So it's already my second week working at Accenture and so far working here hasn't been all that bad, considering the field of work I'm in, Systems Integration and Technology, is completely uncharted territory for the true blue science geek that is yours truly. But let me start from the very first day, which is of course was the most exciting day of all... after all what's more nerve wrecking than my first day at work in a super huge multinational and extremely corporate company such as Accenture when all this time the toughest I've had to deal with so far is bratty primary school kids? Personally, I'd rather take the bratty kids over a stuffy corporate environment where I'd have to deal with difficult clients.... which eventually I will have to do, but thankfully has not happened yet.
Anyhow, the first day last Monday was just an orientation for me together with about 17 other newbies (that's about 3 times more people than the number of people at Mad Science. Yikes! And that's just in addition to the 750 over other Accenture employees in Malaysia alone...). That first day is the closest I've had to endure of stuffy corporate environment so far coz' everyone was in a business suit or office wear. I was the most 'casual' as I was wearing a long-sleeved cardigan over a matching spaghetti strap top with slacks, totally unaware that I was supposed to be dressed more formally as I failed to check my email until after that day. Fortunately, no one chided me for my dressing anyway. There was one other newbie girl with a Japanese-like dorky kind of hairdo (super thick bangs cut perfectly straight across her forehead, with the rest of her straight shoulder-length hair so stiff, it could've been a wig!) and wearing a black blazer with shoulder pads that made her look like a jock.... she looked pretty scary! And it didn't help that it turns out she was my junior from high school and she recognized me, even though I had no idea who she was. Fortunately, everyone else didn't pull off the super intimidating I-mean-business-so-don't-mess-with-me look quite as well as she did.
Anyhow, the bunch of us spent the whole day sitting in a big fancy meeting room, listening to the facilitator explain to us all the important things we need to know, like making time reports, using technical services, our benefits, what are our respective projects, etc, etc... In between, we were taken out to have a nice lunch at Madame Kwan's, a very expensive restaurant at KLCC selling local and western cuisine. Seeing how the company was treating all the newbies to lunch, I helped myself to a rather pricey meal of lamb chops and vanilla milkshake. Then I spent the rest of my lunch wondering if the company would keep an eye on those 'kiasu' people who ordered the more expensive meals. Haha, first day jitters! We also had a guy named Victor sitting at my table together with half of the newbies. Victor said he has been working at Accenture for over 10 years, during which he has travelled to a number of other countries for business. He also told us, very interestingly, that he was on leave that day and was on leave for a whole six months! This is because his family complained that he was spending too much time at work and not enough time at home, so the company, recognizing his contribution to Accenture, allowed him to take a break of 6 months! Wow, that's pretty cool. I don't think many companies would allow that! And the travelling to other countries part sounds nice too (yeah yeah, I know it's not really all that fun having to pack and run around to airports and there would be little time to actually sightsee with work, but still... I'm always up for a little adventure even if it IS mixed with some stuffy corporate meetings). Anyway, we were supposed to try and find out more about life at Accenture from Victor, but the newbies at my table were unfortunately mostly the silent type, save for one other guy and myself who kept bombarding Victor with whatever questions we could think of.
After lunch, we trooped back to the big meeting room where we continued with our long and boring orientation, which got even more boring towards the end when they subjected us to an hour of powerpoint presentations about what to do in case of technical or IT problems related to our laptops (yes, we got laptops!). Every now and then, that robotic sweet lady's voice would ask us "Do you understand this part of the presentation, at which all of us would groan "Yes..." in unison. This was after lunch at around 5 to 6pm, mind you. Then at the end of the day, all of us went of to collect our laptops, which was pretty exciting for me coz' it didn't even occur to me that we would be getting laptops! Unluckily for me though, I ended up with a old Dell Latitude 610, and from what I've heard since then, Dell is sucky compared to the newer models like HP. Plus the bag it came in made carrying it around a huge and heavy hassle, so I decided to ditch the bag and use my Compaq laptop bag at home, which is much sleeker and not so bulky. So now I carry around a Dell laptop in a Compaq bag. Just a couple of days ago, the 'R' button on my laptop came completely off, so I reported it to the IT department, and hopefully it'll be a good enough reason for me to change my laptop with a nicer and newer model!
