In her position as NDS Vice President, Worldwide Development Practice, Alison Vincent has a variety of responsibilities that may sound unusual for a person with a Master’s degree in computer science and a Ph.D in cryptography – both from London University.

She is responsible for improving engineering practices and for facilitating cross regional cooperation within NDS.

What does this mean?

First, the background. “NDS currently has more than 2,500 engineers in seven major regional centers,” she explains. These centers are located in the UK, Israel, India, France, Korea, the US and Denmark.

“As the company grows, a significant number of our development projects are spread around the globe,” she says.

“This means it is vital for NDS to ensure that these projects progress seamlessly and operate effectively. It’s also good for customers to have an R&D center that is relatively near to them, no matter where they are,” Alison Vincent says.

In order to improve engineering practice and foster worldwide cooperation, Vincent has spearheaded a number of key initiatives.

R&D Charter: Best practices

First is the R&D Charter, a virtual manifesto for quality development work. “This is a framework for improvement,” she explains. It is an amalgam based on the best engineering practices she has found within NDS and in other companies. “The Charter establishes the expectations we have for engineers when they write software. It doesn’t matter where they are located,” she says, “they now follow similar guidelines.”

The overall concept is to generate an attitude for continuous improvement so that all NDS R&D groups have development roadmaps and plans which continually “raise the bar” for best engineering practices. “Once a particular group or region meets the specifications in the Charter they can move on to the next step,” she says.

“As our projects expand to meet the needs of our customers worldwide, we identified a global requirement to set and maintain the highest standards possible, and that these should be consistent across our global operation,” she says. “We also realized that when engineers switch projects they shouldn’t have to learn everything all over again.”

“NDS is a powerhouse of engineering. What we want to deliver with the R&D Charter are the best solutions for our customers.”

Vincent explains that the Charter has 15 points. These include how to start and how to finish a project as well as basics for writing effective code.

“The Charter doesn’t include anything our people don’t support,” she says. “What it features are the practices that a mature professional community should be using.” One of the results of the Charter was a process of self assessment. “This isn’t a matter of being audited externally,” Vincent says. “The principle is for development teams to gauge themselves against the Charter and see where they need to improve.”

How are engineers at different levels in different countries relating to the Charter?

“We recognize that different teams brought different levels of professional experience to the table. What the Charter does is put everyone on an equal footing. What we’re aiming for is constant improvement in engineering practice,” she says.

Communications for a global community

Another important initiative which Vincent set in motion is building strong communications within the NDS global engineering and development community. “For example, we have a professional newsletter with all articles written by NDS engineers.” The goal is to share ideas globally. “Having a newsletter helps create connections between engineers and teams,” she says, “while providing visibility of local core best practices, for the benefit of all. Basically, the newsletter enables one region to understand how another region tackles and solves a problem. When one region succeeds with a certain practice it encourages another region to try it,” she says.

It is not surprising that the articles are quite technical. They include subjects like code reviews, root cause analysis and reviewing code quality metrics. “These articles present ways of solving problems. The result is that our development teams share with each other regardless of their location.”

“Ultimately, NDS development teams cross multiple time zones, cultures and (have different) pressures,” she says. “I think it’s essential to utilize the corporate infrastructure to build communities based on common interests.” This includes online forums and debates for engineers to discuss issues and using videoconferencing to build relationships.

Developers Conference helps build relationships

The NDS Developers’ Conference is Vincent’s most established initiative within the company. At this event, held every 18-24 months, about 200 developers meet face-to-face for two days of discussion, debate and information sharing, she explains. “Invitations to the Conference are extended in recognition of technical excellence in NDS projects.”

The result of these conferences is that NDS engineers meet with each other, and form the basis for long-term collaboration. This helps build personal relationships which are essential between, for example, developers in the US and India where there’s a big time difference. “The result is that the next phone call is that much easier,” she says.

“The bottom line is that we are introducing a more human side to a very technical community,” Vincent says.

“As an R&D community, we encourage people to look at the efficiency of what we do. We’re combining the best practices and making the whole as efficient as possible. The end result is cutting down the time involved to deliver the best products possible to our customers.”

As for the future, I expect this process to shape how we distribute work within NDS in all of our R&D centers and on all of our projects,” she adds.

“What we’re trying to do is make our development process smarter. By maximizing the efficiency of our resources it will improve our time to market with new solutions for our customer base,” she says.