Thursday, September 3, 2009

An Interview with Java API for Grid Computing Team

I am very happy to able to do email interview with the team of third place winner project of Open Software Challenge Nepal 2009 (OSCN 2009). The project is Java Framework for Grid Computing. Today Akash, very active member in open source community of Nepal, is with me to give more information about his team, project, hard work, benefit of open source and of course tips for success. Lets start....

RMT: 1) Can you please briefly give your team introduction? What are your team member currently doing?

Akash: Our team involves Mr. Manoj Shakya, Mr. Saurabh Man Manadhar and me(Akash Deep Shakya). Manoj Shakya is currently Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering in Kathmandu University and he has his master's thesis on Scheduling algorithm used in Grid Computing. Saurabh Manandhar is currently working at Nepal Bank Limited and also pursing his master's thesis on Java Framework for grid computing. So far as I am concerned I am currently an Associate Software Engineer at D2hawkeye Services and have been working as a grid researcher for last 2 years.

RMT: 2) What is your project? Can you please briefly describe it?
Akash: As you know the demand for huge computation power is growing day by day either it is in industry, science, education, defense or even entertainment. Technology such as grid computing is only aid to fulfill this demand, but with the complexity of technology and lack of skilled human resource, this demand is far less than fulfilled. Java API for Grid computing is a framework which assist grid technology to be used easily, efficiently and effectively. This framework assists in task splitting, scheduling, processing and assimilation.

RMT: 3) What did motivate you to choose this particular project for the competition?
Akash: We were working on grid/cluster Computing in Kathmandu University for last two year, but we could not work on any substantial product/project. When we came to know about OSCN, we thought this can be a chance and also the reason to make this concept work. Also, I was working on a research about Open Source Collaboration and I wanted to demonstrate my thesis, which perfectly worked during the project.

RMT: 4) What benefit will the project have to Nepalese society or whole world?
Akash: The Application of grid computing lies in the field such as medical science, genetic engineering, astronomy, and so on. That is why the impact it makes to a community is very direct and crucial. It helps solving problem in life critical cases such as CERN, IBM Chicken Pox. In Nepal, this project can be useful to places such as Tribhuwan International Airport for Weather Monitoring Systems, Nepal Army and Nepal Police for Security and Database System on integration with technology such as Data Mining, University Research and so on.

RMT: 5) Did your team face any difficulty during the competition? If yes, can you please give some example of it.
Akash: There were number of problem that we faced technically and on the management side. But the overall set up of the event was excellent. One of the major problem was collaboration among the team, we used to work on different institution, our resident were different, and of-course there used to the problem of electricity.

RMT: 6) What is your development methodology for the project? Did you use any particular SDLC?
Akash:We tried to implement Agile Scrum Methodology for this project, However the daily scrum had to be made weekly scrum and we used to make sprint backlog for the project in monthly basis. However, it was not so agile as we wanted, but it was acceptable.

RMT: 7) What benefit will your project have by choosing open source licensing than choosing closed source?
Akash: The project of this kind could have never been completed in the period of 6 month/1 year. It needs years and years to make such frameworks. So we want people around the world to work on our codes, and make it much more effective, which would have been never possible if we would have closed the source.

RMT: 8) What are the factors do you think as main reason for your teams' success?
Akash: I think our commitment was key to our success. Even if we both were very busy during this period, we cut down an extra hour of sleep to work on it. The other factor can be the organization of our work. Before we even started working on it, we organized the structure, procedure and methodology.

RMT: 9) What is your teams' future development plan for the project?
Akash: We think, it is just the beginning. We have not even completed 5% of the desired framework. However, we are planning to handover this project to Kathmandu University students, and other interested candidates coordinated by Manoj dai, so what they could work on it. Also Saurabh dai will be improving it for his demonstration of master's thesis.

RMT: 10) Do you have any suggestion for anyone thinking to take part in such competition in future?
Akash: Three thing is very important to be successful in these kind of competition, one choosing the craziest project idea that have ever came to your head, managing and planning that project ideas in the best possible way using Software Engineering methodologies and implementing and testing these plans.

RMT: 11) Do you have any blog, tweet or website where you or team actively contribute to development of open source project?
Akash: I have a personal website and blog however I never had time to maintain it. So far as our project team is concerned we collaborate through google groups and d2labs. But I do tweet a lot.

Anyone interested to his tweet can follow him. His tweeter id is openak

I would like to thank Akash for providing wonderful insight into his project. I would like to wish the Team every success in their future work in open source arena.

* photo source credit: http://www.everestuncensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/63-project-java-api-for-grid-computing.jpg

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