Implementation of Big data-Hadoop in a financial institution

The Wizard Technology Solutions is an information Technology Solutions Company and Staffing provider based in New Jersey. "The company has been operational for the past fifteen years, and it has been serving its clients that come from locally and internationally. It differentiates itself via the provisions of quality services, commitment to customer services and the emphasis on exceptional performance" (Wizard Technologies, 2015). What guides the company in performance is a customer-centric philosophy that it has its core values and a deep commitment to serving the clients as well as an overall respect for one another. The company aligns its goals to those of the people it serves, and they commit themselves to being a proactive, cooperative and a solutions-oriented partner to the teammates, both inside and outside. It is fairness that flows through every relationship that the company cultivates, both internally and externally (Wizard Technology Solutions, 2014). The tenet they have is that its success depends on the growth of its employees and partners. It is their joy to help its candidates, team members, clients and communities to thrive.

I had the opportunity to work in this company as an intern on big data Hadoop development under the supervision of Suni Yanamadalaand. There are major responsibilities vested in me by the company during the time of internship, and I will be accountable for these duties as much as I will be doing my internship in the company. I will have the requirement of using my development skills to build a code and conduct unit testing of new systems’ functionality in light of the technical specifications in which the deliverables will be working codes and documented unit test results. I will also have a requirement of developing application support documentation on behalf of the application support teams for acceptance of system changes into the enterprise. The company requires me to perform unit tests on the environment production packages and implement plans for scheduled systems’ enhancements. The other duty vested in me will be the translation of business as well as functional requirements into documented technical specifications.

Organizations that need large and varied data sets have the mandate of implementing Apache Hadoop so that they can have the ability of processing, managing and storing huge amounts of data, whether the data is unstructured, structured or semi-structured (Karambelkar, 2013). I will work hard towards the mixing of online and offline transactions data with an impressive data analysis and management using Hadoop. The company has been having some difficulties in the management of their big data due to inexperienced IT staff. So, my presence as an intern in the company has a lot to accomplish so as to bring a big change in the company that will make it among the renowned companies in the usage of Hadoop to better manage its data. I will ensure to build all the company’s data on Hadoop-based central repository having encryption, firewalls, and data anonymization. I will have to create a prototype WMX in a few days.

Methodology Action Research

Action Research will be the most preferred methodology while I will be working as an intern in Wizard Technology Solutions, Inc as a Hadoop big data developer. The term Action Research refers to a practical way of looking at one’s practice and checking it is as one would like it to be (McNiff, 2002). The practitioner is the one that is conducting Action Research, and so other scholars term it as a practitioner-based research, and since it entails you thinking reflectively about your research, other researchers also call it a self-reflective practice. In Action Research, the idea of self-reflection is central and in all the steps the research has to incorporate a reflection critique of the decisions and the actions taken towards finding a practical solution to the problem at hand. It is different from the other types of research that focus on other people; it rather focuses one’s own live (Costello, 2007). It entails the researcher thinking about one’s own live and why one is the way he/she is.

The researchers ask themselves why they do the things they do and why they are the way they are. That provides a basis for them to conduct a systematic investigation into their practice and reasons for that practice. The resulting report they produce from the investigation shows what they undertook so as to achieve a better insight of themselves for the purpose of continued development at their work. The process of Action Research is Open-ended in that it does not start with a fixed hypothesis, it rather starts with an idea that the practitioner develops (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006). The research process entails a process of following through that idea, observing how it works and continually checking whether there is the achievement of the desired results.

Action Research began in the United States during the 1940s via the work of social scientists known as Kurt Lewin (Costello, 2007). Although Action Research began in other places around the same time, many researchers stake Kurt Lewin to be the starting point. Action Research was very popular in the US for quite some time before it declined due to the impacts of political, cultural and economic changes (Reason & Bradbury, 2008). It did not die completely however as a result of those changes; it re-emerged again in Britain in the 1970s as a result of several influences. One of those influences was the work of Lawrence Stenhouse that was a director of humanities in curriculum development projects. His tenet was that there was a need to organize curricula in schools to make it more meaningful to and relevant to the experience of students whereby the students had to learn to be responsible for their learning. Stenhouse also promoted the idea that a teacher should act as a researcher.

There has been a continuous development of different models and interpretations of Action Research (Grady, 1998). There are people that claim that technical aspects of the methodology should take the priority while others put more emphasis on the values that inform Action Research. Most researchers recognize the educational basis for Action Research. Those diverse opinions still generate debates. What is central to Action Research is that there is a process of conducting an investigation into one’s practice so as to improve it (Costello, 2007). The question that the researcher asks is, "How do I improve my practice?" The assumption is that the researchers are the pole that has knowledge in their given areas, but there is room to improve their skills through the interaction with others in the same field that also have an interest in learning. The intention of Action Research is that one gets to improve his/her skills for their benefit and the benefit of others.

Action Research follows a series of steps that take place in the form of a spiral according to Kurt Lewin. The steps begin with action planning, implementing the plan entailing an actual action taking place, making an observation of the actions taken and then reflecting on the outcome of the actions taken. The researcher has to repeat all these steps until one arrives at the desired outcome in light of improvement of their practices. The interaction with other researchers in the same field and all the stakeholders affected by the researchers’ actions is vital for arriving at a solid solution to the challenges faced by the researchers in their practice (Grady, 1998). As the researchers continually refine their actions, they get to achieve their goals of finding better ways of doing their tasks and impacting their workplaces in a positive manner. The process of Action Research is as shown in the diagram below.

Action Research will be the most appropriate methodology to leverage while doing my internship in the organization in question because of its certainty to improve my practice and the organization in general. It provides a basis for critically conducting a research that impacts the practices of all the participants in the investigation process. That is because the all stakeholder have to participate in the research process, and their inputs are the ones that make the research successful. It is the only research that entails the researchers carrying out research about their practices. My interactions with other company experts will help to gain maximally from the research process, and I will get to improve my practices, and so find practical solutions to the challenges that the organization is facing. As the researchers in the organization improve their practice, they will have an impact on the entire organization (Stringer, 2013), thus, Action Research is the most appropriate methodology for conducting my research since it will not only benefit me but also the organization in which I will be doing the research.

References

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Costello, P. J. M. (2007). Action research. London: Continuum, London: NY

Grady, M. P. (1998). Qualitative and action research: A practitioner handbook. Bloomington, Ind: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.

Karambelkar, H. (2013). Scaling Big Data with Hadoop and Solr. Birmingham, UK : Packt Publishing

McNiff, J. (2002). Action Research for professional development (3rd Ed.). London: SAGE Publications.

Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2008). The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: SAGE Publications.

Stringer, E. T. (2013). Action Research (4th Ed.). Sage Publications.

Whitehead, J., & McNiff, J. (2006). Action research: Living theory. London: SAGE Publications.

Wizard Technologies (2015). Services.

Wizard Technology Solutions (2014). Who are we?

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