G-Cube Blog

Game Based Learning (GBL) is increasingly becoming an alternative way of training. But how effective can this medium be – the medium which has been traditionally used for entertainment?

Our chat with Helen Routledge, GBL Instructional Design Manager at Pixelearning, revealed the answer and more. Game based learning caught her interest early on in her career and she is now held as one of the few spear-headers instrumental in building GBL as an industry. Her work with the many leading serious gaming companies coupled with an experience in the field of education, gives her an edge to understand different learning groups and how to effectively reach out to them.

An excerpt of our conversation, all about the world of GBL.

Has the corporate world truly adopted gaming as a way of learning or are serious games still referred as a pastime and the major reason that it is being adopted, is that it is something ‘different’?

It is a bit of both. Many organizations look at GBL as a differentiator between themselves and their competitors. They see it as a way of appealing to new staff members, that they are offering something new and different in the training side of business. But at the same time it has to also be accepted by their current employees.

There is a culture of being risk-averse, especially in large organizations. But then every organization is different. And in recent years, we are seeing a change in outlook and serious games are being adopted as training application. It is not just about being adopted, there is also a willingness to push the boundaries of technology and try different things in terms of serious gaming.

While most of us are aware and accustomed (even addicted) to computer games, does serious gaming cater to all learners? Is there a ‘learner profile’ for the effectiveness of game-based learning?

I would not say there is a particular profile of learner for GBL. I think the learners must have an open mind, because if the learner has negativity towards any training mechanism, it will not succeed. So, the main thing is that the learner should be open to try new things and learning in a slightly different way.

For learners, who might not be too familiar with computer games, it is kept in mind when designing a serious game – to keep it simple. Most training applications are Flash based and simple to use. Most people are familiar with the Internet and can navigate a web page. That is the type of mechanism in design which we try to use. As long you can ‘click’ and use it as an interactive mechanism in a web page, you can navigate through a serious game as well. Once we explain that to the learner, they usually understand what it is all about.

For first time adopters, game based learning might not be very easy to implement across organization. What are the major challenges one faces while implementing GBL? Does the ROI justify the change management?

If we are talking about technical changes, all our games run on a browser and are Flash based. So there is no need for new installations or plug-ins. We always keep in mind from the very beginning, which browser version our client is using or which Flash version do they have. This makes sure that we are not creating a serious game that they would not be able to use in their existing technological structure.

A serious game is a part of the LMS as any other traditional e-learning course; it brings back updates on the learner in the same way. So, in the technology side, serious game do not generally bring along a whole lot of changes.

As far as the cultural changes are required, the up-selling within the organization is the key. The people who champion GBL need to sell the concept and its effectiveness. That is where we come in, providing collateral material supporting GBL, which in turn helps them to convince their peers and superiors.

We might not be able to share actual numbers but from the qualitative response that we get from our clients, GBL definitely shows positive ROI. It allows the learner hands on experience and a chance to make mistakes before going out in the ‘real world’ and that definitely pays.

While gaming provides a highly interactive and engaging environment for the learner does the ‘fun’ part of gaming take away from the seriousness of learning?

We do get that from many quarters but less and less now. ‘Fun’ might be the wrong term, really. Sure, we like to have fun, but we should be able to engage our learner. And we do that through the narrative, the storyline and the interactive aspects of the game.

We may take the example of the ‘Leadership game’ that we have developed. One of the key criterions for it was an incredibly challenging environment, for it was to be used to train upcoming leaders. The client did not want the learners to have fun; they wanted them to be challenged. A part of the environment was such that they would experience some frustration and the aim was that they should be able to overcome that. So, when designing the game, we had to keep the challenging and frustrating qualities in the environment, and at the same time, we had to make sure that it was motivating and engaging as well.

So if you go down the path of making your serious game a 100% fun and learning is not the main focus, then it is definitely the wrong direction to take. There has to be a balance in making the game engaging as well as getting a definite learning message across.

What are the best practices of learner evaluation in serious games?

The way we look at serious games, is that it is a training mechanism to highlight awareness about key behaviors and instill behavior changes in the end user. Use of serious games as a tool for learner evaluation is an area many people are looking into right now, but is still not very evolved. Most of our serious games are mainly used to create awareness and encourage reaction or behavior in a particular situation or environment.

