Cognitive for Application Development

Program ID: COG024 Cognitive Coding Assistant

Training

25 January 2016
Background
Context
Over the years, considerable improvements have been made in the way developments are done. These improvements
are necessary to keep ourselves competitive in the market.
Two key areas of application development, which continuously needs to have the maximum attention are
• Increased involvement of Early Professional Hires (EPH) during early stages of development
• Reduction of Development effort, time & costs

Solution
By leveraging Watson’s Cognitive features, build a development approach which will not only assist the EPHs
but also the developer pool to reduce the overall effort of development

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Watson Cognitive – How it works?
SSO: OAUTH
Service
Provides IBM ID NLC : Trained
with Common
& Intranet based
Repeated Question
Authentication
& Answer Pairs

R&R : Index of
Corpus
(documents), Error
Messages,
Questions and
Curated Content

iCurate

SMEs
Node Runtime

MySQL Database
iAssist hosted in DST

Business User / Agents Application hosted

in DST

IBM Bluemix
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 How to address a development related query? Developer Sr. Developer / Team Lead

Process Flow

Ask a development related question Was this asked in No Ask the question in Watson Cognitive
to a Sr. Developer / Team Lead Watson Cognitive? iAssist tool

Provide feedback against question

Yes (up vote / down vote)

Provide the answer & share the Q&A

STOP
pair with Corpus Owner

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The BEFORE story – at a large professional services company….

Mar 05 – Mar 08 The IBM Dev

Joe
Joe needs
needs to
to deliver
deliver aa Team goes through the
business requirement on requirement and starts building
Joe high priority basis the design document. They
Client Team Lead need technical guidance. Susan
Mar 04 Susan builds the plan is not reachable till Mar 10 so
Mar 01 Joe shares a critical with a delivery date of Mar 24, they look for solutions via web
business requirement with shares with Joe and gets his searches. The team wastes time
Susan, highlights the importance approval. Susan assigns the in sifting through multiple
of early delivery and asks for a work to her development team results from web searches.
development work plan Finally due to inexperience they
choose the wrong solution

Susan
IBM Dev Lead Mar 09 – Mar 15
Susan reviews the design, advises
the team to correct the technical
solution
Mar 25: Joe is upset that
IBM did not support him The team completes the design
in delivering this critical document, presents it to Joe and
requirement on time gets his approval to proceed with
coding
Susan goes on a week’s leave
Anuj, Vic and Claire
IBM Dev Team Mar 16 - 24 The team starts the development but soon gets stuck
with a critical component. The team wastes time in trying to identify
a solution and finally reaches out to Susan on Mar 18. She can
arrange for outside project support only on Mar 19. IBM misses the
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The AFTER story – at a large professional services company….

Joe
Joe needs
needs to
to deliver
deliver aa Mar 05 – Mar 08 The IBM Dev Team
business requirement
business requirement onon goes through the requirement and
Joe high priority basis starts building the design document.
Client Team Lead They look for Technical guidance.
Susan is not reachable till Mar 10.
Mar 01 Joe shares a critical The team place their query in iAssist
business requirement with Mar 04 Susan builds the plan and obtain a precise answer, with the
Susan, highlights the importance with a delivery date of Mar 24, help of which they are able to
of early delivery and asks for a shares with Joe and gets his complete the design
development work plan approval. Susan assigns the
Susan work to her development team
IBM Dev Lead
Mar 15 – Mar 24 With the help of Mar 09 – Mar 12 Susan reviews
the guidance provided, the the solution and finds it
development team is able to satisfactory with only minor
proceed with the development. rework.

Susan reviews the code upon her The team completes the design
return and finds it acceptable. document, presents it to Joe and
Anuj, Vic and Claire gets his approval to proceed with
IBM Dev Team The team is able to deliver the coding
code by the promised headline of
Mar-24. Susan goes on a week’s leave

Mar 14 - 15 Ram is an SME monitoring Mar 12 - 14 The team starts the

iAssist feedback for unanswered questions. development but soon gets stuck with a
He takes up the development team’s critical component. They try to use iAssist
Ram unanswered question and provides the but no ready answer is available. The team
Dedicated iAssist SME answer within a day. His response is sent to indicates in iAssist that they were not able
the development team over email and is also to get an answer to their query
added to iAssist corpus
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Roles and Responsibilities

Role Key Responsibilities

Project/  Educate practitioners about iAssist and its usage
Sector/Practice  Inculcate the practice of using iAssist first when faced with a technical question
Area SPOC’s  Follow up with the practitioners to monitor usage of iAssist
 Periodically collect feedback from the practitioners and share the same with the Corpus Owner
Practitioner  Ask questions in iASSIST
 Vote (Thumbs Up / Down) the answer received
 Provide feedback
SMEs  Document answer to open questions in iCURATE
 Validation Testing in iCURATE
Corpus Owners  Review & Approve
 appropriateness and relevancy of unanswered questions and take relevant actions
 Identify SMEs
 Track time difference between an open NEW question and its answer
 Inform CA Technical Team on NLC Training requirement
CA Technical Team  Decide on the need for additional NLCs
 Develop identified enhancements
 Execute NLC training based on Curation Cycle

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 Asking a Question in
iAssist

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)

Launch the following link in Mozilla

https://9.121.57.155:3000/#/

Login with your Intranet ID and password

In the next screen select the “iAssist” Mode and chose the project as “ABAP”
(note that this project covers not only ABAP but also BW, PI and HANA
content)

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)
Locate the search box located at the bottom of the screen.

