Access Newsletter

Newsletter 6

2004-08-27T13:36:00.000+10:00

Spring has Sprung – Jodi Reid
Can anyone believe it will be spring next week? For those of us lucky enough to be in Sydney the weather has been sensational. I guess spring is about clearing those cobwebs away and starting afresh. It’s a time of new beginnings and unlimited potential. And that is the feeling I get about Access at the moment. There are so many opportunities to be had, it’s a very exciting time.

In this newsletter Tony Bailey will report on some of those opportunities. Janet Small will give us another update from Optus at Chatswood, Mark Bishop will provide us with all the news from Melbourne. Roland Perpic will report from the Sales Desk and we will have the usual staff updates.

Enjoy

CEO’s Report – Tony Bailey
To say its been a busy 6 weeks is the understatement of the year! I‘ve found myself in Melbourne Canberra, and the gold coast which is why I haven’t prepared a message for the past 6 weeks and why most of you have not seen a lot of me in the last while– my apologies.

That said, the good news is that our goal of capturing and professionalizing the testing industry in Australia is growing and developing at a rapid rate.

On the company front, we have found a permanent location in Melbourne and Mark and team will be busy setting this up in the coming weeks (more on this below). We will be moving half of our Sydney lab to Melbourne reflecting the fact that the majority of our lab work comes from Melbourne customers. We will still continue to provide testing services in the Sydney lab and should be able to get to the stage where we can balance work between the 2 locations. Natalie has made the brave move to Melbourne and we wish her well in her new position.

On the client front, this week we were appointed to another period panel contract with the federal government for Australian Government Information Management Office. This takes the number of period panel contracts we are on to 7 and demonstrates our credibility in the govt. sector. In additon to the one just mentioned the Contracts we have so far are:

Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs
Department of Urban Services - Canberra Connect
Australian Government Information Management Office
Australian Taxation Office - Testing Panel for usability testing services
Australian Taxation Office - Marketing Panel for market survey
TAFE Tasmania

Our work within our existing client base such as MLC, the RTA, Sydney University, Optus, The learning Federation, Hothouse, UNSW and CCH, is growing, which is a direct reflection on the quality work you are providing to our clients. In addition, in the last 3 weeks we have been approached (unsolicited) by St George, NineMSN, Telstra Bigpond, Citibank Singapore and Kaz (soon to be Telstra) to provide testing services in the coming months. This grade A client list is indicative of the position we are now claiming in the Australian marketplace and the opportunities we hope to give you all in the future – and long may it continue.

On the partnership front we have commenced our regular sales meetings with the Satyam team to exploit the 5 year testing partnership we have signed for the Asia-Pacific region. I will be in Melbourne next week to attend the launch of Satyam’s new development centre – which will be Satyam’s largest development centre outside of India. The honorable Marsha Thompson – the Victorian Minister for ICT will open the centre with Satyam’s worldwide Chairman. There are a number of other strategic initiatives underway which will further cement our position as the leader in the testing field, including testing partnerships with IBM and CSC and others I am unable to disclose at this time, but will be able to in future months. Watch this space!

For a while now we have been trying to find a way to do leading edge research and development into testing methodologies and world’s best practice. We have come up with the idea of a Centre of Excellence for Testing (which we drive for our purposes) which would have government, industry and educational involvement. I am in deep discussion with the Victorian and Federal Governments about this idea and although we are still midway through discussions the Victorian government in particular like this notion.

Needless to say you can understand why it has been busy but you can feel confident that our position in the marketplace and the opportunities we are creating are already taking us a long way towards achieving our goal. The pace will accelerate in the coming months and quarters and as always we are only as good as the quality of our people, so keep up the great work!

Newsletter Contributions – Jodi Reid
If you have anything you would like to contribute the deadline for the next newsletter will be close of business, Thursday, 9 September. We would love to hear from you people on client sites – tell us about the project you are working on – or anything interesting about the company you are working within. I had an interesting visit to MLC this week and found the project we are working on and culture of the organisation fascinating. Linda Milne has promised to write something for the next newsletter so I wont go into too much detail, but I think you would be surprised to find how interested other people would be to hear about what you are working on.

From the Sales Desk

Each day I hear a new fact or see a statistic about software quality. Some are quite memorable and some just make me laugh.

Today, I was at a client site reviewing a project. The developer proudly stated that the quality of the code he produced was “better than the average programmer”. This person had to be one of the most disorganised people I have met. With developers like that, there will be no shortage of work for test professionals.

