MIS

Who will not want to live collage life another time? I had the opportunity to live it for additional 6 monthsJ Last semester project of our collage-Major project-was the chance given to all we fortunate 30 ppl. According to tradition, nobody takes this project in college-Nirma due to lots of reasons. The process of finding the project starts 3 months ago where you find any IT company who would take you mostly by reference(sometimes by interviews too!) and give you some training and project with certificate. Then you need to register the company and your project in college. We-Infosys hired ppl-became carefree because Infy was supposed to give us this project, but alas! it cancelled at last moment and lots of ppl like me had no option but to opt for doing project in college. Generally ppl doing project in college are seen as lower rated coz they are assumed not to have been selected in any good company and college doesn’t provide good exploration to IT world. But fortunately this time, our new Dynamic Director(DD-that’s how we used to tease him…that’s another long story) was enthu to make all applications running under one hood, hence he announced a big project-The Nirma Management Information System(MIS)- for 30 ppl in college and we chose it.

The project started with deciding technology and diving modules and team. I and Chakli were praying to be in one team and we became-The Attendance Team, with another girl. 13 modules were decided and we had a small so called ‘training’ on .net. We had a madam and a sir as our project managers. I am not sure whether they did some sort of planning like real projects or not but they used to give us impossible deadlines which was surely not to be met. Apart from them, we had one faculty guide and module lead for each module. I remember when we first went to met our module guide, the first thing he asked us to do was to create a database diagram! I mean, we didn’t know even the requirements of the project, how can we make a diagram? That too, he kept on asking for the same for next 2 days! Like 1^st sem students, he asked us to maintain a file with our daily tasks and keep on updating him. We had to do whatever he told(and being Miss Rule-Chakli in team). We started visiting faculties for asking requirements. We came to know that poor lab assistants have to fill attendance manually from a paper to some historical computer system to generate reports(now I realize why all lab assistants were always angryJ) Every application Nirma like timetable, budget, student registration etc was using was separate, desktop or web applications. The project was to combine all of them.

The design process was long. Each faculty had their own view about how database and forms should be and we had to incorporate all of them. We actually made chart like school students for our complex database hierarchy. Worst thing about our module was, we were dependent on lots of other modules, so even if we completed our work on time, due to the dependency, we had to keep on asking other modules. In every team there was one or the other member who was not working at all! Fortunately there was one guy, who had prepared the base of whole project(whom we called ‘King’ J). Initially it was boring but gradually it became fun. We(MIS team-that’s what we call ourselves) had lots of independence. Mobile is a BIG no-no in college but we were free to use it. We almost took control over that b-104 lab. People actually used to love project, we got wifi internet for free, we almost used to rule, we were getting respect from all the faculties becoz we were building system for them, we all got good marks tooJ Anytime any faculty came and started reviewing our work and giving impossible suggestions to implement. Dead(ly) lines were given to complete the coding part and we used to tell that its MIS-Mission Impossible System J There was a white board in lab in which our managers used to write about deadly lines for project completion which students will erase and write – “Thought of the day”. Everybody used to take turn, raise their hands, to ask Mr ‘King’ doubts about .net. Our lab assistant sir was also coordinating us in database. Initially he asked us to create scripts for creating tables and some ppl’s scripts were so hopeless that he got frustrated like anything. He almost took a lecture on how to write simple ‘create table’ query in Oracle and still ppl submitted bad scripts…hehe…

Our faculty managers shifted our recess from 1pm to 12.30pm so that we can complete our meals earlier and come back to work quickly. But this in turn created confusions in ppl and we used to have our recess anytime we wanted. If anybody has bunked, we used to tell that he’s in canteen for recess J Many ppl actually hardly came and at the end of the project we realized that he too was in project!!! Our usual timings were 8 to 4 but in coding phase we-sincere students-used to stay till 6 o’clock because that was the time we could work peacefully else there was lot of noise of antaxari and comments and doubts and this and that. And besides, we loved working in ac lab. Our lab assistants used to pull us out after 6 o’clock…hehe…And every Friday, there was a faculty meeting in lab so we got additional half hour recess.

As its Nirma, there has to be harassment for attendance always. So many ppl hardly came still their proxy was taken care of. We had to fill 2 attendance sheet daily-one lab register(in which ppl hardly signed) and one in faculty staff room(which was the main). Many times our managers suddenly came to our lab to verify attendance. So somebody has stolen the main attendance sheet itself!!! Now ppl who did not regularly signed in lab register, got their names in short attendance even if they were coming! After sometime, our managers created another main sheet which too was stolen! Hehehe...then they left creating 3rd one, they knew partially who ppl are coming and hard working, so they gave marks accordingly. I, Chakli and Mr King got A+ :)

Coding time was so less that sincere students like me used to work even after college. I, Chakli and Chashmish used to work together. I many times went to Chashmish’s home and told her everything on what happened today and how team course registration harassed us and how Chakli harassed me and what faculties told and this and that. She used to tell me about her project-how her project partners are not working and she had to work double and this and that. I and Chakli were always together or on phone or on chat. My other teammate named our pair-Tom and Jerry-always together and always fighting…hehehe…When we all work together, the room will become a Cyber Café with 2 laptops, books and a desktop and wires spread everywhere. In our lab also, most of the ppl used to work on laptops only because Nirma’s pc had lightning fast speed J We had fixed our places there and there were wires spread here and there.

We had n number of reviews-reviews in front of faculty guide, in front of faculty managers, in front of HOD, in front of Director(DD), in front of external faculties for viva, in front of random faculties, in front of senior faculties…and these too multiple times! I remember when we had review in front of HOD, he suggested lots of major changes after completion of half of the project. But our faculty managers were really supportive, they always cleared our doubts and helped us and told only to implement things which really mattered. We had presentation in from of Director and all branch’s HOD which lasted for 3 days only for 4 modules! Because every HOD used to give their suggestion and there was a cat-fight among HODs. It was fun to watch this entertainment. I remember in the last viva, we were banned to work because our database server frequently got down, and our deployed project was many times throwing errors.

When other students had already submitted their reports, we started making it. Our faculties were lesser worried about reports and more about system correctly working. Though our King integrated all the modules even after getting frustrated from hopeless errors in all modules, we did not have much time to test it properly. There were lots of pits and falls in many modules. But our managers told us, that they were going to have juniors to enhance the system, so any kind of change came, we told-it will be future enhancementJ We worked till the end, when rest of students had already given their vivas and all, we used to come to college. For all our dedication and after a lot of shout for party, we finally got one in college. We took group photos and had small funny award ceremony in which our King was awarded as best Employee and had a big round of applause for him and we were awarded as best team. There were other funny awards too like most chatting, most absent, best orkut user etc etc. It was so much fun at the end. I remember people took their pics in funny posed to put it in ‘About us’ section in the site. There is so much to write about these 6 great months. I would say, you’ll learn a lot about college’s processes and technology and customer satisfaction because our managers and faculties were our customers and they were never satisfied J I am proud that I was part of the MIS team.