Anyway, after Orientation Day, I was straight away thrown to my first project, in which the client is TM. I was rather blur on Tuesday though, coz' I was told the day before to contact my project manager but it was late so I decided to do it the next day, which I did only when I went all the way back to the KLCC office and I was wondering if there was anything else there to do before I flew off to my project site. Apparently there wasn't coz' there was no one there who was remotely interested in the newbies anymore (and I didn't even see most of the other newbies save for a few, including scary Japanese hairdo girl), so I handed in a few more forms before calling up my project manager who told me to get to the Cygal building, which is next to the TM building along the Federal Highway. And that is where I have ever since. And what exactly is my project all about? Well, here's the 411:
The project: Creating a customer care application for TM known as iCare that will integrate with their own system and enable them to further enhance their customer services.
Current stage: They have already created and launched three earlier versions of iCare and are currently working on their fourth release of the application which will have additional features to serve specific TM users. Right now, we are done building the application but it needs to be tested thoroughly for bugs. Which is where I come in!
My job: Create a list of test conditions on which to test the application against, and report and problems discovered to the fix team, who will then proceed to eliminate the problem. For those non-technical people who have no idea what a test condition is, don't worry, neither did I when I first went in. An example would be, say, the test condition is: Search for a customer by his login name. The expected result for that would be: Customer profile is located and his details are listed. So if I perform the search by login name and it did not appear as expected, then something is wrong with that function and I need to report it. As such, anything that has to do with what system's functions are can be made into a test condition. If the system is tested against a condition and the expected results are achieved, then hooray! If the results are not as expected, such as an error message pops up, then it's work for the Fix team. Comprende?
So basically, my job is not difficult in the sense that I don't actually need much IT skills or need to learn heaps of programming stuff before I can do anything (which was what I was worried about)... all I need to do is know what the system is supposed to do, and use a bit of common sense to create test conditions and then test the system against them. The difficult part is that the number of test conditions created are, well, a LOT. And to test against all of them is taking a LONG time. It's a tedious process, in which I do little else but sit and stare at my laptop all day, testing the functions until I come across a problem. In which case, I have a chance to get up and walk 8 steps away to my senior team member to ask her if this is actually a bug or not. And if it IS, then I have to create something called a SIR, which is a report of the problem which will be sent to the fix team. And another difficult part was, and still is, having to remember a gazillion and one new terms and jargon that are used at TM. There are a ton of TM applications with names like CASS, MCMB, eQuest, WebSTARS, TMBilly, WebBRAINS, and so on and so forth, and I have to remember what all the systems are for. And then there are another gazillion abbreviations used related to the project, like CRM (Customer Relationship Management), CSR (Customer Service Representative), ToS (Termination of Service), SR (Service Request), SIT (Systems Integration Test), UAT (User Acceptance Test), CRMKB (Customer Relationship Management Knowledge Base) , etc, etc..... By the end of the first day, my head was full of a jumble of letters! You can imagine how blur I am when my project team members start rambling on about the project and talking in abbreviations, while I'm blinking and trying to remember what they all stand for. The funniest thing is that, while I know my official position is as Analyst under Systems Integration and Technology (SI&T), I had no idea what is meant by workforce or operating group, let alone which one I am under coz' no one told me at Orientation. So when someone emailed me at work asking for my OG/WF (even that I didn't know it was, until later I found out), I emailed back asking what she meant. And her reply was something along the lines of "OG means either CHT, GHT, etc... and WF means SHT, GHF, etc... (I'm just making up those coz' I can't remember exactly what she wrote). Suffice to say, I was even more blur than before.
Sigh, I suppose over time I will gradually understand and speak the strange alien language that they use at Accenture. In addition to that, I also have to deal with less technical issues like how my eyes get blurry rather quickly now that I work all day in front of a comp, and also my butt hurts from sitting on the chair too long. One of my friends suggested shifting from one butt cheek to another at intervals. I never thought any suggestion related to butt cheeks would actually be a good idea.... The good thing now though is that I get internet access all day, unlike my previous job, and I get to enjoy free internet music...which is actually really cool coz' I get to listen to all sorts of weird stations you'd never hear on local radio, like Christian music stations, Rock & Alternative, New Age, and even stations playing recorded sermons. Tried listening to the sermon station once, but it kind of distracted me from my work so I decided it wasn't a good idea. Also, we get to enjoy free milo, coffee, tea and Maggi at office if we're feeling peckish. Unfortunately, this is one area where my office is still lacking, even compared to Mad Science. Over there, I could have all that and even enjoy a variety of sweet, biscuits and other goodies! Of course, most of this stuff is for party pinatas, so technically I wasn't supposed to eat them.... bygones!
As for now, it's time for bed and back to work tomorrow. TTFN!
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