An interesting paper was tabled the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC’04) that was jointly prepared by LaTrobe and Swinburne Universities titled “A Preliminary Survey on Software Test Practices in Australia”.

Some of the key findings reported:
* 70% or private organisations adopted a structured test methodology with government reporting a significantly lower percentage
* Black box test case derivation is widely used
* Organisations are “not allocating realistic budget to testing”
* “There was a substantial satisfaction among organisations that hired external testers…. We predict that the future hiring of testers may become even more popular”
* A major issue was stopping rules and metrics
* Deficiencies in existing published software standards

Melbourne Activities – Mark Bishop
Finally, we have a lease for our new office at 28 Drummond Street, Carlton - well, actually we have one that's ready to be signed. It just needs a review by the Texan. That'd be Tony Bailey (CEO) - anyone north of Mexico has gotta be a Texan!

Anyway, while that formality is taken care of we've started organising the infrastructure. Tomorrow I'm supervising Telstra while they connect our ISDN services. Meanwhile we're trying to beat them into shape so they'll connect our data service sooner than 9 September. Interestingly we get what they call BDSL, a connection straight to the Telstra backbone (no, they're not entirely spineless). In contrast, ADSL goes to Bigpond which then goes to the backbone. So, our service will cut out a layer of communication and infrastructure. That means we get faster, more reliable service with better guarantee of availability. For example, on ADSL Telstra would have a service level of 24 hour response to an outage whereas (I think) BDSL guarantees 12 hours, or something like that.

Our new phone number range will be 9669 1700 - 1799 when we get up and running.

The schedule was to have all infrastructure in place by 30 August and be operational by start of business, 5 September. But, some unavoidable delays have put that at risk. Nevertheless, we're working hard to meet the schedule as far as possible. Thanks go to Rhys McKendrick in particular who has a lot to do, organising supply and installation of hardware lie a new server and PC's plus relocation of existing test platforms from the Sydney lab. All that while maintaining IT services for Sydney, not helped by the server outage this week.

Over the last couple of weeks I've also been trying to hire a permanent staff member to take up the role of Editorial Reviewer for our TLF work. That's proving to be very difficult - I had more than 70 applicants but only 2 proved to be worth an interview by the client. Unfortunately, neither passed the test. Both candidates were required to edit a small piece of text to discover all of the grammar, spelling, context and consistency errors. They each found most of the problems (about 80% I'd say) but not all of them, and they needed to find all if they are to be regarded as true editors. This is a standard that is very important to the client. It didn't help that one of the applicants had typo's in their resume. We see that all too often in the recruitment process - people who apply for testing roles but can't deliver a sound document are likely to be short listed out of the game pretty quickly in this industry. So, the search goes on.

If you know a person with 2-3 years print editing experience and sound knowledge of multimedia technology, preferably for online learning products please let me know.

Next week, aside from the ongoing saga of getting the new office going, I'm looking forward to a big function with Satyam at the Park Hyatt - whoo hoo! It's their grand opening for 30,000 m2 of office space here in Melbourne to cater for 300 staff, establishing the largest Satyam development centre outside of India. Considering they have around 16,000 employees worldwide that says something about their role and commitment in Australia and the potential for our testing partner relationship. The Chairman of Satyam and the VIC Minister for Information and Communication Technology will join me for cocktails.

Yasmeen Barodawala says “Hello”
(Yasmeen joined Access Testing Centre as a permanent employee last week):
"My last job?: I was a Test Analyst at Atex Media Command (AMC). I used to do all types of manual and automated testing for this Development house which created software for the publishing industry. I have been doing basic sanity testing, regression, production, workflow and performance test on the manual side of testing. In the automated world I have written test scripts as well as scheduled running of the scripts regularly using a Test tool called Test Complete.

Now?: I'm at The Le@rning Federation (TLF) and am basically doing conformance testing. Working with Learning Objects can be fun. It is very graphical.

My challenges?: It's a very fun as well as challenging role since I have to test Learning Objects that can have issues which are not only to be reported but a potential solution needs to be provided. This is extremely different to the client-server environment I used to work in my previous role."

Greetings from Optus Chatswood – Janet Small
(Janet and Ian Graham have been working at Optus for the past month)
Things have been getting tense at Optus as the deadlines for our AFS (Allocated Functional Specifications) fall due.

It's a problem being so busy working when the Chatswood Shopping Mecca is a few blocks away and there is no time for shopping!