But if there are any key points of evaluation that the client wants, they have to be kept in mind right from the beginning when designing a serious game. They can be then treated in various ways and can vary in form. At the end of the game, the learner may get a verbal feedback or scores gathered in the course of the game.

The evaluation part of GBL, I would say is an area which is still growing and should be taken with a pinch of salt!

Do serious games provide opportunities for re-use or updating, as and when the learning objective or the audience changes? Any design philosophies one should keep in mind to increase re-usability?

It is a key factor when adopting GBL and must be considered when designing a serious game. We rarely design games which are for one-off use. We always try to build in re-usable aspects in design.

For instance, I can cite an application we built for a US company for call-center sales and service training. We built in a role-play engine and the agents were allowed to go through realistic conversations to build in skills before actually going to the front line of selling. Through traditional classroom training, they might have gotten two or maybe, three chances at the maximum as everybody needs to have a go. But what we did in this training application was that we built in conversations that lasted on an average of 10 minutes. Throughout the conversation, there was the possibility of many outcomes, many routes that the conversation could take, leading to several different endings, positive and negative. So you could replay the conversation several times, and experiment with the many ways of dealing with the customer.

Following on from that example, in all of our applications, the text and content is in XML. It makes it very easy for the client to go into the code and make small changes like changes in prices and such figures.

To be able to update or add new scenarios is crucial in GBL. Most games are modular in structure and this makes changes in environment or scenario possible. Old ones can be replaced by new, changes in existing ones can be made or more scenarios can also be added. Challenges or difficulty levels can be adjusted as per learner requirements. And all this at the click of a mouse!

While entertainment games are reaching new levels of sophistication and quality, are serious games following suit? How important is the ‘look and feel’ factor of an educative game?

We have to follow suit, to a certain degree. But we have to look beyond eye candy in serious games and focus on the learning, for that’s why we are building them and what we will be measured against, eventually. But as the sophistication of the games industry increases, serious games also have to have some of it reflecting.

There are of course, budget restrains that are bound to keep us a few years behind! But I always say, it’s always about first impressions. You should look at it and say ‘Wow… that really looks good; I want to go in and have a look’! It should have the quality to grab attention, but along with it, there should be substance. If it’s all visuals and no real message, then we will not have our desired outcome, there will be no behavioral change. It is necessary to have that balance between visuals and content

Most of our applications do not have a lot of animation; most have flat 3D still images but still gives an impression of a realistic environment. However, if you are to implement 3D animation, it has to be done very well. If it’s not attractive, it will just turn learners away. So we should take a good look into our project budgets before making the choice. In any case, there is a lot that one can do with 2D as well.

Social learning is being hailed as the next big thing in the learning industry. How does game based learning provide opportunities for social learning?

Yes, you definitely learn more effectively when in a social environment. In GBL, one of the key trends that we see coming up is multi-player serious gaming. Our first experience with multi-player gaming was with the ‘Leadership Game’ and that went really well. In addition to being able to lead real people, make mistakes and learn from them, it also gave learners an opportunity to share their experiences. The game is linked with wikis and forums so that learner can share and learn from other learners as well. So the learning goes beyond the limits of the game.

We are also looking at linking training with applications like Facebook and Twitter. A lot of these are blocked by firewalls at many corporate organizations. But we can look at the success of social games like ‘Farmville’, its addictive quality and the involvement that it encourages. It surely provides a competitive element and building trainings around them would be an interesting avenue to explore.

Finally, what are the future trends that are predicted in the field of serious gaming?

The GBL industry today is vast, there are so many different styles, different applications and the audience is huge. So there is no ONE particular direction that it is heading, it is actually exploring all possible avenues.

One thing that is surely looking up in recent years is the increase in the types of organizations that are adopting GBL. A few years ago, we were looking at schools or a few forward thinking organizations but now we are seeing growth in different sectors – both public and private. So a definite future trend is ‘Growth’ in the industry.

