Newsletter 5

Welcome to the “Friday the 13th” newsletter.

So where does the superstition about Friday the 13th come from? Anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown will know that Friday the 13th was the day that Phillip the Fair of France ordered the arrest and execution of all members of the Knights Templar, which eventually bought about their downfall.

On searching the web www.about.com gave these facts about the number 13:

• If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die within the year.
  The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894).
• Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor.
• If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names).
• There are 13 witches in a coven.
  

Quote of the week
"If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time then both are useless."
Darryl F Zanuck

Staff News
I would like to welcome the following people to Access, all have started with us in the past fortnight:

Andrew Kang, Amata Sengchansavang and Asad Khan will be working in the lab.
Dharmesh Saha started with us this week on a 6 month contract with UNSW working on the implementation of their new e-learning content management system.

Adriana Marrone, has started with us today and has joined the Amazon project down at MLC with Linda Milne. Adriana should be with us for the next 6 months at least.

We have also had Geoff Beardsmore working with us for a few days a Sienna and we are hope Geoff will be joining us on a longer term project with Optus starting in the next few days.

We welcome all these new people to Access and hope they will enjoy working with us.

Melbourne Update by Mark Bishop
Our new Melbourne is planned to be operational at 28 Drummond Street by 31 August, just in time to start testing e-Works Series 7 Toolbox.

There's a slight hold-up at the moment while we wait for final approval of our lease application. Meanwhile I've been meeting network infrastructure and telecommunications service providers to organise our voice, data and server requirements. That's a time consuming, nerve racking, sometimes painful experience but I'm a bit short on volunteers.

Susan Cearns, who started as a permanent employee on site at The Le@rning Federation (TLF), is doing a great job. The feedback from our client is very good. On Monday we'll also have another new permanent starting in Yasmeen Barodawala. Also, I have over 60 applications for a permanent Editorial Reviewer role to meet TLF's requirements. Initially, all new resources for TLF are starting on site with training delivered by the client. Later on, they'll move to the new laboratory and are likely to be joined by additional casual resources to pick up the testing load.

On the subject of time consuming, the NATA accreditation work I mentioned last week is nearing completion of this initial phase for the project. By the end of this four week period of work we will have generated a repository and directory structure for all the documentation about policy and procedures required to meet the ISO17025 quality standard for a testing laboratory.

It will be known as the Quality Management System (QMS).

In that repository will be an Operations Manual and all the artefacts we currently have that describe our procedures, templates, checklists and forms. In addition, we will have produced an action list resulting form gap analysis to determine what else must be produced for the QMS in order to meet the certification requirements of NATA. With that information we will educate staff, implement the QSM and begin using it whilst closing the gaps. After a period we will review the status before inviting NATA to conduct an evaluation - more about that process in later newsletters.

From the Sales Desk, by Roland Perpic
Compliance Testing
The reality is that off shoring development for a number of our clients is a real proposition as they look to ways to reduce project costs. Some clients will look to off shore subsidiaries where as others will look towards external organisations to outsource offshore.

How does this impact testing industry is Australia?

It is a two edged sword. Part of testing, Unit and SIT will logically follow development. This is a loss to the Australian Test Industry. On the up side, an emerging new cycle of Compliance Testing (CT) that validates specification with delivered product is increasing as a project requirement. Larger than conventional UAT, CT ensures specifications are adhered too and compliance of deliverables meet.

A number of clients recognise the value of testing locally and this is an opportunity that as a company Access is well positioned to assist. When first embarking on an offshore initiative, clients can continue to rely on Access to validate the quality of the products delivered abroad.

Amusing Observations By Peter Wright
"For those of us working in the City or to be more precise Surry Hills, some unusual things can occur when walking to and from Central and also walking around the local streets.

The other day after having done some shopping, on my way back to the office I noticed, standing at the lights, someone tapping me on the shoulder. I instantly thought it must be someone I knew and turned around to see who it was. When I turned around everyone gave me a "strange' look. No-one wanted me. As I walked a bit closer to the office, I noticed 2 "Young Teenagers" playing the same trick on all the people walking up the street.

Believe me, they received mixed reactions. At least the people sitting on the side of the street watching all this, thought it was hysterical. It will be interesting to see what can happen next!

As an aside, street buskers can vary too. One very talented person plays "Chinese" Music and manipulates a string puppet to dance in time. On the other end of the scale we have a person who sits on a corner and plays a radio (which by the way does not properly pick up the signal). I wonder where the talent lies.

Lily’s Lab Report
As some of you may have noticed that we have quite a number of new testers joining out team us in the past few weeks. I have created a Testers Training Manual which basically contains instructions from setting up the machines, conducting the testing and writing up the final report. I have printed out the manual and placed them in folders around the lab.

For the testers coming into the office, feel free to have a read through the manual and hopefully it will shed some light on the mysterious way we do testing here in the office. The manual is not intended as a be all and end all of testing, it is just a guide to the way we do testing here in the lab. The aim of this manual is create a standard and uniform way of testing and reporting as well as a few hints on how to make your work a little bit easier with the help of a few hidden tools we have around the office.

If you have any questions, comments or even just information on a particular topic which has not been covered in the manual, drop me an email and I will try to update the procedures.

Greetings from Optus Chatswood, by Janet Small
Ian and I are working on the Functional Specifications for DSL SIPS. If you are wondering what DSL SIPS is, spare a thought for us as we grapple with such jargon as LAR LOLO, LOLIG and OIE TAD. Luckily the Optus people are very friendly and helpful. Our mastery of Optus-speak is improving daily.

DSL SIPS is the ordering system for DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Subscriptions, which is a type of Internet connection. Optus are streamlining and improving the existing ordering processes. We are currently wading through masses of documentation and coping with toilet passes and lack of a printer connection.

The hot tip for Optus is that the 5th floor vending machine Item 116 will sell you a packet of Red Rock Deli Sweet Chilli and Sour Cream potato chips for 50cents. Thanks to Lily Lo for this tip.
Once the functional specs are written we will be writing test cases and then testing the system. This should be a breeze because the functional specs are sure to be impeccable!