Author: Steve Ngai

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Uncategorized

Personal Home Page version 2 (v2)

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Since 2004, I have started my personal home page, www.findingsteve.net. Thinking back, I should have gotten www.findingsteve.com but I was just a little late to buy that domain. Anyway, I am glad overall to still have this easy-to-remember and funny domain name as most I believe have watch Finding Nemo 🙂

I think one of the initial reasons why I want to have my own website is because I want to publish my resume online. Perhaps, I got too fed up to fill up the same boring information while applying for jobs or during interviews. So, I was thinking, if I have my resume nicely done and publish it online, I can just give my link like http://resume.findingsteve.net. I admit it is pretty cool back then. But now, it looks like pretty boring design even though I have update ‘newer’ CSS template some years back. So, I guess it is time to have makeover of it. Well, I am not a graphic designer. So, don’t expect fancy design from me ya but I will do what I can 🙂

So here we are, newer fresh look of personal home page. Thanks to WordPress and those who contributed to create all the free WordPress template. Writing or blogging is one of my interests. Perhaps my brain just like to think unnecessarily which I can’t help much. So, writing helps me to sort out my brain and express them out does make me feel better. This means I could express better through text than verbal chat.

Back to the creation of www.findingsteve.net, I use classic ASP to do it, all by own. Well, actually I did pinjam some stuff from the Internet la especially the CSS template. Other than that, I hand-coded all the html and ASP codes. After I ‘upgraded’ my skill, I also added some VB.NET pages into it for my feedback page and some other so-called cool stuff like google search and AJAX stuff. So, if you observe that old website, some pages are in .ASP and some are .ASPX pages and the template is same 🙂

Although I developed web applications, I have manual way to manage (add, edit, delete) the content in my old website. Perhaps, I started it the ‘manual’ way and too lazy to develop some kind of content management application. Initially, I feel contented about it. But after awhile, I realize that I am not as motivated to blog although there were times I have plenty of ideas what I want to share out. Sometimes, old and slow laptop also become a factor. But, recently I just bought a new ‘fast’ desktop. I think the last time I bought a desktop is hmm… ten years ago perhaps.

For the past few months I have been working on my wellness blog, akusihat.com. During these period, I kinda get back some passion of writing and get a hang out using WordPress. And I do love its features and flexibility. It is so much easier to me to edit and maintain the website, even change its design. And there are tonnes of free design to me to use too. So here we go, a new version of my personal home page with WordPress. And I will still keep my old website as a museum for some who still wish to visit. For those who still drop by, I want to say thank you 🙂

Ops, I just realize I have some of other external blogs too. Gonna consolidate and merge them all here soon.

Categories
Risk Management

Process flow + Sequence Diagram – Mixed Breed of UML

As most of job scope of my previous job in BCSIS is to support the application, on my own I have created plenty of own version internal ‘software document’. I think some of these documents are mixed breed between process flow diagram and sequence diagram 🙂 Nevertheless, this is my favorite internal document as I can easily understand the flow of the system just by some quick glance. I also converted some source code into some flow chart diagrams (again my version).

In fact, I do enjoy and satisfying creating all these diagrams. And I did the same for my Product Management department as QC Manager in GHL. By the way, I just use Ms Power Point. No need expensive tool like Visio 🙂

Here are the entire list of ‘Process flow + Sequence’ diagram documents which I have created. Yes, the sample diagrams are a little ‘unclear’ for reasons. To view the ‘clear’ version and to view more diagrams, you can contact me personally ya.

CTCS Gateway Interface (GWC)

  • EPKI – Outward – GWC and Bank Host
  • Inward  Downloading – ISC, GWC and Bank Host
  • Transmission – OCS and GWC
  • Transmission – OCS and PODClient

Bank and BNM Web

  • Branch and Routing Policy Request

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) – Back End Host

  • Inward Generation
  • Generate Billing
  • Generate Settlement File
  • File and Data Archival
  • Report

CSS / RBE / FMS

  • Billing and Settlement @ CSS
  • SQL Server Agent Job @ CSS

Others

  • Swing CTCS – HQ and Recovery Center
  • Host Support Escalation

Product Management

  • Activate Dialogic Card (only for PRI card type)
  • Certificate of Origin – Special Case
  • Check warranty period and SLA maintenance
  • Product Request
  • Supply Chain Management – Procurement / Production
  • Supply Chain Management – Distribution
  • New Project or Change Request

 

 

 

Categories
Risk Management

Sediakan Payung Sebelum Hujan

 

 

Sediakan Payung Sebelum Hujan

Hujan is still okay, but what if it is Storm? Again, here is a classic scenario as illustration purpose. 🙂 Here, we focus on the twist plot – no one resign but the whole office caught fire and all the laptops are destroyed completely.

