SHARK TANK August 30
LATEST NEWS
- TelstraClear's half-year revenue drops by 4 percent, but telco posts $1m profit
- Peter Finch leaves CIO post at Gen-i || 1
- 2degrees announces 875,656 customers
- NZ Fauna app fills "crazy” lack of animal info || 2
- Megaupload interest a mixed blessing for Pirate Party || 1
- There's no business like social business, says IBM
SUBSCRIBE
Computerworld is New Zealand's only specialised information systems fortnightly. Subscribe now for $100 (23 issues) and save more than 37% off the cover price!
SIGN UP
Tales from the world of ICT
By Industry contributors | NZ and US | Tuesday, 7 September, 2010
The rise of mobile devices
“I work in Wellington as a desktop support tech”, NZ Pilot Fish recalls.
“We often log into our helpdesk and take calls from our call centre staff. I have just received the following:
Me: “Hello, how can I help?”
User: “Hello, I just moved desk, and the computer time is wrong by half an hour.”
Me: “What time does your desk phone say?”
User: “That’s wrong too, it says 8.16.”
Me: “Your desk phone says 8.16?”
User: “Yes”
Me: “What time does your PC say?”
User: “8.16”
Me: “They both say 8.16?”
User: “Yes”
Me:: “Your PC and your phone both say it is 8.16?”
User: “Yes”
Me: “So does mine. That’s the time.”
User: “Is it?”
Me: “Yes, it is 8.16 in the morning.”
User: “Oh, my mobile must be wrong”.
Thanks for letting us know
Just after a software vendor ships a custom application to a big new customer, someone notices a line in the requirements document, reports pilot fish.
“It said, ‘The application shall support pooling.’ Pooling is an in-house methodology where related items can be aggregated if desired,” fish says.
The problem is, the user-interface developer had written about 40 complex queries and embedded them in his client-side application code — all without the pooling concept.”
The vendor’s head of development calls together the team. We have to fix this and get an updated version to the customer right away, he tells the group.
And with that, fish and his co-workers are plunged into a frantic effort to rewrite 40 complex queries into even more complex versions that include the pooling logic.
Developers and testers are working double shifts to get everything done. They’re pulling late-nighters and all-nighters.
And in just under a week, they get the job done.
“We posted the final build to the customer-facing download portal,” says fish. “Finally, some breathing room!”
And that’s when they get a piece of good news — just a little too late to help: “The customer decided to push off implementation until the next quarter, nearly three months away.”
MOST POPULAR
Social Media @Computerworld NZ
Computerworld NZ has now reached LinkedIn! Join to expand your networks and meet others interested in information systems.
