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Fire-fighting the Java Way.

Fresh from the "fire-fighting" in office yesterday for my colleague via phone support, it was my turn to go on site for user support today. Although it wasn't my first time I did user support, it was the first time alone. And boy was it tough...

Perhaps it would had been easy for my experienced colleagues, but for me, it was my first taste of fending for myself, solving the problems on the spot, and responding to the users' needs. There was a bad omen early in the morning on what was waiting for me. An accident on KJE after Pioneer North exit had caused a massive jam all the way to BKE. A 30min cab journey to site from home, took almost an hour. Although I was not physically there yet, the problem managed to find me in the form of phone call from the users. When I reached, I bounced around the different sites to understand what was going wrong as I was not too sure where the different group of users were. Yes, thats the problem when you have 4 sets of servers, ie. 4 groups of users with client machines, at 4 different sites (walking distance of cuz.. ha ha... what interesting walks...) that required your support, alone. Thank goodness, today was my only shift.

My theory is, first day of deployment are usually tough, all the obvious problems (if there are any) will appear. Second day is usually peaceful as users hae not use much of the system yet. Third day is the peak, users start to load the system and use those obscure features. Then fourth and fifth days onward, the system will be rather stable and less loaded. Perhaps users will be used to the problems and can't be bothered to inform the tech support or they are capable of solving themselves? Hee Hee. And I was on the third day of support!!! However, with all the dreadful experience, I must say I had taken home some useful experiences.

First of all, I realised how unfamiliar I was with some modules of the system which were not coded by me. What were the causes of the problems, what should the correct behaviours be? I was forced to learn on the spot, with help from my colleagues via the phone. I got to sharpen my debugging skills, analysing the problem, understanding the symptoms from my users, and paraphrasing to them so that I could zoom into the problem straight away. It felt abit like what doctors do. I had to come up with quick fixes, convey clearly with my colleagues clearly to provide the eyes for them, so that they can remotely solve the problems. I had some good exercises too, climbing up and down the vehicles. Girls, never wear skirts to sites! These may be little things, but they were big things for first-timer like me.

Some things I heard from made me feel abit discouraged, but I guess it wasn't their fault, for the fact that I had to be there fixing some kinda problem made them feel that way. I heard one user commented that our system was quite unrealiable. That was an unfair statement, cuz only one small little feature had problem, and that problem did not affect their user experience. It was a backend thingy. Furthermore, the system deployed wasn't even thoroughly tested, nor was it the final release. Technically speaking, it was a beta version. Every deployment should be considered as a evaluation of the system, with less or no bugs. But it is normal that new features usually meant new bugs introduced. And these were kept to minimum, provided users agree to let us do complete and proper testing, and be less eager to use the "latest" version. I think a stable version, is better than a latest version. So if you wanna take the risk, thanks for testing for us! Luckily, the users were rather nice people, beside one or two unflattering comments, they did not complain much. Heng arh!

I am glad the fire-fighting had stopped for now. With better instinct, and more experience, hopefully next time it will be a walk in the park for me. Hah dream on, fight fire lah. Beep Bop Beep Bop *PHISssSssSShHHHHHhhHHH*

Comments

Sunshine said…
sounds like a tough but enriching experience!

i think u'll prob get used to it after a few more rounds....

its quite similar to what i do also....hee...when i talk to the clients, a lot of times u got to understand things beforehand and think quickly on the spot so that u can clarify anything.... definitely not as easy as u think...

i still remember my first time talking to the client when i was on attachment...i practically ran back to the client 4-5 times on the same issue because everytime i finished talking to the client and went back to update my senior, he will ask me another related question which i didn't touch on...so i'll have to run back to the client again... even now, after working for half a year, this still happens sometimes....=p

nevertheless, its a good way to learn...isn't it?
egeus said…
Yeah, I must admit, I do enjoy it tho' it was tiring. -sheepish grin-

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