Ian and I had a walkthrough of our documents on Monday with the Project Manager, Information Architect and Senior Technical Writer. The feedback on our work was excellent and very encouraging. We are now tidying up for the "walkthrough" with the "business people" who do not seem very clear about what they want. Oh well.

We are still coping with one toilet pass and no printer connection. We are also coping with incompatible versions of Word. I emailed my AFS to the project manager who has Word 97. She opened my document and concluded that an insane person had drawn the diagrams.

Staff News
Since the last newsletter we have had Chris Geagea, Jo-Ming Ong and John Nguyen all start as part of our lab testing team.

Leeanne Pellow started with us last week. Fingers crossed Leeanne will be working within Hothouse, conducting testing there 2-3 days per week.

A big welcome to all those fresh faces and we sincerely hope you enjoy working with Access.

Last Friday the Sydney office said farewell to Natalie Kerschner. Nat has taken the huge step of moving to Melbourne to assist Mark Bishop in getting that up and running. We wish her the best of luck in this position.

Welcome back to Lizzie Beaton. Lizzie took a couple of days off, but is now back working at Sydney University.

Alison Ang is now working down with our team of people at Optus North Sydney and from all reports making a great impression with the client.

Happy Birthday to Alex Arvelo for 7 September.

Position Vacant
Background: In the Crows Nest office we have a kitchen roster. Groups of people are rostered on weekly to ensure that the kitchen is kept clean the dishwasher is put on at night. Natalie moving to Melbourne has created a problem for Group 2 who is sorely missing her this week. Following is their solution.

Position Vacant

A vacancy exists for a cleaner to become part of our great team. The areas that this position covers are the staff kitchen and testing lab. The hours per week will vary, as this is a casual position.

Knowledge of current Dishwasher Stacking Practices Essential

Desirable Skills Include:

Team Player
Good Knowledge of Standard ISO 0294675000 –
Kitchen Hygiene Practices
Ant eradication qualifications and supporting evidence

Formal applications, including three available referees who may be contacted for the above position, should be forwarded by Friday, 3 September to:

John Eklund - johne@testingcentre.com
Lisa Herrod - lisal@testingcentre.com

Newsletter 5

2004-08-13T12:42:00.000+10:00

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!

Newsletter 4

2004-08-02T09:03:00.000+10:00

Phew! What a busy fortnight it has been. There has been so much going on, it’s hard to keep track of it all. Our search continues for staff and a permanent office in Melbourne and Mark Bishop has been oing a great job with this.
Joanne Phan has been working on the implementation of our new job costing and web-based timesheet system. A few people have been trialling the new timesheet system and from all reports it seems to be a success. You will hear more from Jo about this in the coming week as we would like everyone to start using the system as soon as possible. We have multiple projects starting in the next week with Optus, MLC, University of NSW, DET NSW and the University of Sydney – all requiring the recruitment of people. We think that we have found everyone required for these projects, but we will have more work starting up in the next couple of weeks. So if anyone knows of experienced testing staff looking for work please get them to send their CV’s to me – jodir@testingcentre.com.
In the past couple of weeks we have also been working intensively on our NATA Accreditation rocess. Mark Bishop has been working on this along with Liz Mataja who is a Melbourne consultant ngaged specifically to assist with the mountains of documentation and processes required to achieve the SO 17025 accreditation.
Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this Newsletter. In this issue, Roland Perpic brings s a report from the sales desk, which we hope will become a regular feature. Chao Luan has submitted an nteresting contribution on technology, Peter Wright is becoming our resident "Greeny" with this weeks nvironment report and Mark Bishop gives us an update on what’s going on down in Melbourne. More contributions are required people. Tell us about the job you are working on, the holiday ou have just been on or any other exciting developments you would like to share with your co-workers.

Staff News
Today we farewell Tessa Cotterrell. Since joining Access in 2001 Tessa has become on of the most wellknown (and loved) members of the testing team. She has worked in many roles, including managing the est
lab in the Crows Nest office, onsite at Sydney Uni, CCH and the RTA among others. In each of her roles Tessa has been dedicated, reliable and an absolute pleasure to work with. Our clients love her as uch as we do, nearly everywhere she has worked we have had to struggle with the client to get them to elease her.
We don't think this is the last we see of Tessa and hope that after she is though experimenting ith new roles and technologies she will come back to work with us again. On behalf of the Access management team I would like to thank Tessa for her ever-present positive attitude and all of her efforts over the ast 3 years.
We will be having a farewell lunch for Tessa in the second week of August and I will send out ore details, as the time gets closer. Please join me in wishing Tessa the very best of luck (not that she will eed it) in her new role.

