Three Time Award Winner

Merrill’s Kumar Vadaparty Sets Laser Focus on Post-Development

First it was his data service framework, then it was his application lifecycle management framework. This year it is his Silverlight Framework. Kumar Vadaparty, third time winner of the Windows in Financial Services Developer Awards, is quickly earning a reputation as the innovative developer to beat. What makes Vadaparty stand out is perhaps his eagerness to turn the old way of doing things on its head and his laser focus on what is often an afterthought: post development. For Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Vadaparty’s out-of-the-box innovations mean productivity gains, particularly important now as the capital markets sector faces increasing challenges. “This approach has enabled our team to provide integration solutions that both drives productivity and empowers our businesses,” says Nick Pinarligil, managing director of Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management Technology. WFS speaks to Vadaparty, first vice president of the division, and gives us a little insight into his unique development approach. The WFS Developer Award will be presented at the 7th Annual Microsoft Enterprise Developer and Industry Solutions Conference in New York May 5 (see page 22). 

WFS: You’ve won the WFS Developer’s Awards three years in a row now. Tell us a little about your development approach. 

Vadaparty: The development approach we use is an iterative SCRUM-based approach, where requirement changes are not only dealt with but are actively expected. The reason for the latter is that the process re-engineering we are doing, where this Silverlight framework is used, is something that is partially documented, partially in peoples’ heads, and constantly changing to accommodate our clients’ needs. We follow SCRUM – the agile version – with customizations that are appropriate for us.

WFS: What are some development lessons learned over the last few years? 

Vadaparty: Focus on both run-time optimizations for developers, and post-development SDLC-optimizations for our infrastructure teams. Often, the post-development SDLC activities (e.g., Build, Package, Sequencing Packages, Monitoring, etc.) do not receive the same laser focus as the development. On the other hand, the cost of post-development activities takes more time and money compared to pure development. Hence, it is a matter of time before someone connects the dots and starts investing in the post-development activities and brings it to the next level. I am fortunate to be in an organization where the management saw this connection, and commissioned my team to do precisely that – put laser focus on post-development activities and bring a new meaning to straight-through processing.

WFS: This year you were recognized for your highly reusable Silverlight Framework. What would you say are some of the top benefits of Silverlight for financial institutions?

Vadaparty: Silverlight brings two major components to financial institutions that did not exist until now: data visualization in a first-class manner – not as an afterthought – to the browser. Second, it brings this power with ‘out-of-the-box’ language that millions are trained in – C# rather than some proprietary scripting languages whose type-safety is at best a big question, at worst un-testable. Silverlight brings all this while executing it on the OS-independent browser side thus consuming client-CPU-cycles rather than taxing the server-CPU cycles. Did I say that it saves roundtrip in terms of latency?

WFS: Companies are reevaluating their IT investments in an effort to cut costs. At the same time they are facing increased competition and expectations from sophisticated customers. How do you hit the right balance?

Vadaparty: Two key factors in this scenario are innovation toward automation based on data-driven paradigm that we get from not only Silverlight but most modern .NET versions and a disciplined process that enables successful and iterative execution of the new technologies.