More and more sectors are showing curiosity and an interest in the area and we are trying to build up evidence to show the success of GBL. And as many big companies are adopting GBL for their training needs, others are encouraged to follow suit. So it’s just a rolling stone now and it shows no signs of stopping right now

Story-telling as a means of imparting knowledge is as old as time itself. The stories of Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Aesop’s fables, the Odyssey, Grimm’s fairy tales and the like, entertain and educate even today.

While these stories have been passed on through generations- orally and through written text, technology can support us today. A blend of the new technology with the craft of storytelling is a unique combination to create winning knowledge imparters.

The blend we talk about is not altogether new.  In the field of e-learning, edutainment has made efficient use of storytelling to achieve immense success. Everybody relates to a story well told, and if a learning module successfully engages its audience with the help of stories and anecdotes, it’s a job well done!

For an instructional design team working on an e-learning module, story-telling is a tool that comes handy. But like any other tool, it needs to be handled with care. Not every learner group reacts in the same way and preempting that reaction is important. While a strong, hard hitting story might invite a lot of response, an excess would only confuse the learner group. In such cases, the objective of learning is lost.

Also important is the flow of the story. The common elements of a story are: The Setting, the Characters, the Event, Development of plot, Climax and Ending.

While these traditional elements build a storyline, are there other ways of telling a tale? Open-ended stories do not generally follow the traditional dictates of how a story is built. The ending, is left for the learner to mull on. While this is sure to generate a definite learner response and even build on further into the course, it has to be a desired response to impact positively. Leaving an impressionable learner without a definite direction can be hazardous!

And then there is this quintessential question of ‘Where can I use stories?’ Building learning around stories works very well for the K-12 learner as young minds work better with examples and are open to suggestions that are derived from a tale. This is not to say that the concept of story-telling is ineffective for an adult audience. Learning courses on attitude evaluation or awareness programs do well with examples from real-life.

Current topics, social or political, can be infused into attitude evaluation programs to determine the views of the learners. This helps to gauge their attitude towards similar issues and evaluation is simpler. Awareness programs often deal with delicate issues and when preparing them, it is important to keep the learner sentiment in mind. A story, depicting characters that the learners can identify and sympathize with, can make them at ease. Often, it also gives them a sense of solidarity and opens them up to the ideas or information that we want to impart.

Story-telling can also be interestingly infused in Managerial or Sales trainings. Here, graphical depiction or ‘visual storytelling’ can be adopted. Heavy reading can be a deterrent for the learner but images, graphics, charts or diagrams can convey the message – making the course short, yet impactful. For instance, a successful sales pitch can be illustrated through a series of graphical dialogue. This takes away the instructional nature of prose, but can convey the attributes of confidence, product knowledge and patience – all necessary for a sales pitch.

Storytelling then, is more of a strategy, than a methodology. As a strategy, it has to be worked out, keeping the learner and the course objective in mind. A strong tool in the hands of a smart designer – and we not only have a good story but also learn from it!

Microsoft and Facebook recently announced beta release of Docs.com, an online document viewer and editor which is integrated with Facebook. With docs.com you can upload, create, and edit documents using the web application, and Facebook integration allows you to share your documents with friends, work collaboratively on documents, and discover documents shared by your friends.

Microsoft already has Office Live – a document sharing and viewing platform, and has also recently launched beta version of MS Office Web Apps that comes along with Office 2010 Beta – this allows you to access, edit, and share your documents (MS Word, PowerPoint, & Excel) through the web application.

All these platforms store files on the cloud. MS Office Web Apps does also give option of installing the platform on enterprise servers.

With all this activity on web apps and cloud, the thinking in Redmond clearly seems to be-

1. Web Apps hosted in cloud is where action is rapidly shifting to
2. Enterprises would continue to manage sensitive data on their own infrastructure (for now atleast)
3. Users on social platforms want to/are ready to share and discuss more than just pictures, and videos

I am however curious to find out what kind of content actually gets shared on docs.com, as that would also be an indicator of whether users are ready to consume productivity enhancement content via social platforms, or if they are there just to connect with friends.