Actually, this can really happen. Although Malaysia is fortunate enough to be protected by most natural disaster, we should not take this for granted. Disaster can still happen and the common ones are fire. Hence, Bank Negara (Central Bank) requires all the financial institution (FI) like banks to have Business Continuity Planning (BCP) or Business Continuity Management (BCM). The main objective is about RISK management.

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In my previous company, we also performed this BCP every year by going to Bank Negara, restoring our core applications and ensure that our core applications works. I remember there was once I had a argument with my manager just because of I refused to ‘amend’ the BCP form, so that the company can ‘pass’ the BCP. Same goes with my current company when I was doing Terminal Quality Management (TQM) which is required my MasterCard for one of our products certification process. But, that’s another story all together 🙂

For more info – Operation Risk Management Concept Paper by Bank Negara Negara

 

Categories
Risk Management Software Engineering

The BIG Dilemma – Should I re-build the good old house?

One of the biggest consideration and dilemma as a software engineer is, should I re-design the system design and clean up the source code or not?

rebuild.

Here is a classic scenario as illustration purpose.

If Mutu’s source code is well designed and clean, Sally is considered lucky to pick up his role to continue and maintain his source code. Otherwise, it will be a nightmare for Sally to try to figure out his design and the dilemma on whether to clean up his source code. Why dilemma to re-design/revamp the system? Cleaning up code is good provided you are well-verse with the entire system design. The main benefit of a clean, organized and well-design system is maintainability. Although I don’t consider myself a talented software engineer, developing a well-maintained source code is one of my principles. I would rather spend a little more time to make the source code more maintainable, so that I don’t have to have sleepless night and headache troubleshooting bugs and for future enhancement.

But, for a large and critical system whereby there were many software engineers have ‘touch’ on the source code, usually new software engineer will opt to take the safer path by not making any unnecessarily big changes, be it to clean the source code or to re-design the system. Re-design the system can cause big impact to the entire system and highly susceptible to bugs too. Much effort is needed also to re-test the new re-vamped version.

Categories
Risk Management

This classic scenario rings a bell?

A team of five including the team lead, Wong are working on a software project. That project was given nine months time frame. The project went well and ‘on track’ for the first six month until one senior software engineer, Mutu tendered his resignation letter with one month notice. Upon receiving the ‘bad news’, Wong immediately notified the HR manager, Nurul. Few days later, she informed her staff to process for the new hiring. A week later, the advertisement was out in Jobstreet.

For the past six months, Wong and his team members including Mutu had been busy focusing in software development. Some documents were created along the way but there are ‘everywhere’. Some in his own laptop while some were in his team member’s laptop. That included the software modules in charged by Mutu. But these documents available are mainly high-level documents like use cases and initial functional specification.

Bear in mind, that Mutu is a quick-pace and strong-domain knowledge software engineer. Otherwise, he won’t sustain the in the company for four years. But, just like most software engineers, he hardly creates any own lower-level software document like flow-chat diagram, sequence diagram, test plan and release notes. Why? God knows. Maybe this is common among most software engineers; so that the company will always need and rely on them. But with software documents in place to understand the design of the system faster, they afraid that any new staff can replace them. Moreover, Wong also didn’t request for all the low-level of software document what. Maybe. Just my guessing.

At this point of time, the project time line is not longer ‘on track’ due to the extra time Mutu spend to prepare hand-over and for Wong’s time for Mutu’s hand-over sessions. All these hiccups were not factored in during project planning in the beginning. A week before left the company, he could only hand-over a couple of documents and all the source code to Wong. But due to heavy work load as a team leader, Wong has only limited time to attend and learn from Mutu’s hand-over sessions. Imagine how much stuff left over by someone who worked for four years. Hence, Wong just copied all those little software documents and all the source code in his external hard drive.

All in all, the hiring process took about two months. By the time, the new software engineer, Sally came in, Mutu had already left the company for a month. Wong met up with Sally and ask her to copy all the resources and Mutu’s source code from his external hard drive to her laptop and explain to her briefly the project they are working right now and ask to her those documents created by Mutu last time. As Sally went through those document, she realized that those software document are not in sync with the source code. Hence, she took quick a long time to really understand the modules developed by Mutu last time. And this cause more project delay and we all know time is money. The domino effects continue from one generation to another.

Two possible twist in the plot: Can the above scenario became worse? Can the project ‘survives’ and meet the project deadline? What if

  • Wong also resigned one week after Mutu tender his resignation letter.
  • No one resign but the whole office caught fire and all the laptops are destroyed completely.