Welcome back to Amanda Ambrose. Amanda has just come back to her post at CCH after about a month off, visiting the relo’s overseas
In the last fortnight we have a couple of new people to add to the Access team. I would like to welcome Simon Ng and John Tan to the lab team. Tuan Pham has joined David May and Richard Martin down at Optus, North Sydney. At Optus, Chatswood we welcome Ian Graham who will be working with Janet Small there for the next few weeks at least.
We also welcome both Yasmeen Barodawla and Susan Cearns to our Melbourne team. Susan starts with us on Monday and Yasmeen on 16 August. Yasmeen and Susan will be working out of The earning Federation offices until our office is fully operational in early September.
Larry and I have been conducting interviews for the past 2 weeks and this should result in another 3-4 people starting with us next week in various roles. The RTA’s correspondence Workflow project winds up today. From what I hear Tessa Cotterrell, Lizzie Beaton and Chao Luan have all done a great job on this project. Lizzie will be heading out to take up her place at Sydney University again for a while. In between she will be having a well earned rest for about a week starting next Thursday. Chao will start working with Eran Segev on a load testing project for Resimac who is a new client.

Melbourne Update by Mark Bishop
The Melbourne office will soon be moving from the luxury of Level 50, 101 Collins Street to slightly less salubrious digs. This is largely a response to increased volume of work from the Le@rning Federation (TLF), a long term client for ATC. It's also to meet our commitment to them that testing can and will be done better if co-located with the client. What does that mean? Well, we're very close to leasing space for a new test laboratory not far away from TLF's office in Melbourne CBD. Also, we're hiring local staff to take up testing and editorial review roles.
Yasmeen Barodawala will start with ATC on 16 August, taking up a permanent position. Also, subject to some final paper work, Susan Cearns will take up another permanent role starting this Monday, 2 August.
Both people will initially work on site at TLF to be trained by the client about their testing and reporting requirements. This week an advertisement will be placed on SEEK and MyCareer for apermanent Editorial Reviewer to join the team. And, Natalie Kerschner is succumbing to the temptation of Melbourne's shopping, restaurant and quality coffee (mostly the shopping though) to move down permanently and take up the test leadership responsibilities for a team that will be dedicated to TLF's testing requirements. Natalie's coming down next week to sort out some personal accommodation, have a look at the (potential) new office and meet the new starters.
The plan is to have the new lab up and running before 4 September. That's because we have a significant volume of work starting then for e-Works, formerly DET Victoria, and their Toolbox Series 7. Similar to TLF, we have committed to transfer all testing to Melbourne. It will provide better, more responsive service and eliminate some of the communication issues that often occur when organisations are geographically challenged. We'll soon be recruiting locally for those roles too. The prospects are that by mid September we should have 6-8 testers plus myself in the new lab. By the end of this calendar year I wouldn't be surprised to see us at 8-10 just for those two clients. Logistically, this is all a bit of a nightmare, trying to find a suitable property, get the infrastructure laid on and organise staffing. Something else that's making life interesting here is our application to National Association of Testing
Authorities (NATA) for accreditation against ISO 17025. We have hired an experienced project manager to work with me and prepare a Quality Management System for ATC. The purpose and objectivesof the Quality Management System and the ensuing Operations Manual is to:
Centralize and consolidate the Organization’s Quality Management System Policy and procedures
Provide a mechanism for communications and transparency across the organisation to promote and ensure the quality management system is accessible and understood by all personnel Establish a foundation level for NATA accreditation and future quality process improvements Provide a mechanism that ensures a quality system for the scope of activities
Provision of a quality system that generates technically valid results Guidance and assurance of the quality of the organization activities and test deliverables
This is an important goal for ATC, something we must do to assure quality of our work and also to remain competitive in the market place. The industry is showing signs that clients are more inclined now than ever before to choose their service providers based on demonstrated competency. Our involvement with NATA and also the Certified Software Testing Professionals (CSTP) training programme for permanent staff, delivered by Software Engineering Australia (SEA), is a means to that end. In September NATA will review our system and how we conduct quality management. We'll then have the opportunity to closeany gaps with the aim to achieve accreditation before the end of this year.

From the Sales Desk, by Roland Perpic
The quote of the week came from a banking executive (I won't name the bank).

