Our standard 1GB package is now only Rs.999/- per year (19.95USD per year) as a part of the New Year offer until 15-Jan-2011. (Service tax of 10.30% applicable).

This package also comes with Microsoft SQL Server databases included in it – besides the usual MySQL database. The features in this package are:

• Free domain registration or transfer
• 1GB Disk Space
• 10GB Bandwidth usage per month
• Unlimited MS SQL and MySQL databases
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Unlimited FTP accounts
• Unlimited sub domains and parked domains
• Control Panel (Plesk on Windows server and CPanel on Linux server)
• SMTP/POP3 with Webmail
• Weekly Backups included
• 24 by 7 support

This offer is applicable to new registrations as well as domain transfers. The offer is valid for the life of your account, which means that you just pay Rs.999/- each year during renewal and nothing more.

Also, this offer also qualifies for our Annual Auro Shared Hosting Customer Loyalty Rewards Programme.

Get your domain name and hosting account today by signing up today at New Year Promotion Order Online: https://auroinfotech.com/clients/cart.php

Note:

1. 10.30% service tax will apply on all orders.
2. MS SQL Server is available only on Windows servers.
3. This special offer expires on 15-Jan-2011.
4. During order placement, the domain cost will say Rs.450/-, accept it and the promotional discount will be applied right away. The final checkout will be only Rs.999/- as the total amount to be paid for this offer.

Please click here to contact us if you have any questions on this offer

As always, we followed a very rigorous QA testing process and our QA team had signed off on the cross browser testing of the application, The QA team had tested the website on PC, MAC and mobile browsers. They had tested on Firefox (versions 2, 3 and 3.6), Internet Explorer (7 and 8), Opera, Safari and Chrome. This testing was done on different resolutions.

After taking care of all these variations, we confirmed to the clients that the website was fully ready to go live. The client also tested from a machine at home and said that everything was fine.

Then started the nightmare.

The client went to the office and tested again to realize that their entire left menu did not work. The best part is, it worked right on a few machines and did not work on a few. I tested on a IE7 machine and it was messed up, It worked fine on another IE8 machine.

As we continued our investigation, we found out that with IE7 and IE8, Microsoft has introduced a new feature called ‘Compabitibility View’. As per Microsoft’s explanations on Compatibility view, Compatibility view exists to accomodate those features that were used in older sites.

In addition, we noticed that Javascript was disabled by default in IE7 and IE8. It is very difficult to believe that Microsoft just decided to strengthen the security and make such huge change on Javascript related features. Many of the online users would not even know where to go to enable it.

This problem was solved by enabling compatibility view or by enabling javascript. We are still trying to find out the exact set of steps that happen when we enable compatibility view, so that we can try and see if we can programmatically enable it if required.

The best case scenario will be where we develop the sites, test it across standard browsers and it works without any exceptions. We do remember the nightmare we went through with IE6 testing and we felt better after taking the decision to discontinue support for IE6 and provide only on demand support for IE6 for the websites we develop.

Will provide an update after we investigate this further.

Aravind has been with Auro Infotech for five years now and has grown from the role of a Server Administrator to Manager of the Server Support Team.

In this role, he has gone above and beyond his basic job responsibilities and has contributed to various initiatives at Auro Infotech.

In 2009, Aravind was instrumental in leading the efforts in engineering various solutions such as WordPress MU, Magento, OpenX, etc. He has also been managing various client initiatives in different projects we delivered to our clients.

As a result, in 2010, Aravind is now also overseeing the design team and is on track to managing the operations of Auro Infotech, Chennai.

As a part of this reward, Aravind gets a special gift of his choice from the Auro Infotech Management team. I hope he will write about his gift in the near future.

Please join me in congratulating Aravind on a job well done and wish him all the best in all his future initiatives.

A sample WSR is given below:

——-Auro Infotech Weekly Status Report Begins—————–
Sample Status report: Weekly Status Report on Music Plugin for Week Ending 27-January-2006

Project Name: Music Plugin Enhancements v3.0
Project Started on: 26-January-2006
Project Planned End Date: 13-February-2006

Status Report for Week Ending: 27-January-2006
Current Phase: Coding

Previous Accomplishments:
Nil

Accomplishments during the week: (23-January-2006 to 27-January-2006)

1. Coding: Changes to Home page

Plans for next Week:( 30-January-2006 ) to (03-February-2006 )

1. Coding: Create Static Page on the fly

Future Tasks:

1. Week of 6th Feb: Coding and Testing
2. Week of 13th Feb: Release
Project Status (Development Team view): On target

——-Auro Infotech Weekly Status Report Ends—————–

5. Weekly Status Reports should be sent to the clients at the end of every week by the team leaders

6. The following are the statuses:
1. Completed – Client Signed Off
2. Pending Client Sign Off – This is if the client has checked it and said everything looks ok, but has not sent an official sign off.
3. Pending UAT – If the client is still testing something.
4. Pending QA Sign Off – If coding is completed and is with the QA team.
5. Coding – If coding is going on.
6. On Hold – If client has put this on hold.
7. No Response – Sent more than one mail to the client with no response from client.