Would you use Docs.com (I am there on it, but like many others waiting for my activation code)? What would you share (How To’s, Product Manuals, Knowledge Bytes, Newsletters, Course-ware)?

e-Learning is making its presence felt across industries and the Life-sciences domain is no exception. It has seen an increased momentum in adopting newer technologies to satisfy learner needs and increasing efficacy of learning. Needless to say, time and cost savings are added benefits.

Like any other domain, it has its own special nuances, out of which arise its needs. To begin with, it can be differentiated into further categories of Pharmaceuticals, Contract Research and Health-care Services. One size does NOT fit all and each of these categories has their own characteristics and needs. How does e-learning fit in this all? What works best, and where?

Pharmaceuticals

This is a hi-tech industry, where manufacturers have to spend a lot on training. With e-learning, training needs of the industry can well be addressed.

• With e-learning, course material is available to the learners, via Intranet or Internet, ensuring easy availability. A course can be uniformly made available to all personnel – across offices.
• Courses are often rich in theory and refresher courses have to be made available from time to time. With advances in the field, updates are also necessary. e-Learning gives room for this to be possible, seamlessly.
• The nature of the courses is often very staid but learner interest can be increased with the inclusion of graphics and even audio-visuals.
• Assessments from time to time are also made possible, ensuring the readiness of a recruit to start work.
• Since pharmaceutical industry deals with a lot of regulations, compliance training is another area where e-learning has been exceptionally effective in delivery.
• These trainings have to be completed by every single employee of the company and within a specific time frame. e-Learning platforms are successful in ensuring that every employee has completed the course, putting forward the ones who are lagging behind and providing assessments, as per requirement.

Contract Research Organizations

Contract Research in the field of Life-Sciences is an area where investments are high and the results expected – flawless. Training in this sector is also of high importance and an area where e-learning has fruitfully contributed.

• Standard courses have to be completed by employees, like in the pharma sector, before they can embark on their assignments. e-Learning contributes here – by offering courses which are easily available, can be updated and re-circulated from time to time.
• A special need of this sector is that it is forever in a state of flux. Newer technologies, discoveries and advancements in the field of bio-sciences have to be incorporated in the Research industry. e-learning makes this constant flow of information available to companies and their employees. It helps the top-managers to be confident that their teams are well-informed – surely the most important requirement in field of Contract Research.
• Compliance is also needed, as this too is a closely regulated industry. Most research companies depend on e-learning for the dissemination of regulatory mandates for their employees, and swear by the effectiveness.

Health-care Services

Health-care Services form the largest section of the Life-sciences industry as a whole. Trainings for doctors and surgeons are conducted thoroughly and within strict guidelines. The training for nursing and administrative staff, however, is not so streamlined. While there is no dearth of available content, it is the presentation that often lacks force.

• Blended learning for nursing and administrative staff is often a successful formula for effective training.
• Introductory courses can be part of an e-learning curriculum, which lays down the theories. Hospital policies, regulations, compliance’s – can all be a part of this module.
• Background information on medical equipments can be made available, including intricacies of how they work, their care, maintenance and so on.
• Instructor led course can also be developed using e-learning technologies, which provide a touch-and-feel approach. Rich media can be a part of this, providing an experience which is needed for learning in this domain. Role play and reality-based scenarios are also part of the training, ensuring competency of the staff in dealing with patients.
• This mix not only is cost effective but it is replicable. This is a necessary trait as staff in nursing and administration is prone to attrition. Training is a constant need and blended learning enables the cycle to continue on a regular basis.

The intricacies of the life-sciences industry are many. We have merely listed some. What stands clear is that Learning is a way of work – within all its categories. And with e-learning, we can make their work a lot easier.

Continuing with our Knowledge Sharing Series, we took great pleasure in chatting up with yet another stalwart of the e-learning industry – Mr. Bill Rosenthal.  He is the CEO of Communispond, which works towards actively developing communication skills to strengthen the talent within an organization. Bill has worked in learning domain for over two decades now. Among his many accomplishments, he has served as President of Kaplan College, part of Kaplan Inc, where he was instrumental in developing and launching the online college. Prior to that as CEO of Element K f/k/a ZD Education (which acquired Logical Operations co-founded by Bill), he oversaw growth of the company from a start-up to one of the largest e-learning solution providers in the world. Apart from USA, Bill has also worked extensively in China & Singapore, giving him a well rounded ‘world perspective’ of learning domain.

