Another Hectic Day of the Integration Testing

Last week we have started the 2 weeks’ Integration testing, covering on the connectivity, functionality and data integrity. Taken into consideration that these are the major areas to look out for

Being proactive, I have also executed on the following software engineering principles:

1. Algorithm correctness – multi-packing, postal codes-town name validations, exceeds limitation of cartons
2. Internet Performance – Page loading responses
3. Usability
4. Portability

Lecture Notes – Software Quality Engineering

Beside that, I have been informed to take the lead in updating the project progress, service requests, issues for weekly meetings. I am not sure why the project team has come into this stage of distrust and lack of information-sharing. Probably it is the lack of understanding or managing expectations among team members, but the most important factor is the team members’ commitments and the support of Management to ensure everyone understands the way of workings, change management. Maybe I should be the one to take up this role, being diplomatic and get things done and knowing the escalation processes.

As for today, I am starting to get more visibility on the current progress of the software and lots to work on for the deployment, especially to get the following equipments and configurations required for the setups.

Internet Performance Testing for Phase 2a

Last week I just came back from Shanghai, discussing with the local Operations/IT teams on the deployment activities to carry for.  In the discussion, we shared about the SMTP setup for email notifications, script for sending EDI from one folder to another local ftp folder.

Moreover, during this week integration testing we obtained feedback from Taiwan and Korea about the slowness in Internet responses on login, navigating the pages when using online solution.  I quickly responded back with a page loading testing, back with the test steps and trace-rt information to track where is/are the network bottlenecks from the local countries accessing the central solution on the web.

A shed of light, after all hard works of suppressing conflicts

Today I received a news from the IT Manager on the current situation of the ’sage’ of the importance of prioritizations.  As the direction from the Global IT-Business organisation’s concern, whoever involved in the projects who have change requests to engage on needs to go through the change process managment with their respective Global Engagment team in working out the priorities for the Global IT organisation to work on for the engaging periods.

It is such a relief to myself and IT manager.  We had been withholding the integrity and principles of work with the Global IT team in aligning the IT-business strategies that the Company is working on, even though under the great pressures from the regional account manager.  Right now, everyone of us in the project team is clear of the escalations, change management’s procedures to work with the Global IT-Business team and put on the necessary expectations in working with the Client.  In Sales organisation, any sales person is likely to over-commit themselves in front of the Customer and pushing others to get information done, even though we need to brain-storm and analysis the situations together.  For this situation, the account manager has made some mistakes on the solutioning of the system to the Client and now she is being ‘backfired’ and to follow the procedures with the rest of the team members.

Lack of Project Plan, I am working on one right now

When I was engaged in the project to oversee the development of the single/double-byte solution, the first thing I requested to the project team if we have a project plan, task list of the activities we will be covering but there is none.  As I been staying in the project for some time, more project activities came up, involving some configuration setups of new invoicing accounts.

Not to mention for this Phase B, similar setups are required for the new accounts.  Regards to the timelines, all related setups including for the financial system are to be done by end March.  That includes the network setup to the Client’s CRM application as part of the BPO services to report to them.

Since no one is willing to draft out the project plan, I myself did a quick WBS (work breakdown structure) of the activities involved for Phase B.  The ‘high-level’ activities are:

1. New accounts setup for the Financial System
2. Integration of EDI invoicing between Financial system with a 3rd-party solution.
3. User Training (both local IT and Operations) on the new double-byte solution.
4. User Training (Customer Services) on the CRM system
5. Network setup to Client’s CRM system via VPN
6. Test Plan for end-to-end testings between financial system and a 3rd-party solution for invoicing
7. Test Plan for end-to-end testings from tracing the recipient of the shipment to the delivery to consumer using a shipment tracking system
8. Test Plan for end-to-end testing of shipment details to double-byte solution between vendor A and vendor B (including regression testing)
9. Infrastructure/system setups for the new solution, including translations, new user profiles for the existing and new production lines.
10. Documenting system and user guides for the new solution
11. Consolidating change requests and prioritisation.
12. Conducts post-project review after project go-live.

Change Management, Escalations, Internal conflicts

When a project is getting bigger with lots of parties involved, it makes existing steering board difficult in decision-making efforts as to whom is/are the rightful stakeholders that holds major influences in this area and impact the project’s outcomes, resulting internal conflicts among organisations.

Change management is one point that senior management has to keep communications opens to all organisation levels, including middle management.  The project I currently involving lacks open communications on new processes and procedures to all departments on the rightful ways of doing things.  Hence, people have different expectations on the project teams to get things done and at the same time, over-commit the promises and raise unexpected ‘high’ expectations from the Customer on the service provider.

Basically, noone likes to have new changes to the daily operations whereby existing working models have been long established and stable for the last few years.  And when there are needed changes, effective communication has to be established and work out a working model for ongoing projects within minimum impacts.  To go along with that, resources, business strategies, processes have to make known to all involved in the project.

Right now, the project has been escalated to higher management as due to misunderstanding of the proposed solution provided for Phase B for Vendor B implementation.  Everyone is denying or not admitting the areas they are at fault in in particular on the business requirements document that signed-off by the Account Manager who turned around to mention not being aware of the proposed solution for this phase.  Maybe some initial IT/business discussions were over-looked, not being communicated or agreed with the Customer during the feasibility study.

No doubt, at the moment a big issue now as the Customer has disagreed that they had never come to the point to accept the proposed solution for vendor B as per specific on the business requirement document signed by the Account Manager.  I am also in doubt that whether the Account manager has communicated/discussed any information from the business requirement document with the Customer before even signing off the document.

Deployment Checklist

After going through the familiarization and initial results from my internal testings of the beta solution, we have come down with the possibility of deployment list that we need to setup for the existing production lines when we go-live with the system in late March 08. Beside the software installations, we need to work out a configuration list of the configuration/look-up table to be created in the live system when required.

Items to check on:

1. User accounts to access the central solution via Internet, local PCs.
2. PCs and printers to setup for existing production lines
3. Connectivity testings from local to central solution
4. Code translations for location-based addresses/postal codes
5. Sanity check of existing production lines after the setups, using test data from testing.

At least, the initial deployment list is to be ready by end February.

Getting set for Integration and UAT Testing

With the deployment time-lines firmed up with vendor A, we are all set in preparing the test data, accounts, setups for the full-scale testing beginning of mid-February to mid-March 08.
Right now, I am gathering the required users’ informations for using the solution, get their test accounts setup and review with them on the usability of the tool after the last 2 weeks’ trips to their offices for user trainings. Things to check out on are:

• Testing approach – Understood test data from vendor A has to send to us via emails (understood for Integration testing, we are expecting at least 2 test files from vendor A) -By Feb 6
• Testing scopes – what needs to cover for Integration and UAT – By Feb 6
• Communication – inform participants of the testing time-lines and expectations, the outcome from hands-on on the solution on the test environment. – By Feb 11