Newsletter 2

Welcome to the second staff newsletter. Can you believe it is July already?
Farewell to another financial year. From all reports the last newsletter was a huge hit. Please keep the feedback coming, it's your newsletter, what would you like to see in it?

I have had two submissions for a name for our newsletter. The first from Rhys McKendrick was "Tales from the Nest" and the second from Lizzie Beaton, "Random Access". Has anyone got any others? If I can get a couple more we will put it to a vote and there will be a prize of two movie tickets for the person who comes up with the winning name.

Staff News
Amanda Ambrose, who is our person on the ground at CCH is taking a well earned break for a month. In the meantime Janet Small has moved back out to her old stomping ground to take over the testing for CCH. We hope Amanda has a fantastic holiday and comes back well rested. Mey Shia Khou, who is also based out at CCH is currently undertaking her mid-year uni exams, we wish her the very best of luck Speaking of Uni . . . .welcome back to Scott Sander who decided to go back to Uni this semester. Scott will be working with us during his mid-year break and hopefully next semesters timetable will allow us to see more of him in the second half of the year.

A Big welcome to Amy Yiu who is our newest recruit in Finance (at long last !). Amy is a recent graduate and will be starting next Monday, 5 July as Trainee Accountant. Amy is bright and enthusiastic and we look forward to having her as part of the team. Please make her feel welcome. Welcome back to Rhys McKendrick who has been taking a couple of days off down south

Welcome to Karen Bayley who has joined the test team working in the lab. Karen has an interesting background and has just completed her PhD in Environmental Studies.

On a sad note . . . this month we will farewell Tessa Cotterrell. Tessa will be leaving us on 31 July to pursue new and exciting projects. We anticipate that this is not the last we will see of Tessa and certainly we hope to be working with her again in the future. Anyone who has worked with Tessa knows what a pleasure it is to work with her and what a positive force she can be. We wish her the very best of luck with her new pursuits. More information will follow time/dates for farewell do.

From Tessa . . .

 "Not sure what to say about what I am going to be doing next....am joining the crazy world of contracting, hoping to learn a few new things and practise some older and favourite skills, meet new people and continue friendships with people I have worked with. I know that all sounds very cheesy, but I really do hope to be able to remain friends with all the great people at ATC (and I am not moving on to "bigger and better things" - just a different way of working)"

Today, we would also like to farewell Ken Shorten and Jennifer Tjie who have been working for us at the RTA for the past couple of months. Ken is hading back to Ireland, but promises that we will see him again in the future and Jennifer's contract is now complete so she will be moving on to brighter things. Both ken and Jennifer have done a great job representing Access and we wish them all the best of luck.

And, finally we would like to wish Larry Lambert a very Happy Birthday for Friday, 2nd July.

Testing Association
As some of you will know Access is in the process of setting up a professional association for test analysts. The aim of the association is to provide a professional network for test analysts of all levels to get to know other people in their field and be kept up to date with the latest developments in their industry.

At this stage the idea is to have a monthly event where tool vendors, other testers or companies that have an interest in the area of testing can present the "latest and greatest" information, techniques or tools. After the presentation there would then be an opportunity to everyone to relax, catch up with people they know over a couple of drinks and some nibblies. At this stage we are trying to get the word out to people who may be interested in joining. So if you are interested or know others who may be interested please let me know.

We are also trying to think of a name for the "association". Following are a couple of names that have been bandied around in the office, please let me know what you think, alternatively if you have any ideas please let me know:

* Australian Professional Testers Network
* Australian Association of Professional Test Analysts
* Australian Institute of Test Professionals
* Australian Federation of Test Analysts

We will be holding a brainstorming session after work on Thursday, 8 July. So mark in in your diary, we will organise some pizza's and refreshments. If anyone is interested in coming along and having some real input into this I would love to hear from you.

Events
Satyam Partnership Launch Last's night's event at the Park Hyatt in the Rocks to launch the partnership between Access and Satyam exceeded everyone's expectations. Satyam's worldwide president explained that Satyam are very selective in choosing partners and Access is the first such partnership in the Australian marketplace. The agreement was signed in the presence of the Indian Ambassador and the Indian Consulate General.

To understand the scale of Satyam they have offices in 46 countries, 101 of the Fortune 500 companies as clients, approaching 15,000 worldwide employees and are just about to sign a lease for 30,000 square metres of office space in Melbourne CBD (Access's entire office space in Crows Nest is 480 square metres).

Tony gave an excellent presentation on Access and our aim to simplify the testing process for our clients. From all reports this was well received. We now have some significant opportunities with some very large organisations including Coles Myer, Commonwealth Bank, BEA and Westpac. This is a significant step up to the next level for Access and we must all seize this opportunity with both hands. Satyam are also excited about the potential and have already been asking about whether we can fulfil some testing roles in Singapore.

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Education John Eklund is currently away in Greece presenting (or so he says, some of us secretly think he may be just lazing on the beach) at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE). The 5th ICICTE conference will seek to address the many challenges and new directions presented by technological innovations in educational settings. Providing keynote speakers, plenary sessions, workshops, and forums with a focus on integrating technology into all facets of education, the conference will provide participants with a forum for intensive interdisciplinary interaction and collegial debate. I am sure John will be pleased to report on his trip when he returns and answer any questions that you may have.

Education and Training
A big congratulations to both David May and Janet Small who both passed the SEA Certified Software Testing Professional (CSTP) Foundation Level Course with flying colours. Currently, we have Joel Espinosa and Lily Lo working through the foundation course and David May and Lily Lo working through the Advanced CSTP Course.