Here is an excerpt from our discussion.

Since the beginning of your career, you have helped organizations across domains with their learning needs. How would you say corporate training strategies have changed over all these years?

That’s a really good question. Fundamentally, what people need or how they want to learn has not really changed much. The major shift is how people are trying to capture much of that into the space of e-learning. In the early days of technology, e-learning was very flat and linear. But as technology got more sophisticated, the shift is to arrive at an approach to e-learning which is closest to one-on-one learning.

In a way, they are now almost replicating the classroom environment with building more interactive courses and by having someone who they can react to or someone who can clear their doubts.

What would you say are the major challenges that L&D organizations are facing today, and how can some of these challenges be addressed?

The biggest challenges are people thinking too narrow and too small. Great companies listen to and meet customer needs and brilliant ones anticipate them. The biggest challenge is to then think about future learning needs and anticipate them, as opposed to just providing for the learning needs of today.

Taking the iPod as an example, nobody was thinking beyond CDs and Cassettes ten years ago. But inventor Steve Jobs came up with the idea of a device that stores all your music and can be carried around in your pocket. The iPod was thus born, not out of any specific customer need but anticipating the need.

I know you are quite enthusiastic about m-learning, but haven’t we been talking about m-learning for almost five years now without any real success. Why hasn’t m-learning been successful so far, and what makes you positive about m-learning this time?

The reason for this is nothing new, it’s happened before. In the early days of e-learning, there were learning disks, which required specialized hardware and software. And it was also quite expensive, so learning centers would have just one or two computers for the learners. What really made e-learning take off was not that e-learning got better. With easy internet accessibility and desktops being able to play audio-visuals, we were able to leverage it for e-learning.

The same thing applies now with mobiles too. In certain countries the majority of phones that are sold are smart phones, which have the access to high-speed data networks and can play audio-visuals. So it’s a case of reaching that magic tipping point and I believe we are at the cusp. When the majority of customers will be carrying smart phones, we can deliver some kind of meaningful e-learning to them.

So is it just about the number of people carrying smart phones reaching tipping point or is it also about creating smart content?

Its both, we can argue all day about which one is more important but the reality is that we need content as much as we need the network to be able to deliver it. While the ability to make and deliver meaningful content over the mobile phone is increasing, so is the number of people who are carrying the devices which support such content. So it is really about time that m-learning catches up.

The greatest challenge in developing content would be that some people might just make the mistake of taking what works at the big screen and adapting it to the small screen. But I also hope there would be people, who realize that they can use the mobile technology in many different ways to deliver content more effectively.

Another hot topic of discussion these days is ‘social-learning’ and how it is the next big thing. What’s your take on it?

While we are all social learners, whether in a classroom or through e-learning. We tend to talk to our friends about our experiences and often share knowledge. Social learning structures this, but it also exposes the danger of learning from a source which might or might not be accurate. Also social learning is mostly about topics that are of personal interest. And the reality is that e-learning for most people is the means to an end and they might not be in love with the content! e-learning is about content that one needs to get their job done, but do not have a pure affinity to it.

It might work for certain scenarios like for a sales team across the globe, selling the same product – they might have a common shared interest. But most training topics are not so enthusiastically received! So while we spend all our energies into building social networks for learning, it is difficult to find active participation – it is like you have a party and nobody shows up!

With so many technological advancements happening in learning domain, what future do you see for classroom trainings or is it increasingly going to become a dying art?

No, not at all. At the end of the day, there will be certain topics which will be delivered best on-demand and only when people need them. But then there are topics which can only be effectively delivered in a classroom. So the reality is that the two (e-learning and classroom learning) will go hand in hand, indefinitely. I would never want to be operated by a doctor who has never operated on a human being. Or board a plane flown by a pilot who has experience, but in a simulated environment.  But if I was going to China and I would want to drive on my own there, there is no need to take a two-day course on it when I can learn about all that I need in a simulated environment in 2 hours.

