DNS: Test Run Results

The launching was a blast yesterday as the system take charge all the day to day transaction of my client company. As early as 7:30am customers are all standing and waiting for their bills to be paid and I didn’t expect to have that huge amount of customers waiting for their turn.

The in charge teller went to the office at around past 8am and by the time we start to roll the system things did go pretty well but of course there are some problems occur that I didn’t anticipate as I expected.

Here are the lists of mistakes that I encounter:

1. DLL’s hell. I think visual basic package reach its limitation on adding up a number of components that I used because even though I already add the new dll’s and reports during the package setup still during the installation and test run this new components didn’t exist.

2. Beta Test run. I must admit I reach to a point where during the past two months I got so bored and lazy because there where no reason to solve anything since everything was already tested before. And when things happened on that important date yesterday I forgot to initialize the print statement on my other three modules. The price was wasted time and effort. The daily reports for the tellers after the long hours of collection didn’t do exactly the way I expected it to be. I had to print the collection to perform the tally.

3. Bugs will be bugs. There was this one minor error that I encounter during the test run I had with the tellers which is the second message box that will appear after they press the save prompt “Do you want to print the bill again?” the purpose of this information is when the printer suddenly jam during the first print and allow the user to print it again. Most users were used to on pressing the enter button as many times they want to and my approach to this system before was to advice them to wait because the system tends to generate an error. I thought that it was a good and fast solution for a lazy developer like me but during the real thing it wasn’t funny at all. It did cost my time and effort walking from one department to another. I promise it will never happen again.

4. Windows 98. Damn this OS. Indeed it is one of the most unstable OS that I ever had. During my most critical time it failed me to deliver results that I needed. I could not connect to the server to access and update the system. The system would not run and access the SQL server. During the installation it went well when I test it to connect the server. I guess when tough times come and all networks are busy there is no guarantee for this OS.

5. User’s coordination. I don’t really know how to explain this but at some point in my test run one important module in auditing department created a problem. It’s the promissory note module. This module allows any customers who can’t afford to pay their bills to be partial and pay the remaining bills on a particular adjusted date. Though during the simulation the way my system process this bill was quite new and I did convince them that this new way of processing this adjustment is fine. But to some point when the real thing happen everything went backfired at me and they demand the old way. Sometimes most users must experience the real thing for them to see what you’re trying to say during the one on one test run.

Overall, after the test run it went good. Though it was really one long day as the tellers and auditor try their best to balance the amount that was collected and the MIS staff tried to reenter the entire amount into the old system.

Right after we finish our lunch I immediately get their feed back and comments in order to fix things. The next time we will have our next test run it wont be as worse as this one.