Siva Dorairaj

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ALERT! This person can no longer be contacted through the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington

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Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington

In the second trimester (2013), Siva is involved in teaching SWEN 302: Agile Methods, SWEN 304: Database System Engineering and COMP 102: Introduction to Computer Program Design.


Lecturer at Whitireia New Zealand

Siva is a contract lecturer for IT5104: Programming (using Visual Studio.NET) at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, Whitireia New Zealand, located at the Porirua campus.

Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington

Siva is a teaching fellow for SWEN 302: Agile Methods. SWEN 302 is a second trimester third year group project course for software engineering students. In SWEN 302, students work in teams of around 6 - 8 people to develop prototype software for real projects, working for project sponsors from outside the software engineering group.

Biography

Siva has 15 years experience teaching computer science and software engineering courses in the universities (Malaysia and New Zealand), and 10 years of experience teaching technical training courses (mainly on .NET and Java) for software developers/engineers from software companies and government agencies. His research interests are Agile Software Development, Object-oriented Techniques and Computer Graphics.

PhD Research

Through a Grounded Theory study, I investigated the main concerns of distributed teams in Agile software development. I conducted one-on-one, face-to-face, semi-structuredinterviews with 55 participants (including Developer, Scrum Master, XP Coach, Business Analyst) from 38 different software companies in the USA, Australia and India. Through a rigorous and systematic data analysis, I developed a theory called The Theory of One-Team which explicates how a distributed team in Agile software development adopts explicit strategies for bridging spatial, temporal and socio-cultural distances, while facing critical impact factors, in order to become one team. The findings from this research study have been published at AGILE 2012, EASE 2012, XP 2012, XP 2011, ISEC 2011 and XP 2010. Recently, I have 2 research papers accepted for publication at international conferences: AGILE 2013 and ICGSE 2013.

Publications:

1) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble. "Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Agility, Distribution and Trust". AGILE 2013.To be published.

2) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, George Allan. "Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Senior Management Support". ICGSE 2013. To be published.

3) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Knowledge Management in Distributed Agile Software Development, AGILE 2012, Dallas, Texas, USA, Aug 13-17, 2012, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6298093&isnumber=6298076

4) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Understanding Lack of Trust in Distributed Agile Teams: A Grounded Theory Study. Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, 16th International Conference, EASE 2012, Ciudad Real, Spain, May 14-15, 2012, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6272500&isnumber=6272489

5) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Understanding Team Dynamics in Distributed Agile Software Development. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 13th International Conference, XP 2012, Malmo, Sweden, May 21-25, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30350-0_4

6) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Effective Communication in Distributed Agile Software Development Teams. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 12th International Conference, XP 2011, Madrid, Spain, May 10-13, 2011. Proceedings, pp102 - 116, Springer, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20677-1_8

7) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Bridging Cultural Differences: A Grounded Theory Perspective. In Proceedings of the 4th India Software Engineering Conference, ISEC 2011, ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp3-10, Feb 23-26, 2011, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1953355.1953357

8) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik, "Distributed Agile Software Development: Towards a Grounded Theory", The 9th New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference, NZCSRSC 2011, New Zealand, 18-21 April 2011.

9) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik. Understanding the Importance of Trust in Distributed Agile Projects: A Practical Perspective. Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 11th International Conference, XP 2010, Trondheim, Norway, June 1-4, 2010. Proceedings, pp172 - 177, Springer, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13054-0_14

10) Siva Dorairaj, James Noble, Petra Malik, "Exploring Distributed Agile Projects: A Grounded Theory Perspective", The 8th New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference, NZCSRSC 2010, New Zealand, 12-15 April 2010.

Past publications (Papers are available at http://vuw.academia.edu/SivaDorairaj/Papers)

11) Siva Dorairaj, Saraswathy Shamini, Jaspaljeet Singh, Mohana Shanmugam, "Experimenting with Industry's Pair-Programming Model in Teaching & Learning Programming", Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Technology & Multimedia, Malaysia, 18-19 Nov 2008.

