The ‘Engineering Nexus’ - galvanising Sri Lankan tech

Sysco LABS Ltd. Senior Director Technology & Architecture Hasitha Liyanage introduced the ‘Island of Ingenuity – Sri Lanka Knowledge Services’ brand, launched recently to position Sri Lanka as an investment destination for tech companies looking to expand globally

(From left) Pearson Lanka Ltd. Director Hosting Operations Roshan Razik, Virtusa Ltd. IVS Security Lead Anjana Chandrapala and Hasitha Liyanage at the panel discussion led by Sysco LABS Ltd. Senior Software Architect Asiri Liyanage 

The inaugural Engineering Nexus meet-up was hosted at the Sysco LABS engineering centre recently, marking the launch of another initiative to help grow and develop the software engineering and technology development practice in Sri Lanka. Unlike other meet-ups, the Engineering Nexus intends to solve tech problems by bringing together ideas and methodologies from different disciplines within tech organisations together. Therefore, the three speakers who addressed the audience, Virtusa Ltd. IVS Security Lead Anjana Chandrapala, Pearson Lanka Ltd. 

Director Hosting Operations Roshan Razik, and Sysco LABS Ltd. Senior Director Technology & Architecture Hasitha Liyanage, all specialise in different areas but came together to discuss the problem of engineering productivity. 

The Engineering Nexus was started with a desire to address a problem that exists within the industry; that technologists tend to think in silos when it comes to solving problems and fail to see that there may be simpler solutions to their problems if they can bring in practices from different disciplines. To this end, the three speakers were not just from different organisations, but also had different technical areas of focus; Quality Engineering, DevOps and Software Architecture. They all spoke on techniques from within their technical focus areas that can be used to improve an organisation’s engineering productivity overall. 

Speaking on the event, Hasitha Liyanage said: “I spoke on using data as a tool to help you to be more productive by making smarter decisions about what work you should focus on. It was really interesting as a software architect to be able to share my viewpoint on the subject of engineering productivity because that is a subject that is usually the focus area of quality engineering, but that is the power of the Engineering Nexus. I think the Nexus has great potential and I really want to encourage other tech leaders in the industry to join and collaborate on future events.”

As the recent launch of the ‘Island of Ingenuity’ brand for Sri Lanka’s Knowledge Solutions industries illustrates, the nation’s tech sector is on the rise and there is abundant scope and insight available in the industry. It is the support of this industry that will be key to the growth and expansion of the Engineering Nexus as it will be the industry leaders who will host events, identify key focus areas to base the sessions around and share their valuable knowledge and best practices.

Discussing his 

experience  speaking at the Nexus, Anjana  Chandrapala highlighted three key principles to adhere by in order to optimise the traditional software development process to make it capable of delivering solutions to a consumer-driven, fast-paced market. “First, reduce waste by eliminating unwanted efforts during the life cycle and by applying best practices such as defect prevention mechanisms. Second, focus efforts on what matters the most by utilising scientific measures such as pairwise algorithm. And finally, automate throughout the life cycle to get redundant jobs done faster, which leaves you room for creativity and quality.”

Roshan Razik shared the challenges of managing and supporting large business critical platforms and infrastructure at Pearson, and the continual service and operational improvement initiatives employed to overcome them for increased productivity. “There are three facets to our approach; persistent productivity, continual improvement, and innovation. They have enabled our TechOps teams to transform into a service-aligned team. Our key success factors for 2018 are agile, enhanced customer experience, enabling cloud, and automation.”

If all goes to plan, we should see more Engineering Nexus meet-ups within the year. Complete videos of the speeches from the first meet-up can be viewed at syscolabs.lk.