The statement form the banking executive struck me. With Microsoft Windows 2000 the ratio of developers to tester analysts was 2:1 with Microsoft XP the ratio was 1:1. This was the first project that I am aware that testing exceeded development. A number of well delivered projects over the last couple of weeks, bouquets from our international
colleagues:
"I'd like to extend my thanks to you and Access Testing for the usability testing of the RAP project scenarios. The testing performed last week was thorough and professional ...." Air New Zealand
And . . .
"After "decrypting" access' log files I was able to locate the problematic requests in several of the sigmalink log files. They all showed the same error. At this point I actually have to congratulate access for the accurate appraisal of the issue." "This helped a lot!" Empolis (Germany)
Keep up the great work.

Yet More Environmental Gossip!! By Peter Wright
"National Tree Planting Day 25/7/04 Feedback"
From what I have heard from the Planet Ark Group, there was approximately "1 million trees" planted across Australia. This is really a step in the right direction. I attended one of the sites for my local council and I must say it was a bit disappointing. The tree planting activities were planned to only last 2 hours, there was only about 10 people present, the average age of attendees was 40+ (where were the "Teenagers")and there were NO TREES TO PLANT? (All we could plant were shrubs and grasses). Taking all this in to account it was still good to be able to do something for our environment. I just hope that next year, "National Tree Planting Day" in our local area takes on a new image.

Chao's Sites of Interest.
Environmental Matters
To continue on with Peter Wright's green theme from the last newsletter, I'd like to introduce an organisation called Greenfleet (www.greenfleet.com.au), what it attempts to do is offset your carbon dioxide and other green house effects caused by cars, households and air travel, by planting trees. There's a nifty little "Tree Totaller" that calculates your annual greenhouse emissions and equates that to the amount of trees required to offset these emissions. You can then elect to donate money to plant the trees. As a rough estimate of the costs, I generate 12.91 _tonnes_ of green house emissions a year (49 trees), based on having 1 car and having a household of 4. This equates to a reasonable amount of $115.29 for the year. This is quite a small amount of money to spend actually, and it'll go a long way to protecting our environment. I for one will be contributing to this worthy cause.

FireFox.
As you know, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is very insecure and there are a lot of exploits that use the security holes within IE to compromise your computer. Even if you are patched up to the lastest IE version, you can still be annoyed by browser hijacking and popup ads. It has come to the point that even CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) advises users not to use Internet Explorer. Even Slate, a part of the MSN Network (owned by Microsoft) advises users not to use IE. (http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/#ContinueArticle)
There is an alternate browser out there called the Mozilla, the newer Netscape browsers use the code from the open source group in their browser. However, previously you had to install the whole Mozilla suite, which included the browser itself, as well as the email and news client. This is where FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) comes in. Firefox is just the browser component of Mozilla.

Listed below are the additional features Firefox over Internet Explorer.

* Slim, unbloated application
Firefox is designed to be slim and unbloated, any feature you want can be added on top of the browser via Extensions (see below). In terms of speed, Firefox takes about as much time to load as IE does. (This is even with part of IE already being loaded already in Windows!)

* In Built Pop-up blocking
Don't be bothered by pop-up ads no more. Legitimate pop-up windows can be configured to pop-up automatically, or you can allow pop-ups on a per-popup basis.

* Tabbed Browsing.
Instead of opening multiple Internet Explorer windows and having it clutter up your task bar. Firefox allows users to have multiple websites open, within the same Firefox window, by adding tabs. Simply middle click (or Ctrl+Click) a link and it opens the page up in a new tab, within the same browser window.

* Extensions + Themes
Extensions as the name implies, extend the browser's capabilities allowing users to configure the browser to suit their needs. Themes can change the look and feel of the browser, allowing it to reflect the user's own personal tastes. These have to be downloaded and installed, but are small.

* Quick Search + Dictionary. just type 'google' and then your search term into the Address bar and it'll perform a google search type 'dict' and then the word you want to look up, will look up the word and it's meaning from www.dictionary.com
A nice list of extensions can be found here: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

Extensions can be useful for Access:

* TabBrowser Extensions (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/tbe) This allows more control over the tab, and you can specify what links you want to appear as a tab and what links you want opened in a new window.

* Web Developer Toolbar.
This is quite well suited to the Web developer (as the name implies) as well as our own Usuability and Accessability experts. It allows you to disable images, replace them with the alt tabs, outline HTML elements, validate the page for HTML conformance via the W3C validator and even allows you to resize the browser window to specific resolutions (800x600,1024x768,custom resolution etc).

