I am extremely scared to say that we are half way through the semester, like really scared. Business case and Risk report is due this week with a lot of work being pulled by all team members. One week to meet and greet the Clients which is exciting and Thank you for the prestige award of BLOG OF THE WEEK. I think Jake, we could almost stop blogging now and possibility that we would still win at the end. The golden bunny was cleared through quarantine when travelling back to Werribee. The Shininess of it is blinding me every time I sit at my desk lol.
Anyways, our business cards are on in the process of printing at this moment. Got a fantastic deal that will cost us $12.30 each. Great customer service at Hoppers Crossing then Springvale and she gave me all the options for the same price such as the different card types. Stay tuned for the unveiling of the cards at the next meeting. Just in time for the meet and great next week.
Well the business case document so far has been successful approach to it. We divided the document up to each team members and made a due date for Monday which worked well. Loads of drafts had been sent to Jake and the only main thing to remember for next time is the Attended Audience, we must speak about the managers of the consultancy firm rather than the client. Small hiccup but quickly fixed.
I believe I am giving myself too much work to do and should look at handballing some work to other team members. Example, the business case I think I have spent more time on it then all other team members put together which is not good. I had given it a go this week by ringing up Vishan to ask him to review the document. Saved me a lot of time and probably more effective too, just not too good when coming to editing.
Well we spoke about a new approach to developing the docs when producing the release version. I spoke last week about producing a PDF file so that formatting would not change when coming to printing or different versions of Word. Well we decided against this due to the quality of images for the documents were turning out very pixelated. There was no issues with formatting this time around so thumbs up anyway.
Before the our meeting with Jake, i'd thought it might be an idea to get started on the function requirement specification document, just to stay ahead of schedule. It is going to be difficult in how to approach the document because there is no way that we can divide sections up but might be able to give a specific section of the system to each team member. I think I'll play by ear.
Little worried about Alex this week, she is looking extremely stressed and just hoping she is ok. Towards the end of the week, things seem to improve which is fantastic to see and said for her to tell me if things are getting a little rough to tell me and I can sort something out. Monday, she asked me if I could run the client meeting because she didn't feel up to it and I was yeah for sure. Thought it was a fantastic experience as I had never actually taken charge of a formal meeting before. I think did pretty good for a first time, well no one has told me otherwise lol. After the meeting she came and thanked me for doing that for her is great but as I have said before, I hope that everyone is happy and then things run smoothly.
Client meeting
For the first time we tried separate project meetings, but each project meeting one after another to help out the client. Just amazing how much easier it is, we can ask whatever we need and still compensated for overlapped questions. Before the client meeting there were a few questions that all projects had that was similar. We divided them up into different teams but I have a feeling, one of the questions was asked 3 times, just speaking with the other teams after the meetings. Not sure why this was the case but oh well, our team did the correct thing. One of the questions was about the idea of a centralised user account database. The client was against it due to each of our systems have different types of users and not any common users. They also wanted to keep it as simple as possible for us which I guess we can't complain.
Throughout the meeting, I asked the client what exactly what the system will record from the user exactly. I can't exactly remember what he said but the answer he gave was not what I intended to be the answer. What he said was what he thought was correct and I'm sure it was but not really what we needed. So we need to develop a better technique for next time. Alex has suggested that we build a prototype of exactly what we mean and then the client can picture what we mean and exactly say we don't need this or we need this as well. I am feeling really good about the success for next week from this and the experience I have learnt already is just unbelievable.
Booked in for next Client meeting for Monday at 4:00pm at the clients Head Office. Will be taken around on a tour of the office and possibility of visiting a career house. Not sure what to expect to be honest but sure it should be interesting.
Seminar
This week's seminar was about Risk Management. Some of the main points were that every project has risk of some sort to it. Example used was the Formula One Grand Prix which is amazing how much you can relate to it. Some of the risks such as death, injury, damage to car, risks around the corners, risk to spectators, pit crew, officials etc. There is always a planned list of risks and strategies involved to reduce risk. Example with the F1, they changed the design of the car for more safety. Also ways to monitor, ensuring that risks are less likely to occur. Most of it I had learnt in Project Management but was good to have a reiteration of it, like always.
Other News
My assignments are all fairly spaced out with the Business Case Today, Network Security Due today and my Service Oriented Computing due in 2 weeks time so no need to stress too much. Also have a Unit test for Java EE next Thursday which is not much fun. No other real issues with Uni.
Been doing some work for Neil Brand on his Apple Sever. His sever is running a mail sever which is running 100% all the time. What is happening is that there is emails sent to the sever because of the domain name but they are incorrect address. Such as a@alisante.com.au or abc@alisante.com.au. What is happening is that the queue is all full and is pending while trying to send these email and cannot find the destination so it wastes processing time. I have to find out a way of fixing this problem through the week and also next week will be meeting Neil in person.
Not sure if I spoke about updating my personal site in previous weeks but I will this week. I have officially updated the site into better segregated sections and more content. Thought it might be important for when sending resumes to graduate positions and other work. If you have not visited my site, please go it at http://lukejpocock.googlepages.com/
Half way through the semester and thought really there would be more heat on us for IE so far but I'm sure the next 4 weeks are going to be tough so I won't talk. Lol Thanks for another Week of Blogging, till next time.
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