So both e-learning and classroom learning coexist and in some cases even, overlap. This brings us to the whole idea of blended learning. There are times that you begin in a classroom, go on to e-learning for a refresher course, and then head back to the classroom after some time.

You have headed learning organizations across the world and worked extensively in Singapore and China. What are the major differences that you see between audiences across the globe that a learning developer or a deliverer should keep in mind?

It was a belief that once a product was developed, it was first introduced in the First world, then the Second world and then the Third world. Lesser developed countries could just be sold the old stuff, but that is not true anymore.

Even in the remote reaches of China, I have seen people using smart phones and having an access to the Internet. So the idea of a differentiated product does not sell well, as buyers all around the globe are getting more sophisticated. There is no first, second or third world when it comes to how people think or how they gather information, its just one world.

This is good news for developers who do not have to think up different set of products any more.

And my last question – e-Learning development is being substantially outsourced to countries like Ireland, India etc. From an American company point of view, what are the benefits one can look at, and what should one be careful against?

For the need of a better term, it is the fear of the unknown. For some people, outsourcing becomes a challenge because the people are far away, there are in different time zones, there are some language barriers – but mostly its just fear. The main thing is to get beyond that fear. Agreed, that for most people it is the cost savings that drive them to outsource e-learning development, but it is also true that if it was not good, they would not stick with it!

Technology is enabling a lot of fear to diminish. Tools like web conferencing make people come together and feel not ‘far way’ from each other.

Also, mainstream media is so multicultural nowadays, that the cultural differences are fast fading away. Young people are getting used to communicate with each other all over the world. Thinking back, making an international call was a huge deal even a few years ago, but not so anymore.

The world’s a smaller place today and it certainly makes it easier for us to work together

Holi – the festival of colors – is undoubtedly the most fun-filled and boisterous of all festivals. It’s an occasion that brings in unadulterated joy and mirth, fun and play, music and dance, and, of course, lots of bright colors!

The G-Cube Family celebrated the festival of colors with great fun, gaiety and reverence.

The celebration started with prize distribution ceremony for sports events that were held in December & January. After that it was free for all mayhem, where G-Cubians enjoyed the exuberant ritual of putting color on each other. In for special “attention” were the new joiners, who simply became unrecognizable after some time!

Soaked in “Gulal” and dancing to the tunes of “rang-barse” G-Cubians had a gala time on the occasion.

e-learning is surely changing the way business leaders think of training, to train their executives across diverse verticals. Today more than ever, companies are turning to e-Learning for their ever increasing training requirements.

And when we talk of creating an e-learning course, the first step is that of Instructional Designing (ID). Simply put, it is integral job of ‘thinking up’ the whole course. The expertise needed for this is not only a strong hold on language and communication but an all-around understanding of the learner needs and the design aspects rising out of them. Analytical skills are necessary as is a strong creative bend of mind.

But in spite of evident need, Instructional Designers in India rely and learn the most from experience in the field. While this is true for all professions, it is especially true in this case as special courses in the field are scarce and the degrees which do exist impart more theoretical knowledge than practical experience. In fact, most of the theory of ID can be researched and found on the Internet. But the task of putting that theory into practice is tedious and often, impossible for a fresh ID aspirant. Recruiters too are aware of the need-gaps, but agree to hire professionals with just a background in communications. The whole process ignores much of the entire skill set needed for a good ID professional.

So, with increasing demand for good designers for e-learning courses and no real solutions in sight, G-Cube brings the Mountain to Mohammed. The latest initiative of G-Cube is a special in-house course on Instructional Designing, called ID-Edge. The course is divided in three parts – Beginners, Intermediate, & Advanced with each semester running for around four months and with on the job training between each semester.

ID-Edge will steer the selected recruits towards a profession that gives them an opportunity to explore and hone their talent. While some theoretical knowledge is a part of the course, the main emphasis will be on practical knowledge of how a learning course is built from scratch. Not only the course will provide functional knowledge, but it will also sensitize the learners about the end-to-end development process, customer-facing communication, and cross-functional challenges.

And what will G-Cube gain?

Well, we will gain good people on our team, and hopefully some good karma points for creating a pool of trained Instructional Designers for the industry!