* Live HTTP Headers
This is quite well suited to load testing (OpenSTA). You can view, on-the-fly, the headers generated by the browser and the response from the server. There are many more extensions available, just have a browse through the extensions available and choose the ones that suit your needs. *Phew* that was a long, section. Time to relax!

Time Wasters
If you’re still with me until now, I commend you. :)
At the end of a long hard working day/week, unwind and relax by "testing" the following time wasters.
1. Tontie - http://www.kiteretsu.jp/on/tontie/
Try and hit as many weird monsters as you can before the time runs out,or you run out of health. The complexity increases each level.

2. Lemmings - http://193.151.73.87/games/lemmings/index.html
We all remember the game lemmings? This is an online version :) What I find great about this is, it doesn't use any flash at all... it's all in DHTML. Very ingenious. I have some more, but I think I'll save them until next time as I think I've bored you enough.
Happy Surfing 8) Chao.

More Contributions
If you have anything to contribute to the next newsletter please e-mail me on
jodir@testingcentre.com

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Newsletter 3

2004-07-16T16:27:00.000+10:00

Welcome to the third Access Newsletter. I had hoped to re-format the newsletter into a Word document and send out a snazzier looking PDF to you all, but unfortunately that old enemy time caught up with me. I will definitely attempt to do this for the next newsletter as it was something that nearly everyone who provided feedback commented on. Anyway, on with the news this fortnight . . . .

Dr John Eklunds Conference Report
During The First week of July John Eklund gave a keynote speech at The Fifth International Conference on Communication Technologies in Education. This is a conference of about 150 delegates coming from a wide range of countries, although quite a few Australians were present. It was a great experience - I have done many papers and invited talks before but this was the first time I have been an opening keynote. It's the best speaking spot as all eyes are on you to say something special and you really get an opportunity to set the tone of the conference. I put a lot of preparation into the talk and it went really well, giving Access Testing Centre some valuable exposure at an international venue. The publication details are:

Eklund J (2004) Driving the Future of e-Learning. Keynote Address to The
Fifth International Conference on Communication Technologies in Education.
In Fenstrom K (Ed.) Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference on
Communication Technologies in Education, Samos, Greece July 1-3, 2004. P.
2-13.
and here's a link to the presentation if anyone cares to check it out.
http://www.testingcentre.com/jeklund/ICICTE.zip

A word on "Helping the Environment" by Peter Wright
Well, last week my family and I had a couple of days leave up in the Blue Mountains. One day we decided to go Jenolan Caves. The trip took us via Mount Victoria, Hartley Valley and Hampton. On our way through Hartley we saw for the first time, the generation of electricity using wind. I was astounded at the size of these giant "Wind Machines" they were using. There were two of them and they were each, the size of a small office block. It was great to see an alternative to coal burning. Also this year I became a member of the "World Wide Fund for Nature Australia". I was so pleased to see their yearly summary of achievements:

* A Sanctuary for Whales
* Clean Generation of Electricity
* A Haven for Squirrel Gliders
* Protecting Tassie Forests
* Tracking an Endangered Turtle Species
* Protecting Wetlands in Northern NSW
* Protecting and Re-Establishing the environ for the Black Winged Stit
* Protecting the Natural Environment from Weeds
* A Rare Discovery of a Bird (the Eastern Yellow Chat)

I hope they keep up the much-needed successes.

Testing on The Rocks
Chao, Lizzie and Tessa have been very comfortably installed in a sunny meeting room on the 4th level of 121 Harrington Street, The Rocks. This is the home of Dimension Data, who has done the development for one of the RTA projects (which we are testing). A temporary test lab has been set up - not only do we have lovely avocado green desks and chairs, a test server and hub, the longest power strips in recorded history, but we also have access to tea, coffee and soft drinks. The lunch room has a goldfish tank with two fish (only one of them has a name though...). Chao and Lizzie have been recording tests in QuickTest Pro, and have really done an excellent job of automating a complex workflow. The recording continues for the rest of this week. Tessa has been writing the manual test cases and logging any defects found by the team. The Project Manager here is pleased with the progress of the testing effort, and very impressed with the work done in the automation.

Recruitment
We are currently looking for people to fill a range of roles from Test Analysts for work in the Lab through to Senior Test Engineers to work on a couple of projects starting at the beginning of August, one of those is a 6 month contract at UNSW so if you know of anyone who may be interested please get them to forward their CV to me - jobs@testingcentre.com
mailto:jobs@testingcentre.com.

We are also currently recruiting in Melbourne for TLF Conformance Testers, we have filled one role and have one left to fill. This will start as a contract for the first two months until we get our larger premises up and running and then it is likely to become a full-time position. Again, if you know anyone who may be interested please let me know, they must have a strong multimedia background.

