Every month an employee will pick a technology and product of choice and present a proof of concept on the same at the end of the month on the presentation day (fourth saturday of the month).

The idea is that Auro Infotech’s contribution is to give all the saturdays in the month to be spent towards learning a new product each month. This 32 hours of contribution from Auro Infotech (four days) should be added to one or two hours every day in the month (26 or 27 days) to generate around 60 hours of learning time, so that the employee can fully learn the concepts and details of any one product each month.

Please note that the success or failure of this Monthly Technology Project fully depends on your commitment and involvement during the month.

Every Saturday, the plan should be to start the day early and end the day by 6pm IST.

Each team member should do the following:

Week 0: Preparation
1. Pick one technology that has not been picked by any other person.
2. Talk to your mentor about the technology and get the approval for the same.

Week 1: Analysis

1. Study about the technology of choice.

2. Pick five products within that technology.
3. Prepare a write up on the full list of features available in the five products
4. Identify one product on which a Proof of Concept (POC) will be developed. These POCs should be relevant to our projects.

Week 2: Requirements and Design
1. Prepare a set of requirements, project plan and screenshots of the Proof of Concept (POC).
2. Prepare a database design and all relevant information necessary for approval
3. Coding can be started if you have a very good understanding of the product and the end result.

Week 3: Coding and Testing
1. Complete coding on the Proof of Concept
2. Perform thorough testing of the POC and submit it for User Acceptance Testing
3. The support team will move the code from your testing servers, to a live server at the end of this week and after that you will not have access to do any changes to the code after this. So please do a thorough testing of the POC before you submit it for promotion to the live server.

I will be the guide/counsellor/mentor for all these POCs for now until some of our leaders mature into mentors. For now, I will also be the final user of the product so I will be signing off on the POC before the start of week 4.

Week 4: Presentation and Winner Selection
1. Each person will present their Proof of Concept to the team for 30 minutes using slideshows followed by a demo.
2. Every team member should vote anonymously for the Proof of Concept on various factors such as:
a. Presentation – how well was the team member able to present the POC with relevance to the product.
b. Simplicity – how simple is the POC to use
c. Feature Set – is the POC developed rich in features?
d. Adoptability – Do I feel I can use the sample POC provided and build on it?

Points, Voting, Winner Selection:
1. Monthly Winner Selection:
Each month three winners will be selected based on four inputs:
a. Popularity Votes (33%): This is decided by the team that participates in the votes on the presentation Day.
b. Mentor Votes (33%): This is decided by the mentors who work closely with the team members during the month.
c. Judges Votes (33%): This is decided by the judges who attend the presentations on the presentation day.

In case of a tie in the popularity, mentor and judges votes, the administrator will decide the winners from among the team members who are tied for any given position.

Each month, three winners will be chosen and given a cash award of Rs.5000, Rs.3000 and Rs.2000 respectively.

2. Points and Grand Prize:
Each month, the team members collect points from three four sources:
a. Popularity Points: The votes cast by the team members on presentation day are added to the points obtained by the team members.
b. Mentor Points: Team members collect upto five points from their mentors based on their delivery each week (Week 1, 2, 3 and 4 deliverables). These points are decided by the mentors for high quality and timeliness on each deliverable.
c. Judges Points: The judges will rank the presenters from 1 to n (where n is the number of presenters). If your rank is m in a given month, you get n-m+1 points from the judges for the given month.

A simple formula based sheet will be presented with a easy way to track these points.

At the end of the calendar year, the top three winners with the most points will be given a cash award of Rs.50,000, Rs.30,000 and Rs.20,000 respectively.

Note:
1. Working in teams is not an option. Each team member has to learn by themselves.
2. If there is an extra week in the month, please plan to study more about the technology you have chosen for the month.
3. If there are only three working saturdays in a month, please plan your projects accordingly.
4. If you have pending client work from the week, you have to manage your time to accommodate the Monthly Technology Projects and your pending client work. No excuses will be accepted on failing on either one of them.
5. This Monthly Technology Project is open for all employees.
6. It is advised that you do not cast your vote to yourself. If you still insist doing it, you are free to do so.
7. If a technology was picked by a team member, but not presented, it can be picked by any other team member in the future, except the same person who missed presenting it.

We are allocating a budget of 2.2 Lakh Rupees for this exercise for 2009.

Please find below the plan for Presentation Day. All timings are in IST.

Overview:
On the Presentation day, all employees will have to attend the office in person in Chennai, and remotely from 9am to 6pm IST.
The presentation sessions will start at 9 am and end at 5pm

Voting Process:
The voting will start at the end of the day. It will be through an anonymous polling system, where except the admin no one will know who you voted for. Every employee will login to the voting system (details will be announced shortly) and cast their vote to their favorite POC.

Session Details:
Each member will have 30 minutes during their session.
10 minutes of Slideshow Presentation
15 minutes for Online Demo
5 minutes for Q&A and Judges Feedback

Timings:
10am to 11.30am: 3 sessions
11.30 to 11.45: break
11.45 to 1.00: 3 sessions

1.00 to 1.45: lunch

1.45 to 3.15: 3 sessions
3.15 to 3.30: break
3.30 to 5.00: 3 sessions

5.00 to 5.15: Overall Judges Feedback
5.15 to 5.30: Polls open for a)Team Members. b) Judges
5.45: Results of winners announced

Exceptions:
Any one who cannot attend office on Presentation Day must obtain permission from the administrator ahead of time. Your participation in this initiative will be expected to be 100% as this is a training exercise for the team and is beneficial to the team only based on 100% participation.