Today I have been absolutely up to my eyes in project meetings (5), other meetings (1), conference calls (2), a project-related phone call and helping resolve software bugs. If anyone from the Health and Safety Executive is reading this, I was of course wearing safety goggles to protect my eyes.

I have also not had enough tea, so am erring on the side of slight grumpiness. However, it is just about home time, so I am not going to cry. Yet.

Ok. You’re here for the news and Plusnet gossip, right? Good. I’ll shut up and you read this… Here first up is Chris from the Customer Services Team.

It’s not been a great start for me today as I had all my Sheffield United, Rotherham United and Barnsley friends constantly reminding me about the blue and white wizards’ humiliating penalty shoot-out loss to Rotherham (we let them win as they need the cash).

I have been in the office since 8.30am and we have been taking a huge variety of calls – the top 3 issues we have been dealing with are as follows:

1. Billing and payments enquiries – Customers updating payment details and paying bills.
2. Package Enquiries – Customers making sure that they are on the correct package for their usage needs. Before they call they check their usage on View My Broadband Usage on the member centre.
3. Sales Enquiries – Lots of potential new customers calling to discuss our new product range and our new-look website.

Right, I am off home now to give Rotherham the beating they should be getting on FIFA08.

Bye!

Thanks Chris – over to Networks now to see what they’ve been up to today…here’s Matt:

Duncan has been looking into some new technologies. Jamie and The Steve have been building a new anti-virus server and improving CSC monitoring. Mike P has been monitoring the platform whilst looking cool in his sunglasses. Russell has been working on problems and asking himself….where did my golden locks go??

Neil, myself and Aaron have been working the Networks ticket pools and I’ve also been working on a few tasks. Kev has been working on the new JTN site and providing support for JTN and PAYH. Riz has been working on problems, Carl has been working on speed profiles and RADIUS and Denis has been documenting a new VPN solution. Last but not least, Sarah has been continuing the migration of servers to the new loadbalancers.

And that’s another day from Networks, until next time…
Matt

Good stuff. Now here is QA’s update, written by Catherine:

The might of QA reached Products today as Tommo took a telling off from Stephen for using ‘old’ Workplace – the old way viewing of customer details. He’s not the only one who uses it though, so perhaps there’ll be more to come

So what have the rest of the team been up to? I’ve been working with Networks and our Java team on some Apache changes and some upgrades to our Java platform. Gavin has been working away on yet more automation (apparently, robots are the future) and helping with a demo of some shiny new platform software we’re looking at. Nigel has once again been working with Rys and Co on the Secret Project (Ed: I am also managing the Secret Project and it’s very interesting!) and Paul has been working with our developers at QBurst on a tool to help us manage our products better. Last but not least, Gary has been wrangling with our test environment once more (Ed: Gary has also been helping fix bugs on the same project as me – and done a great job today!) and Matt B has gone home early before a rollout of many Things and also many Stuffs tomorrow morning (it would take too long to list!).

Thank you Catherine! Finally it’s over to Rys in Development:

I’m in the middle of the beta phase of my project, so my day was mostly spent integrating bug fixes and working with QA to make sure everything was OK. Bug squash time can be fun, honest!

Outside of project work, we had someone from iBuildings come and demo Zend Studio to some of the department, me included. Zend Studio is a platform and suite of tools for executing and monitoring PHP, to increase performance and make debugging easier. We’re evaluating it to see if it’ll save us time and money and maintenance headaches. It shows real promise, so we’ll be taking our time over the evaluation to make sure we come to the right decision.

Lastly, I’ve just chaired a meeting on our revision control strategy (RCS) where I put forward a vision for not only changing the underlying software, but changing the way we maintain our platform and develop projects using that software. It’s a complete shift in the way we do things, so it’ll require a corresponding shift in the way people think about using their RCS to develop. We also have to consider ongoing changes to our agile development methodology and our staging environment at the same time. It’s a really difficult problem to solve to everyone’s satisfaction, but I’m pushing us to get there.

Thanks Rys. The things that Rys talks about outside his project work mark a big-change in the way we’ll be working in Development – and it will be very much for the better. Keep up the good work Rys and bring us more news when you have it!

… so, another EOD passes by. I have just had another cup of tea, so am now completely content and ready to go home and hit the gym. I would rather sit in the pub – but that will not help me lose my nickname of Pot Belly Ali!

Until next time…

Ali McGowan

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This entry was posted by AliMcGowan on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 8:33 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD, PlusNet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.