North Sydney Leagues Club
North Sydney Leagues Club are based at Cammeray, they have recently sent me a corporate membership discount offer. According to them there are all sorts of reason that you would join the clue including; great entertainment every week, instant wireless internet connection within the club, discounts at over 200 shops throughout the North Shore and cheap gym, pool and sauna facilities. If you are interested please let me know.

Staff News
Since the last newsletter Richard Martin is now working down in Optus at North Sydney along with David May. Joining them on Monday will be Tuan Pham who is new to Access, so welcome to Tuan.

We also have a couple of new faces in the Lab. Welcome to Alejandro Alvaro and Bill Rankin who started with us last week. John Tan will also be joining the team in the Lab on Monday - welcome John.

Linda Milne has also recently joined Access for a 6 month contract at MLC. Some of you will already know Linda as she has been working with us periodically for a few months now and attended the team building afternoon we had in April. We wish Linda the best of luck for her knew role. The latest word is that Lizzie Beaton and Chao Luan will finish up their RTA project at the end of next week. We have had excellent feedback from the project manager who is grateful for all the help that she has had from that team - which includes Tessa Cotterrell. Tessa will remain out there until the end of the month when we wish her farewell. Congratulations and well done to all three.

Happy Birthday to Amy Yiu and David May for tomorrow, Mauri Ahtee for yesterday and Janet Small for next Thursday. And Happy Birthday to anyone else I may have forgotten.

Newsletter 2

2004-07-16T15:20:00.000+10:00

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!

Newsletter 1

2004-07-16T15:16:00.000+10:00

Welcome to the new and official staff Newsletter. The aim is to compile and send out the newsletter once a fortnight.

Once upon a time it was very easy to communicate with all of Access’s staff - they were all located here in Crows Nest and we used to have a staff meeting about once a month. Now, we have people working all over Sydney and an office in Melbourne so holding a staff meeting becomes a logistical nightmare.

The aim of the newsletter is a forum to let you know what is happening in your organisation. This includes new contracts won, changes in staff, changes in processes, new company initiatives etc. It’s also open to contributions - if you have something to say or news to tell please let me know - it’s your newsletter.

CEO's Message
Its been a hectic six weeks and on top of all the project work that you have all been involved with, we have a number of exciting opportunities under way. Our Melbourne office is now well and truly up and running and a number of our existing and new clients are expressing an interest in extending our current projects and commencing new ones. (see Mark’s report below).
We have been trying to strike up a strategic relationship with Satyam (one of India’s leading IT service companies, with over 12,000 employees worldwide - 300+ in Australia - www.satyam.com) and I am happy to announce that on July 1, Satyam’s Worldwide President will announce a unique partnering arrangement with Access to offer combined onshore/offshore testing services to Australian clients. This announcement will occur at an event in the Hyatt hotel and will be made in front of the Indian Ambassador and a host of Satyam’s Australian clients including, Macquarie Bank, Comm Bank, F2, Qantas, AAPT, Cisco. It is a wonderful opportunity for Access and a resounding endorsement of how far we have come in the last few years, for a company of Satyams size to choose Access as a partner.
We are also now working with the Eclipse Group (a 100% subsidiary of Deloittes) on a number of projects with a view to forming a long term testing relationship. Eclipse specialise in web development and pride themselves as the largest developer in Australia (70+ people).
In addition to the above, we currently have proposals with clients such as Westpac, Optus, AAPT, ACS, Macquarie Uni, NMA and The Australian Heart Foundation.
As you can see, its been a busy few weeks and I look forward to reporting on the progress we make with these opportunities.

Welcome back and congratulations to Joanne Phan For those of you who don’t know Jo, she is our Financial Controller. Jo has been off travelling through Europe for the past month and we are very relieved that she has finally returned. The big news is that while she was away she got engaged. We wish Jo and her new fiancée Brett a big congratulations on their engagement.

Welcome to Lisa Herrod
Welcome to Lisa Herrod who has accepted a full-time position as a usability analyst. Lisa has already delivered a number of successful projects and won further work on that basis. She was instrumental in Access' recent successful bid to be on the panel of suppliers for The Department of Immigration and Youth affairs.

Welcome to Peter Wright
Congratulations to Peter Wright on becoming the newest full-time member of staff at Access. Peter has worked for Access on a casual basis since 2002 and has recently been very successful in his position at the RTA. Welcome Peter.