Please contact hr@gc-solutions.net to find out more about the course and enrollment procedure.

Our workspace imitates the world around us, like art imitates life. No wonder then, as the world gets smaller, boundaries in the workspace also decrease. The first such boundary to break is that of distance. While it is imperative to have productive interactions, it is no longer necessary to make extensive plans for bringing busy colleagues at the same location. And this is possible with the advent of real-time collaboration technology. Web Meetings enables audio-video interactions with a range of features like desktop sharing, whiteboards, polls, assessments – to name just a few.

The benefits are manifold. For smaller organizations, it is a boon that can enable them to find a global reach and makes their business international. For bigger enterprises, it increases inter-organizational communication and builds knowledge within its structure. It is also a great learning platform. The greatest tangible benefit is that of savings – travel costs as well as inter-organizational costs from lesser phone calls, meetings and the like.

While the benefits are clear, let’s face it – Business is about numbers. The return on investment (ROI) for any business case is necessary and a clear ROI also spells the support and approval of management! So we tried to analyze the ROI for our own organization, and the results were simply amazing. Here are our ROI computations -

Some points worth noting in the calculation above –

1. We haven’t considered off-shore travel time and cost savings which would exponentially increase the ROI
2. Couple of subjective factors were also not considered while doing the calculations, such as a) not all of the time saved would be used productively, and b) there would be some productivity gain due to intangible benefits like increase in customer satisfaction, effective communication etc. So while one factor would decrease benefits accrued, second would compensate it by increasing productivity benefits.

Leaving the very evident ROI aside, the intangible returns or the soft benefits for us are that of increased collaboration and faster access to our customers. It is now easier for knowledge within the organization to be shared. Expert views and interactions can also be easily made available across geographical boundaries. This leads to enhanced productivity for all the stakeholders. Training and support can be provided quickly and much more effectively leading to increased customer satisfaction.

The returns are thus are quite substantial, and the ROIs are only expected to increase as web meetings further embed in our organizational processes.

We recommend you look into your needs, future prospects and user profile – and go ahead and choose the best solution for you. You would not have to wait long for the competitive advantages to kick in!

As all of us love to have good food.  The pleasure of eating multiplies many folds when someone in the family or a friend is cooking Just For You. The pleasure is not only for those who eat but for those who cook for that someone.

G-Cube introduced a unique initiative ‘Just For You’ for G-Cube family and friends in order to further enrich our homely environment. This monthly initiative that started in January this year brings delicious and mouth watering dishes which are cooked by talented/ experimental/ adventurous cooks from G-Cube family.

The initiative created vivacious and bubbly mood among G-Cubians and arose their gourmet spirit. The inauguration of this initiative was done by Ms Sonia Mahajan from HR Team. Sonia cooked “nutty-kishmish Halwa”. All G-Cubians relished halwa with great delight. This was followed in February by Mr. Ankit Kumar from Content Team who made mouth watering “pakodas” of different kinds.

Hats off to you two -  Sonia and Ankit! All G-Cubians are now anxiously waiting for next adventurous cook who would delight them with its cooking skills.

Having used Agile methodology in various projects, I wanted to share my thoughts on the opportunities and challenges presented by this methodology.

What is Agile?

As per www.dictionary.com, word agile means ‘Quick and well-coordinated in movement’.

Applying this definition to IT development process, it would mean that the process should be -

• Quick to deliver results
• Efficiently coordinated to deliver best results

Let me further investigate ‘quick’ and ‘efficient’. What does ‘Quick’ means for IT development?  It is purely defined by the needs and nature of the business goals and aspirations. It can be 1 year for a research project Or 1 week for a vanilla LMS implementation.

The success of any IT development process is dependent on the seamless coordination among all stakeholders. So, a process being ‘efficient’ goes by default. The challenge is to measure the process success as being ‘efficient’ or ‘inefficient’ and the ability to introduce changes in the ongoing process to keep improving it to the Nth degree.