Enter your query and Click on the ‘Ask’ button

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)

If the question asked is an exact match with an existing question in the corpus,
the answer will be displayed immediately after clicking the Ask button

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)

If the question asked is not a direct match with existing questions in the corpus,
some related questions are displayed as proposed alternates

If the proposed questions are indeed the right matches, on clicking the links to
a particular proposed question will reveal the corresponding answer

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)

In either of the above cases, it is mandatory to provide feedback before the

next question can be asked. The option for entering the next question will
not be enabled unless feedback is registered.

If the answer was accurate and useful, click on the

Thumbs Up button, in which case the time saved
has to be entered.

On the other hand, if the answer was inaccurate or

not of desired quality, click on the Thumbs Down
button

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Using the iAssist tool (Watson Cognitive Coding Assistance)
If however none of the proposed links is the right match, the user should click
on “Show me content from other resources”

A popup will appear on which the button “No, let’s

start over” should be clicked.

These unanswered questions will flow to the SME’s

who will subsequently get back to the practitioners
with the answer to these questions via email
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 Thank you

15
Stage 1 – BAU Phase
Roles & Responsibilities
Role Key Responsibilities
Practitioner  Asks question in iASSIST
 Vote (Thumbs Up / Down) the answer received
 Provide feedback
Corpus Owners  Review & Approve
 appropriateness and relevancy of unanswered questions and take relevant actions
 the Category for unanswered questions and make relevant corrections
 curated Q&A pair
 Identify SMEs
 Conduct short curation session with SMEs to identify clusters
 Assign unanswered questions / clusters to SMEs
 Minimize time difference between an open NEW question and its answer
 Inform CA Technical Team on NLC Training requirement
SMEs  Document answer to open questions in iCURATE
 Validation Testing in iCURATE
CA Technical Team  Decide on the need for additional NLCs
 Develop identified enhancements
 Execute NLC training based on Curation Cycle

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 Stage 1 - BAU Phase Practitioner Corpus Owner / SME Watson Technical Automated

Process Flow
Yes 2.3
2.1
Update Corpus, based on
Provide Feedback in iASSIST
feedback

1.0
Answer (a) Impacted Effort (in hours)
Enter Question in
available? (b) Resolution Time saved (in
iASSIST hours)

1. Assign a tag
1. Login to iASSIST using IBM
2. Real-time sync - From
intranet credentials No 2.2 iASSIST To iCURATE
Assign a Tag to the question, in the
2. Enter a question in iASSIST for
which an answer is required iASSIST tool 3. Workflow to the Corpus
Owner and SMEs about the
open question

3.0 4.0 5.0

Answer the open question Approve Q&A pair in Re-train NLC with STOP
in iCURATE ICURATE approved set of Q&A

1. SME assigns a correct tag to a 1. If the Q&A pair is found to be appropriate, approve 1. Retrain NLC for the
question (if applicable) the Q&A pair approved Q&A pairs which
will Synch up approved Q&A
2. SME assigns the question to a Cluster 2. Email notification to the practitioner with the answer pairs – From iCURATE To
iASSIST
3. SME responds to the open question 3. If the Q&A pair needs to be modified, modify the
same

Note:
There may be technology upgrade/updates leading to modification of existing answers. This should be followed by process step 4 and beyond
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 Stage 1 - BAU Phase Practitioner Corpus Owner / SME Watson Technical Automated

Interim* Process Flow

Yes 2.3
2.1
Update Corpus, based on
Provide Feedback in iASSIST
feedback

1.0
Answer
Enter Question in (a) Impacted Effort (in hours)
available? (b) Resolution Time saved (in
iASSIST
hours)

1. Login to iASSIST using IBM No

intranet credentials 2.2 1. Assign a tag
2. Enter a question in iASSIST for 2. Real-time sync -
which an answer is required
Assign a Tag to the question, in the From iASSIST To
iASSIST tool iCURATE

3.0 4.0 5.0

Answer the open question Approve Q&A pair in Re-train NLC with STOP
in iCURATE ICURATE approved set of Q&A

1. SME validates the question in the Master 1. If the Q&A pair is found to be 1. Retrain NLC for the approved
document (MS-Excel document). Note: Lead appropriate, approve the Q&A pair. Q&A pairs which will Synch
SME to collate the new questions & answers up approved Q&A pairs –
and update Master Document on a daily 2. An email notification is sent to the From iCURATE To iASSIST
basis practitioner with the answer

2. SME documents the answer in iCURATE 3. If the Q&A pair needs to be modified,
modify the same Note:
3. SMEs update the SME group via online ST Minimal time should be spent in process step 3 and 4 and between the
chat on the question & answer process steps 1 and 4
18 IBM Confidential * Process to be followed till the enhancements are implemented