Congratulations to John Eklund . . .
John Eklund recently successfully completed his grading in Judo, in which he attained his brown belt (he has been blue for 25 years so about time!). With this he also qualifies as a Judo coach NCAS level 1. End of June he will travel to Greece to give a Keynote address at the 5th International Conference on Educational ICT. He is currently working on a project for The Australian Computer Society.

Happy Holidays to . . .
Peter Brawn is currently away overseas visiting family in the UK and holidaying in Thailand on the way home, he should be back in the office early July.
Roland Perpic is also taking a few days off for a bit of R&R, he should be back in the office next week.

Melbourne
As most of you know Mark Bishop was originally based in our Sydney office. He has taken the huge step of moving to Melbourne to set up our Melbourne operation and is having great success getting out to the market and promoting Access. Here are Mark’s highs and lows for the past couple of months:

High's for April/May/June
* Started new work, conformance testing for TLF
* In-principle agreement today (11/6) with e-works to take on their equivalent of conformance testing
* Likely to get destra go-ahead soon
* Likely to get eclipse go ahead for test process review
* VPN was established this month and working fine (thanks Rhys)
* Good prospects for opening a Melbourne test lab very soon => move out of small but impressive office to large establishment of empire-like proportions
* Peter Wright joined ATC as a permanent based on great service at RTA - very happy customer!!!
* Joel also doing great work too at RTA (to a fault) cos now we're having trouble getting him out of there
* Sharon Dreise doing great job at RTA managing a challenging project schedule and ever-changing scope
* Taking new Aprilia SL1000R for a test ride tomorrow - whoooohoooo
* Thanks to Tessa Cotterrell's husband for recognising my fiancé's hard work at DataBank, Melbourne with a dinner voucher for two this weekend - whooohooo

Low's

* No one to pay for my new Aprilia SL1000R
* Richmond got flogged again last weekend but there's always the next game - Sunday at the "G"
* Can’t see the view from my office here, but it is impressive
*NAB hasn't returned my calls and emails

Tessa’s view from the RTA From what I have seen here at RTA, the projects are proceeding well. There are 8 of us here working on a number of different projects, ranging from load testing to workflow to automation. We are scattered all over the 8th floor, and one of us has a lovely corner seat next to a window with a great view over the train station (not me).
E-mail All staff on client sites that have client e-mail addresses can now have their Access e-mail forwarded directly to their client addresses to save everyone having to check two e-mail accounts. It also makes life a little easier for those who don’t have access to the Web. This is now up and running for everyone at the RTA, MLC and CCH.

Rhys has gone to quite a bit of trouble to set this up. Unfortunately it is not easy to keep track of. If you have e-mail being forwarded to you at a client site, please let Rhys know if there is any change in your situation - eg. Switched to a different project / site so that the e-mail forwarding can be amended.

A big thanks to Rhys for organising this and assisting in improving communication with our people.

Timesheets
Just a reminder to get your timesheets in to Access in a timely manner. For those of you who are contractors and casuals we cannot guarantee you will be paid on time if your timesheets are not received by close of business on the Monday following the week just worked.
It is also important that we get the timesheets as soon as possible for the client’s sake. Often we are required to report effort used to date on a weekly basis to the client. If your timesheets are late then this report is not correct and makes us look unprofessional in the eyes of the client.
This also applies in the case of invoicing the client. We have recently been caught out by staff submitting additional timesheets after we have invoiced the client. Again, it makes Access look unprofessional if we have to go back to the client with additional invoices.

To combat this problem we are currently looking at several options for a web based timesheet system and are looking to implement this system sooner rather than later. If anyone has worked with a system previously feels it would be useful to Access’s situation please let me know.

In the meantime, timely submission of timesheets does not just apply to casual’s and contractors - you full-time staff also have an obligation to ensure you submit your timesheets by the close of business on the Monday following the week just worked. Everyone’s co-operation with this would be greatly appreciated.

Work Assignments
If you are sent out to a client site to work on a particular project and the client swaps you to another project you must let the account manager for that project know. When the client swaps you without reporting it to Access it impacts the quotation that Access has supplied to the client. In a case we had recently with Optus it has caused huge delays with getting invoice approvals from the client and ultimately Access being paid for the work performed.

The Next Newsletter The date for the next newsletter is Friday, 2nd July. If anyone has anything to contribute please send it to me before then. I would also like us to name our newsletter. Rhys had the suggestion of "Tales from the Nest", if any of you can think of a better name please let me know