Agile methodology for software development attempts to achieve the ‘Quick’ and ‘Efficient’ traits by mandating the following key principles:

1. Break the project into number of small deliverables
2. Regular deliveries at predefined short time intervals
3. Regular feedback from key stakeholders on the deliveries
4. Keep adding to the list of deliverables as they are discovered during the development process
5. Re-plan as and when changes arrive or requested for
6. Ensure the availability of all important decision making stakeholders to make a confident ‘real time’ decision
7. Cut the communication time by conducting face to face conversations
8. Less focus on documentation/recording and more focus on ultimate deliverable
9. Always keep making progress despite ‘roadblocks’ by shifting to alternate work for the time when ‘roadblocks’ are dealt by ‘specialists’

To summarize, process should be flexible to adapt changes, iterative with N number of development cycles and minimize the communication related delays.

Benefits of Agile

These key principles immediately throw some excellent benefits over traditional approaches, such as:

• All stakeholders are apprised of project’s status at all times
• Helps visualize the final deliverable in early stages of development
• Gives a quick estimation of ‘How far are we from final product’
• Keeps the team on its toes and hence, competitive
• Reduces the ‘idle’ time to minimum and thus, increases resource utilization

Challenges of Agile Methodology

I do not doubt the realization of any of the ‘Agile’ benefits. However, after having worked in a complex and big development & implementation project using agile methodology, I have some concerns on ‘Where Agile can be best utilized’.

Here are some of the practical challenges which I feel constraints the use of Agile methodology.

1.    Quality, Cost, Time and Scope

As per PMI (Project Management Institute), changes to any of these constraints bring a change in one or more remaining ones.

Agile being flexible allows frequent changes in scope which means that Cost, Quality or Time has to change. In practice, majority of projects have fixed budget and a mandatory deadline (say, LMS deployment with custom data-flow and reporting mechanism for regulatory compliance).

Hence, even though a project follows agile methodology, at ‘certain point’ the scope changes have to cease.

The realization of this ‘certain time’ is the most difficult task. Do it any sooner than required and business looses the benefits of being agile and on the contrary, do it any later than required, and projects runs over budget or time.

2.    ‘Ready to use’ product

One of major benefits for agile is that ‘ready to use’ product with limited features is always available throughout the development cycle. Hence, if the project has to cut short due to any external constraints, business have a fall back product.

Again, from my personal experience, I do not believe that this benefit can be realized in practise for most of the development projects.

Majority of projects need performance testing and tuning. Basic principle of performance testing warrants a stable functional application to be tested on. An application under agile development process is always evolving and may have functional defects. Hence, performance testing can only be performed after substantial number of deliveries.

Hence, the deliverable is never in ‘ready to use’ form during the development stage unless it is performance tested. Like performance testing, there are many other work items which may continue well after development stage, such as:

• Data Migration
• Setting users in live system
• Security/Anti Hacking testing

And basically, anything to ‘implement’ the deliverables in Live Environment.

3.    Inability to ‘design’ for future requirements

Irrespective of best design models and most experienced design personnel on a project team, it is very hard to design a system on the basis of unseen requirements. This often leads to ‘rework’ at various stages in development and testing.

There was a major mandatory design change due to elaborated requirements during one of the development cycles of the project I worked with. The impact of this change was so big that 2 development cycles had to be used to fix the system as per new design.

4.    External and Internal Dependencies

Majority of projects have external dependencies which are out of control of core project team. External teams will not always follow the agile methodology and hence, will deliver at a certain point in time. Any dependant work can only be undertaken once external deliveries are made.

The problem arises when these dependencies are only discovered during the development process.

There can also be internal dependencies between the different agile teams working on same agile project. In one project we had 3 agile development teams. The selection of work items in an iteration was heavily dependent on the deliverables from other teams. This made planning each iteration very tough, and it needed huge coordination effort.

5.    Need of experts in agile team

Since, each iteration is for a small duration; it is must that each member of team must be an expert in their respective field. This is rarely a case in practise. Hence, often there is a danger to overrun the estimated time for work items.

Conclusion

• Though, agile offers several benefits to Business but at the same time it remains a very challenging task to be able to deliver an agile project successfully.
• The nature of project must be considered before the selection of methodology. In my experience it works well for small to medium projects, or implementations that require less product customizations.
• Some of the challenges I have mentioned can be addressed by better planning and experience.