By Sultan Muhammad, the Chief Editor

Air Commodore (Rtd) V.A. Abidi joined Pakistan Air Force in 1957 as a pilot cadet but instead was commissioned as a Navigator. After some dozen years, he filled various PAF jobs at very responsible and senior level. Later he was selected to head the PAF Data Automation Organization. After retirement from the PAF, has been very active on the IT scene of Pakistan, but has retired now. He is a vastly travelled and a very well read person.

CodeWeek: Briefly tell us about you, your family background, your education from beginning to the last highest degree earned?

Abdi: I was born at Azamgarh U.P. India on 18^th September 1938. I went to school at L. D. Meston Degree College, a collegiate in the small town of Ballia, where the Congress had established an independent Indian government in 1942 during the “Quit India Movement”. However, my education was discontinued at that institution when we moved to East Pakistan in September 1947. I had to go to various temporary schools in the rural East Bengal before we got settled in Dacca and joined a Pilot Project Government school established as model for the New Pakistan with highly educated and trained teachers, headed by a principal from the Provincial Superior Services. I passed my FSc from Notre Dame College Dacca, BSc from Karachi University and hold a post graduate diploma in Resource Management from Monterey, California.

CodeWeek: What attracted you to the specific field of Software Development?

Abdi: In fact this would sound very different to normal professionals, as I was ordered into it by the Pakistan Air Force. I had taken an Aptitude Test in Computers some time when I was a young Officer and consequently sent to do computer language courses like many other officers of the Air Force. In 1982 I returned from Deputation from a foreign country and posted to an Air Force Formation which was engaged in developing its own systems independent of the Air Force on Apple II. Since I had brought with me an apple II while returning to Pakistan, I started helping the team developing software for the formation. During the same period Pakistan Air Force was revising their Plans for the Computerization; the Vice Chief of Air Staff thought that I could be of help in the development of the plan as I was neither from the Maintenance branch nor from the Electronic Branch thus could be able to muster the support of the mainstream Air Force. I was roped in, in spite of all my resistance to stay away. I faced a formidable challenge as there was serious shortage of human resources in the Air Force: Additionally, the Directorate had to man the independent computer set-ups at all PAF formations, Depots and Bases etc. I looked for the civil market for the trained personnel but found that Air Force had already taken quite a few people from the really smaller then available number of personnel. I tried to recruit fresh Masters from various Universities, but found that unlike students coming out today from the universities; in 1982 the fresh arrivals lacked skill to develop software. Therefore, I decided to take two streams from the open recruitment sources: the BSc Engineering and MSc applied sciences. We established our own Training School by hiring Instructors from IBM France and sent our best to British and American University to obtain MS in the Computer Science. Meanwhile, the senior staff of the IT were tasked to prepare Plans to computerize every aspect of the organization and suggest the hardware (HW), also to decide between the Centralized Computerization vs. Distributed System. I allowed open debate by every one including the key punch operators. The discussion got so heated up that my most senior deputy director resigned and left. I recommended to the higher authority to nominate a committee to decide the acquisition of the Equipment in view of the task developed by the Directorate and invite all vendors to give a presentation  for any number of times they wished and then referred the findings to the Computer Bureau. Once the comment from the Computer Bureau was received, the Air Force nominated one of the most senior commanders to head the selection committee for the final selection of the HW taking due cognizance of the first committee’s recommendations. By then our plans were finalized and approved, the HW selected, and the government instructions issued, two of our officers had completed their education in the foreign university and the first batch of the recruited officers trained in software development were available for the task. This way we had three tiers of the software engineers. Our servers and intelligent terminals had started arriving, the work began at once and with the grace of Almighty Allah, we completed every thing that was needed, so much so that one of the foreign contractors taking advantage of our ignorance of copy rights and other commercial aspect sold our developed systems to two countries !

CodeWeek: What would you tell budding Software enthusiasts as to what is Software Development?

Abdi: I would emphasize on all software developers to give full attention to fine planning, thorough preparation and never to start any project with out assembling all the resources. One should remember the “S” graph in project planning remember that the resource requirement at the start of a project is very little, the requirement would gradually increase as the project heads towards the completion, the resource requirement would peak when the project is about to takeoff. It is this time that you would need resources for not only development but also for testing and implementation, besides the QA. Thereafter, the requirement graph would dip as now you would only need resources for the maintenance and fine tuning for the users need. The Resources are all encompassing: the money, the HW and the HR.

CodeWeek: Tell us about major personal achievements in your life.

Abdi: I feel my greatest achievement is fighting for the Internet in Pakistan and obtaining the GOP acclaim for my ideas. My struggle was to keep the Internet free from censor as it is futile to put any lock on the internet even with very large resource. My second point was to reduce the price of Band-width and at that time, the encouragement to the Government to grab every opportunity to increase International cable resources. The third achievement was to force the issue of voice over IP. We even went to court at least on two occasions to bring the then PTCL around. The PTA people even started calling me VOP ABDI instead V A ABDI.

CodeWeek: How would you advise youngsters who wish to join and pursue Software Development as a career?

Abdi: In short, I would say that one should learn to be logical in all walks of life through clear thinking practice. Prepare yourself for facing tough challenges and dream for good life in the future.

CodeWeek: What is your broad perception about the Software Engineering community in Pakistan as it stands today?

Abdi: Our Software Community has travelled a long way since early 80s, all premier institutions of our country are involved in educating the young and able youth in IT. I can say with the confidence that our youth is as good as any in the world; specially, they are quite competitive with our neighbors, except that they do not enjoy the patronization in the International scene as we delayed our presence in most of the markets. At present we are suffering the aftermath of terrorism and perception.

CodeWeek: What would be your advice to the GoP regarding enhancement of the IT Sector?

Abdi: It is a long topic and I would leave it here, only with a suggestion that GOP should ensure better infra-structure and take some risk in providing guarantee to the foreign customers.

CodeWeek: What are the critical points for sound Software Development?

Abdi: I have already dealt with this in my earlier paragraphs. Selection and training of HR, Understanding the processes involved in the daily and periodical operations of the business for which the software is meant. A good analyst should also try to locate the weak point in each operation and make a fool-proof remedy for those operations. Use actual data for dummy and check for wrong operations.

CodeWeek: What are the major responsibilities of Development Manager or Project Manager heading a Team Developing the project planning ?

Abdi: Like all other project management the software project management also has the following requirements:

Managing the project team

Managing the project risk

Managing the project schedule

Managing the project budget

Managing the project conflicts

In addition, the software project manager is also expected to be familiar with the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This may require in depth knowledge of requirements solicitation, application development, logical and physical database design and networking

CodeWeek: What are your personal professional plans for the immediate future for the next 10 years?

This one is a real good one. I have retired and plan to play golf as long as I can play!