12) Jaspaljeet Singh, Siva Dorairaj, Saraswathy Gunasekaran, Mohana Shanmugam, "Designing Computer Games to Introduce Programming to Children", Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Technology & Multimedia, Malaysia, 18-19 Nov 2008.

13) Saraswathy Gunasekaran, Siva Dorairaj, Jaspaljeet Singh, Mohana Shanmugam, "Befriending Computer Programming - A Cognitive Approach Towards Learning C Programming", Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Technology & Multimedia, Malaysia, 18-19 Nov 2008.

14) Mohana Shanmugam, Siva Dorairaj, Saraswathy Gunasekaran, Jaspaljeet Singh, "Development of Education Portal using Microsoft Windows SharePoint - An Overview", Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Technology & Multimedia, Malaysia, 18-19 Nov 2008.

15) Siva Dorairaj, Jaspaljeet Singh, "Programming Excellence through Academic Competition - Case Study iPC 2008 ", National Student Development Conference, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 22-23 October 2008.

16) Jaspaljeet Singh, Siva Dorairaj, Peter Woods, "Learning Computer Programming Using A Board Game - A Case Study on C-Jump", International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies (M2USIC 2007), Multimedia University (Malaysia), 19-20 Nov 2007.

17) Badmanathan Tanggawelu, Siva Dorairaj, "Network Losses in TNB Distribution System" , Proceedings of the 14th Conference of the Electric Power Supply Industry (CEPSI), Fukuoka (Japan), 5-8 Nov 2002.

Awards:

1) Academic grant from Agile Alliance (USA) to participate in Agile 2013 (in Nashville, USA), August 2013.

2) Outstanding Achievers Award from Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), July 2012.

3) Academic grant from Agile Alliance (USA) to participate in Agile 2012 (in Dallas, USA), August 2012.

4) Faculty Strategic Research Grant from Faculty of Engineering (VUW) to participate in XP 2012 (in Malmo, Sweden), June 2012

5) Faculty Strategic Research Grant from Faculty of Engineering (VUW) to participate in EASE 2012 (in Ciudad Real, Spain), June 2012

6) Academic grant from Agile Alliance (USA) to participate in Agile 2011 (in Salt Lake City, USA), August 2011

7) Faculty Strategic Research Grant from Faculty of Engineering (VUW) to participate in XP 2011 (in Madrid, Spain), June 2011.

8) Faculty Strategic Research Grant from Faculty of Engineering (VUW) to participate in ISEC 2011 (in Trivandrum, India), Feb 2011.

9) Post Graduate Student Association (PGSA-VUW) Travel Grant, December 2010.

10) Contribution from SPPI research grant to participate in Agile Australia 2010 (in Melbourne, Australia) and for data collection in India (May 2010 and June 2011)

11) Faculty Strategic Research Grant from Faculty of Engineering (VUW) to participate in XP 2010 (in Trondheim, Norway), June 2010

12) Travel grant from Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Malaysia) for data collection in USA, August 2009.

13) Academic grant from Agile Alliance (USA) to participate in Agile 2009 (in Chicago, USA), August 2009.

14) PhD Scholarship from Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Malaysia), March 2009.

15) Full scholarship to participate in the Tenth Commonwealth Study Conference (CSC 2007) in New Delhi, India, April 2007.

16) Travel grant from TNB Research (Malaysia) to participate in the 14th Conference of the Electric Power Supply Industry in Fukuoka (Japan), November 2002.

Favourite Quotes:

"The beauty and charm of selfless love and service should not die away from the face of the earth. The world should know that a life of dedication is possible, that a life inspired by love and service to humanity is possible." -- Amma, Satguru Mata Amritanandamayi Devi.

"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." -- Mahatma Gandhi.

"Dreams are not what you have when you sleep, dreams are those that don't let you sleep." -- Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam, Former President of India.