Today is the end of a hectic week at PlusNet, but it is also a sad day as… two of our development team are leaving today. Andy, one of our Live Code Support Team (who fix many of the problems that are opened relating to code), is leaving today. We also have another development-type person leaving, but more of that later.

Gavin from QA starts us off today with this update:

“We’ve been a little short on numbers today in QA, with Matt B, Catherine, and Paul all on holiday.

The remaining members Matt R, Nigel, Gary and myself have all been working hard on the Madasafish project. While Steve as always has been in meetings.”

Shaun (See, I can spell it right ;)) brings us the Products update:

“The delightful task of compiling the EOD lies with me today (read: chasing all of the products team on what they’ve been doing and not really getting anywhere!)

Darren’s off today taking a well deserved break. Maria has been in London all day talking about 21CN. Dave has attended the weekly traffic management meeting, a product review meeting, looked at gaps in the signup and activations processes, started to write the latest blog, planning December’s network management configuration and some tickets. I’ve been looking at churn (still!), covering Darren’s daily duties, attended the weekly operations review meeting, various dashboard tweaks and additions and attended a strategy meeting.

Ian and Rich have clearly not done a lot as they haven’t given me an EOD

Have a great weekend!”

Mand brings us today’s Comms report:

“Welcome to your Comms catch up, where we have developments on the ‘cupcake’ front (confused? see yesterday)

Bob has been emailing customers regarding our shiny new VoIP trial, sorting out some hardware issues and handling relay policing on our mail platform.

Chris has been sat up in networks, dealing with problems and change controls, as well as making ‘cupcakes’ for him and me (we’re ruling out Bob and James from now on as they steadfastly refuse to return the favour).

I’ve been handling *LOTS* of Home Phone orders and personal tickets, as well as looking after internally raised problems. I’ve been frequenting the forums for a rare change today too.

James has been in lots of meetings today, and lamenting his lack of ‘cupcake’. He’s also been lurking around the forums, and has helped out our CSC colleagues by chipping in with some tickets.

Matt’s enjoying a well earned day off today.

To end our week, we would like to leave you with the following quote from a customer:

Some say he pwns Bob even whilst asleep
Some say he’s allergic to tea
Some say he’s actually a mad sheep
All we know is he’s called BOLOR.

(This amused us lots, yeah I know we’re strange! :))

Have a good weekend,
Mand”

Mark from Finance brings us today’s update:

“Finance

Today Kate has been working on the migration of Madasafish direct debits to PlusNet.

James has been working on inter-company reconciliation’s.

Mark has continued the handover of his work to our new team member - Alex.

The commercial team have submitted the strategic plan. It is the end of Bill’s first week ( Bill is the new commercial finance manager).

Tickets are looking OK going into the weekend.”

Riyaz from the CSC brings us their update:

“A very hectic first few hours but we managed to get on top of everything quickly.

Router configuration
New customers who have gone on-line and customers purchasing their own hardware calling for assistance in configuring their hardware or recently purchased routers.

Faults
Customers logging new connectivity issues with no specific pattern covering: Loss of sync/Intermittent sync and speed faults, also requesting/providing updates on ongoing issues

Hardware Updates
Still a big one generating a fair number of calls into the call centre, customers are extremely unhappy at the fact that the service is now on-line for them but they are in no position to start using the service. (Ed: P1 Problem)

Email/Other
Users requesting assistance in setting up their email accounts on their client program/troubleshooting and a slight increase in spam related calls coming in as well.

Sales/Direct Marketing
A fair few sales calls as a direct result of the recent promotions. Calls centred around the Home Phone service.”

Chris from Marketing is making us jealous…

“We’ve had a hectic day in Marketing working hard to meet print deadlines for an upcoming direct marketing campaign. We’ve also done muchos work on our Christmas promotion - which should be announced next week.

There’s been some PR work needed to get ready to promote the Xmas promo and I’ve been looking at some print opportunities for early next year.

I’m off to Prague early tomorrow - I’ll have a Staropramen for you all :)”

Lee brings us an update from the Networks team:

“Lee here from networks. Its been another busy week in the 24/7 world of running PlusNet’s networks and systems. It’s also been my first week of being the on call duty manager which has been interesting! Have to say it’s been generally quiet so far, hope it stays quiet for the weekend too!

Lots of work this week on the Madasafish project - everything from physical installs of fibres and network kit through to supporting the huge effort on the software front including the 24hr a day testing that’s been ongoing.

It’s been busy sorting out the last few issues following our cutover onto the new super-secure network last week. Still some further work to do, but we’re in a much better place now.

We’ve had our fair share of overnight work this week to remove some weaknesses from the legacy network, well done the lads for putting in the hours and doing the graveyard shifts!

Next week sees some changes to increase performance on our database platforms - so watch this space.

Weather forecast for tonight is -4! Ouch!”

Rupert from the Web Team

“The big focus for us at the moment is Madasafish, with everyone working on getting everything ship-shape and polished. I’ve been doing code reviews for the Dev team making sure there aren’t any strange things going on, and I have to say the quality of what has been written is very good (nothing less than I’d expect from our top developers).

But it’s not all MAAF for everyone, because Sam is working on the special Christmas promotion. More info about that in the days to come.

Well that’s all from me for today.”

As we all prepare for either a relaxing weekend, or a weekend of work, we’ll leave the final words on today’s End of Day to Graeme, one of our Development Team Managers is leaving PlusNet today after 5 years with the company.

“Well, everyone is flat out on projects, but I wouldn’t really know about that because all day I’ve had my feet on the desk while others subject me to ritual humiliation. Fair enough I think, as today is my last day at PlusNet…

I joined the company over 5 years ago as a Graduate Developer and I leave as a Development Team Manager. It has been a fantastic, inspirational journey. I still love the pace and enthusiasm of the projects and of the people around me. I’ve done well out of PlusNet because I work harder when I’m surrounded by people who work hard too. It brings out the best in me. I’ll miss that a lot.

I’ve seen the floatation of PlusNet plc, and then the takeover by BT. Some things change, but one thing has always stayed the same; the great people who work here.

What PlusNet’s customers and partners see, and occasionally comment on, is a company who care about the community and about being open and honest in all that it does; a company that listens and spends time in the forums with the people who matter. Well, I can tell y’all that the helpful and friendly attitude of the PlusNetters is not for show. It’s real, and it’s the reason I’ve been here so long and that I’m very sad to leave. If you think it’s great having a helpful person answer your question in the forums, imagine how great it is working with 220 of them! I can count the number of PlusNetters on one hand that, in 5 and a bit years, I haven’t got on with well enough to go for a beer. That’s pretty cool!

PlusNet has had it’s ups and downs publicly in the time I’ve been here, no denying it. But I’ve always been proud to be here. This company delivers and innovates at such an incredible pace that we’re bound to learn things the hard way from time to time. Sh*t happens, but it’s how it’s dealt with that really counts.

So, thanks to all my colleagues and friends here. I will really miss the good ship PlusNet and all who sail in her.

Bon voyage!

Graeme Fraser
Ex-employee, PlusNetter forever”

OK not quite the last word…

Have a good weekend and all the best to those leaving us today.

Colin

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This entry was posted by Colin Ogilvie on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 5:59 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a reply below. Pinging is currently not allowed.