World renowned speakers add value to SLASSCOM Quality Summit

The Keynote speaker at this event is Mr. Navyug Mohnot, Founder and CEO of QAI, India, which is a trans global organization focusing on  Operational Excellence to the IT industry. Speaking on the topic "Quality as a Differentiator", Mr. Mohnot is widely recognized as the pioneer of quality revolution in the Indian IT and BPO industry. He is also a TiE Charter Member, a mentor on the NASSCOM Emerge Forum and on the Editorial Advisory Board of India's first journal on consulting titled "Consulting Ahead". He conceptualized and developed the world's first global virtual ecosystem for software engineering namely, www.softwaredioxide.com.

Mr. Mohnot will elaborate on the pros and cons of quality as a differentiator to success. He will dissect the difference between Operational Excellence and Business Excellence.   Whilst all stakeholders, country policy makers and strategists, CEOs in ICT sectors, CIOs of IT consuming organizations and IT  professionals have their own view of quality and their own agenda, Mr. Mohnot believes that everyone needs to be  aligned  under a common approach for results to materialize.

The Guest Speaker at the event is Mr. Krishna Kishore, Manager, IT Advisory practice, KPMG who will talk about "How process can ensure Quality" which is a vital component to the ICT BPO sector. Mr. Kishore has many years of industry experience in the Quality Assurance domain in various industries such as IT, manufacturing and various other functions. His expertise is in giving process design and implementation support to organizations based on CMMi, Six Sigma and ISO models and implementing CMMi based process improvement in the IT development and support areas. He was also involved in Process and Product Benchmarking in the IT and non-IT industry and conducted many trainings on CMMi, Six sigma and metrics. He is a certified Six Sigma Black belt from American society of quality, certified Authorised CostXpert Estimator, a trained Internal Quality Auditor from Wipro Technologies and Core member for benchmarking group of Hyderabad Software Process improvement network.

The basis of his topic, "How process can ensure Quality" is about process being the key element of any activity performed either in domestic life which is repeatable or in a mission critical activity which is performed only once. Following a specific process in executing an activity can largely impact the quality of the outcome / deliverable in the positive direction.

Also billed to speak on the "Importance of Testing to Ensure Quality" is Mr. Geoff Thompson, CEO, Experimentus. With over 30 years of experience, Mr. Thompson has an excellent track record in Test Management and Process Improvement and is particularly passionate about Test Process Improvement.

In 1997 he started working with ISEB, developing the original Software Testing Foundation syllabus and exams. He then managed the development of the original Software Testing Practitioner syllabus and exam in 2002. Mr. Thompson initiated the ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualification Board) and until recently was the UK representative and chairs the UK Testing Board. He is a founder member and Chairman of the TMMi Foundation Management Executive (www.tmmifoundation.org.uk), the Vice Chairman and Treasurer of the BCS SIGiST (Specialist Group in Software Testing). He is also co-author of the biggest selling testing book on www.amazon.co.uk - Software Testing - An ISEB Foundation. He won the 2008 European Testing Excellence Award for his work in the field of testing.  Mr. Thompson will also give an Introduction to the Testing Maturity Model.

His topic is in the context of software engineering, software quality measures and quality of design, quality of performance etc., often described as the 'fitness for purpose' of a piece of software. It also provides an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks at implementation of the software.

During the Summit, Track A will be conducted by Mr. Kishore on IT/ BPO Quality measurements and metrics . He will discuss how metrics can be classified as either leading or lagging indicators and its repercussions on organizations starting from the bottom most operational level rolling up to business level thus enabling the organization to work towards a common business goal.

Track B will be conducted by Mr. Chinmay Pradhan of QAI, who will share his knowledge on Using Simulation based Prediction Models in Process Improvements Journeys. Mr. Pradhan is a Process Consultant at QAI with a full life cycle definition and implementation experience with models like CMMI 1.2 Dev, CMMI 1.2 SVC, As9100b, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001:2000. A certified CSQA, certified PMP and ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, with strong communication skills, he has the unique skill of quickly grasping situations and implementing solutions. He is the Co-Author of a paper on Stochastic Optimization modeling published in IEEE. His most recent assignments have involved the implementation of Level 5 process areas of CMMI 1.2 Dev with various organizations across India.

Mr. Pradhan will highlight how all processes have an inherent variation associated with them and a system is a series of interconnected processes and how understanding the variation and the interrelationships between the various process components helps identify the most suitable process for improvement and also identify the impact of this process on the overall system.

Track C, by Mr. Thompson is an Introduction to Testing Maturity Model. The aim of this track is to provide background and to help the attendees understand how to deliver qualitative and quantitative process improvements using the TMMi model.

Mr. Raghunath Basavanahalli, VP, Asia Business, will conduct Track D. A graduate from IIT Delhi, he will make a detailed presentation of Digité, a leading provider of collaborative enterprise application software for process and portfolio management. It will demonstrate how different types of project processes (Agile, Iterative, Multi-vendor programs, Support, etc.) can be configured with templates that can be inherited consistently during the execution of the project. It will cover areas like time tracking, task tracking, resource management including utilization, requirements management, Test management, Defect management, Change management, and other parts of Application Lifecycle Management. 

The event, scheduled to be held on the 18th of August at the Cinnamon Grand Ballroom, will be an ideal opportunity to gain insights into global best practices in quality, local case studies on successful adoption, and get the chance to interact with experts.