMMS, which mainly comprised of Maximo
• Development of share point based DMS.

My primary role included providing business support to MAXIMO installation and managing the Share point implementation.

The project was required to be completed within 12 months of time and within the allocated budget.

The project Hierarchy is given below -

Personal Engineering Activity

[CE 1.5]

My Roles & Responsibilities

• Leading the BA team across the MAXIMO project and Share point project implementation. The methodology I followed was modified agile & utilization of BA tool kit for ensuring uniform documentation.
• Plan, design, develop, and deploy MAXIMO system supporting core metro system. I was also responsible for generating comprehensive reports with causes and possible solutions to systems issues.
• Planning the business analysis activities
• Developing key requirement extraction templates.
• Information management and maintenance of overall quality and consistency across the project.
• Providing expertise in mapping business with technology and data flow across the complete architecture.

[CE 1.6]

The critical factors in this project were

• Installation of MAXIMO and integration with other business systems
• Mapping data flow across the complete architecture

The main problem was visualizing the complete three tier architecture including business systems, integration touch points and data flow. Technical team needed the same to start any activities. To address this, the first step was to map business need to the technology involved.

Solution: I spent 47 man-hours developing the system integration touchpoints in MS Visio for showcasing the bigger picture.

Problem 2: The second issue was on the timelines and requirement sign-off, namely MAXIMO installation was not to be started till the infrastructure is ready. DR plan was in place and rail enablement servers were in place and to be finished before appropriate network was setup across the metro-rail lines.

Solution: In my experience, under tight project timelines, the requirements have to be accepted along with planned project deliverables. I took the necessary steps &

• Worked closely with the infrastructure team and the MAXIMO project team involved in setting up resources, and calculation of costs for the standard activities.
• Did setup of ‘WAR-ROOM” which mandated all key stakeholders to deliberate, confirm and sign-off on the business requirements which helped create high-level documents and map to technical requirements. This ensured any critical scope and assumptions to be addressed beforehand.
• Created a comprehensive RACI matrix and FIT-GAP file on each line item of project plan associated to bring maximum transparency on daily activities being competed

Problem 3:Conflicts between BA created specifications and converting them in to solution by technical teams. This pitfall was mainly due to inadequate time was allotted for eliciting requirements and documents compilation.

Solution: While this initially was a hiccup, I resolved this issue by having the BA team use approved templates & use modeling techniques for missing information and getting sign-off on the high-level documentation before creating the tedious detailed documentation.

[CE 1.7]

The success of this project depends on effective communication and documentation. In this project, the templates, RACI, data-flow Visio diagrams, were all defined by me.

I personally designed the CMMS system which captured all integration points and connectors. With this as the baseline, I also designed the sub-components with inputs from the technical architect.

I also designed the visual model which was extremely useful to flag critical components and issues during the course of the project.

[CE 1.8]

I carried out Integration tests, API checks, stress testing on the Maximo system. For the integration points, I referred back to the COE library in my company to identify the key elements and business impacts. I also regularly took advise from enterprise architect who had worked on similar project in US for risk mitigation.

I was involved in the man-hours and timeline calculations for the project work related to BA, overlapping with project teams and deployment. As part of the project management, I was also involved in work breakdown structure calculation.

The software that was to be implemented was MAXIMO, I used MS Office, Project and Visio primarily for developing the functional mapping, documentation, design, and communication.

I introduced the RACI matrix which was highly appreciated. I also introduced modelling design from which entire project team benefitted during the course of the project.

[CE 1.9]

Communication was the key in successful completion of this project. I daily had briefing/de-briefing meetings with my team. I also had WARROOM discussions with key stakeholders on weekly basis. As part of this project I attended weekly review meetings on project status & I was part of executive meetings as well.

I had daily 1-hour meeting with the program manager and project managers for application and infrastructure teams.

I needed to deliver multiple reports on daily, weekly & monthly. The key reports were related to project timelines and issues which my team foresaw and provided necessary remedy.

I was involved in presenting the charter over the project kick-off and weekly presentation on the BA components to project teams. The RACI presentation was run by me and I was the SPOC for WARROOM presentations.

[CE 1.10]

Summary

The project was successfully completed on time with zero redundancy. This was a critical project and we got a CSAT rating of 4.3/5 in meeting the objectives. Overall project was appreciated by the COO of the Metro-rail for its delivery within the stipulated time frame.

I led the BA team and contributed in developing my teams’ skills in all aspects encompassing communication, problem solving and critical analysis. As one of the key leaders in the project, I was also taken onboard as expert to make key decisions in the project for both MAXIMO and DMS. I was also responsible for building project artifacts and templates, which aided in maintaining uniformity and appropriate documentation.