Typically the development teams respond by saying “It will take 12 hours to complete it” or “It will be completed in 12 hours”.
The above two sentences have two completely different meanings.
“It will take 12 hours to complete it” refers to an effort of 12 hours required to complete the work.
“It will be completed in 12 hours” refers to the duration within which the task will be completed.

Having said that, lets understand the difference between the terms “Effort” and “Duration”.

Effort refers to the number of person days or person hours required to complete a task. Eg. 12 hours of effort: This means if one person worked on this task non stop, they can complete the task in 12 hours.

Duration refers to the time period required to complete the task. Eg. 12 hours duration: This means the task will be completed in 12 hours time. ie. This statement does not say how many people will be working on it. It could be 3 people working for 8 hours of effort each and getting it ready within 12 hours duration. It could also be that one person will be working on it for 3 hours of effort, but will have time to complete it only in 12 hours time.

In order to get out of this confusion, we have set certain guidelines to be used by our teams whenever interacting with clients on topics of effort and duration.

While giving a proposal/estimate, we always give two numbers:
Estimated Effort
Estimated Duration

Also when replying to any client queries on when a task will be ready, we give them two data points: one about effort and the other about duration.

We will be interested in knowing if any other teams use a variation of this for their terminologies.

This series should help provide a full picture of the actual steps followed by the AI team members and help the clients get a better understanding of what goes into the minds of the AI folks when they are working on any project.

I hope to review each section on a regular basis and elaborate on the same.

Project Life Cycle Checklist:
CL – Client
PL – Project Lead
DH – Development Head
AC – Accounts Team
DE – Design Team
SU – Support Team
QA – QA Team
MGMT – Management Team

General:
All updates/emails should be posted in the forum before end of day.
All client emails/queries should be responded to within one hour of start of the day.
Send Weekly Project Report to Client – Project Lead
Post daily update on forum about the tasks handled in the project – Team Members
Enter time accurately under the right project version and phase in time tracker – Team members

Requirements Analysis:
CL – Come up with requirements
PL – Document requirements presented by the client and identify the modules involved
PL – study the modules and identify the time estimate for the project – after identifying the time estimates for each module, testing, etc.
PL – Prepare paper Workflow Design, scanned as PDF with AI copyright in all pages
DH – Review and approve the paper workflow design
DH – Present the paper workflow design and the time estimates to the client.
CL – Sign off on the paper workflow

PL – Prepare Resource Planning
DH – Review and approve resource planning
DH – Get client ok on the requirements and estimates
DH – Notify Accounts Team to raise invoice 1 of 3 for 25%.
AC – Raise invoice 1 of 3 for 25% to the client.
CL – Make initial payment.
AC – Notify DH and project team to go ahead with the project.
DH – Start project work if payment is received – Alternatively get management approval on forum to start project.
DH – Present Project Start Report with resource planning to AI management team and get approval for the same.

Design:
DE – Prepare static Screen Design with AI logo in all screens
PL – Review and approve Static Screen design
DH – Present Static Screen Design to client
CL – Sign off on the static screen design
PL – Prepare database design
DH – Review and approve database design
PL – Prepare component Design
DH – Review and approve component design

Coding:
PL – Complete coding
PL – Complete developer testing
PL – Coordinate with QA team and complete QA Testing Process

QA – Sign off on the application
PL – Present demo of the application to DH
DH – Review and sign off on the coding
DH – Notify Accounts team to raise invoice 2 of 3 for 50%.
AC – Raise invoice 2 of 3 for 50% to the client
CL – Make second payment
AC – Notify DH and project team to coordinate UAT
DH – If payment is received, Email Client with UAT links requesting them to schedule a time for demo – Alternatively get management approval on forum to start user testing

Testing
DH – Along with the PL, call the client and give a demo of the application on testing server
PL – Coordinate and complete User Acceptance Testing Process
CL – Sign off on the application on testing server
DH – Coordinate with client on the date of release of the application on live server
CL – Confirms the date and time when the application can be moved to live server

Deployment process:
PL – Coordinate the preparation of deployment document ahead of time and finalize it and submit it to the support team as soon as QA sign off is obtained.
PL – Work with the client and identify ‘Deployment Date and Time’ for migration when client will be available for ‘Promotion Completion Sign Off’. (This is not the Client Sign off, but a confirmation that the deployment looks ok and client can test later in detail to sign off.) – The client can give a written exception to the PL to complete this without the presence of the client.
PL – Decide and post the list of project team members to be available during the ‘Deployment Date and Time’. Each person identified by the PL must be present during this time. PL will take responsibility for any exceptions.
SU – Support team moves the files and dbs to live site and confirms to PL.
PL – Checks and confirm on forum if the site is up and working fine with out any error.
PL – Sends the details to the client and requesting them to sign off on ‘Promotion Completion’.

DH – Notify Accounts team to raise invoice 3 of 3 for 25%
Ac – Raise invoice 3 of 3 for 25% to the client
CL – Make third payment
AC – Notify DH on receipt of payment
DH – Release final code to clients if payment is received – Alternatively get management approval to release final code
DH – Email client asking for feedback on the project and status of any open issues, etc.
DH – Present Project Completion Report to the Management team to qualify for project appraisal and project reward.