Superannuation contribution
Superannuation contribution for the last quarter of this financial year (April to June) has been paid. A remittance advice detailing your contribution will be either emailed or mailed out to you in the next few weeks.

New Job Approval Form

In the last few weeks, we have gradually rolled out the new Job Approval form to a few individuals in the company. From 1st July, all members of the delivery team (technical and usability) will be asked to use this form when they are scoping a new project.

Benefits
The new job approval form will allow us to understand key information about a project such as:

* project start & end dates
* project size
* level of resources
* and most importantly, profitability

In the past it has been difficult obtaining all this information because they resided in multiple systems, with many individuals. This form will have all key information available on the one document (radical idea, isn't it?).

Who should use this form?
Anyone who is scoping a project
When should this form be used?
This form is used at the scoping phase of the project. For those in
technical, it replaces the old word job costing document.
Can a project commence without an approved Job Approval Form?
In short, No.

The Job Approval form must be completed and signed by the scoper before it is submitted to the financial controller, Joanne for final approval. We are trialling the current format for the next 90 days. Feedback is welcome on how we can improve the form (please make them realistic!)

Melbourne

The office in Melbourne is going well, in fact we're now looking actively for larger premises where we can establish a testing laboratory . One of our core Sydney staff may soon be joining me in a permanent move to take up the test management role for that facility. Initially, it will include infrastructure for internet, multimedia and compatibility testing. Tony Bailey visited last week and we managed to meet a few old (TLF and Nelson Thomson) and new clients (Capgemini, Sensis and Satyam). We also met with Borland in Melbourne and talked about the partner relationship that Roland Perpic established for ATC recently. I'll be meeting with some of their sales guys soon to take that further and let you know what happens in the next newsletter.

The week before that I attended the CMMI Industry Forum conference, organised by Software Engineering Australia (SEA). It was very interesting and a few new leads came out of the networking too, plus a really nice lunch. CMMI appears very well suited to smaller IT organisations, more so perhaps than other mechanisms like CMM or Adaptive. It's more scalable and tends to be cheaper and easier to implement. Have a look at SEA's website for information - www.softwaremark.com.au

We're currently working with NAB and their procurement area to establish a professional services arrangement. This would be a long-term relationship with ATC as preferred supplier for testing services to all NAB Data Centres; there are at least five, responsible for various streams of development. The process is long and rigorous but very promising and could see us grow very rapidly if approved.

Next week Natalie Kerschner is visiting and we have planning sessions with The Le@rning Federation and e-Works (Flexible Learning Toolboxes). Both are existing clients for whom we've largely been doing Acceptance Testing. recent discussions have agreed in principle for ATC to take on all Conformance Testing too; this is akin to a full System Test of every product. The objectives of the session will be to:

* Clarify the scope and responsibilities
* Estimate the workload, i.e. what's in the pipeline
* Examine how to ensure continuity of work
* Begin preparation of a Master Test Plan to define scope, test
approach, responsibilities and testing management procedures
* Agree on reporting requirements/clarify procedures

Yesterday, I had a beer (plus a roadie) with Thommo (Andrew Thomson), ex test manager, etc who's now with Infosys and visiting a Melbourne client for a week or two. He's involved in process improvement services. He's also wearing a suit now which didn't happen too often at ATC. Report: Load testing by Eran Segev

Some of you have already had the exciting experience of being part of a load test. For those of you who have not been that fortunate, let me briefly describe what load testing is all about, and tell you a little about what is going on in that arena at the moment.

Load testing is the generic name for several types of tests that involve generating load on systems by emulating a large number of users. These tests are typically developed by using a tool to record the activities of a typical user, and then replaying multiple instances of the recording to emulate the activities of many concurrent users. As you probably suspect, it is not nearly as simple as that in real life, but that is basically what is done. Within load testing, there are several types of tests. The most common one is a performance test. In a performance test, the response times are measured to see how the system performs under increasing load, and whether an acceptable response time is still achieved under the target load. Stress testing loads the system more and more, until it breaks. The goal of stress testing are to find the breaking point of the system, but also to see how it fails - does it do it gracefully, sending an informative error message, or does it simply shut down?

One of the main difficulties with load testing is that after a load test has been designed, scripted and executed, the results need to be analysed. This task can be quite complex, as it requires collating information from the load test and from elements of the system (computers, network, software) and sift through it all to find a pattern that would indicate at the source of a performance problem. While it is quite difficult, it is also very interesting especially for the more technically apt (thou shalt not say geek!).

At Access, we use several different tools according to the customer's needs and financial considerations. The main tools we use are LoadRunner from mercury, QALoad from Compuware, and OpenSTA, which is an open source tool. Two major projects that are about to start are a load test of an employee evaluation and career path development application for Deloitte, and a load test of a brokering system for Resimac. A load test of a publishing management system for CCH has recently ended with CCH being very happy with the results (there were actually some problems discovered, so the happiness is at the accuracy of the results and the detail of the recommendations). A load test of an internal Macquarie University system is being conducted at this time, and is planned to end the end of July.

If you wish to learn more about load testing, feel free to contact me on 9467 5057 or erans@testingcentre.com

Reminder: Taking Annual Leave

If you are planning to take annual leave during the year, please make sure you give the company sufficient notice so we can plan around your absence. This is particularly important ifyou are in a delivery role. Don't forget to get your leave form approved by your manager!