Needless to say, my prediction was dead wrong.

I spent my summer 300 in casual attire at a software development company in Makati. The company was not at all like I imagined it. In the office, there’s a pingpong table, an exercise bike, a nintendo wii, a rockband set, a playstation 2, numerous couches, pillows, sleeping mats, unlimited rice, milo and iced tea. But this doesn’t mean that the experience was all fun and games. I worked in the PMBA Department, learned about new ways of system development, understood the complexity of quality assurance, and enjoyed the company of new people.

O&B wasn’t what I expected. It was so much better. Thank you for a memorable summer.

photo grabbed from Hing

I’ve always thought highly of people who work in the Philippines despite job opportunities abroad. I always told the people around me that I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else but in the Philippines because I want to give back to the country — until I realized how much money people make in other countries. I found out recently that a pay of P18000 a month was low, really really really low, for an internship in Singapore. And the part of me that gets blinded by money suddenly forgot all that I said about patriotism and giving back, and decided that I wanted to work anywhere but in this country.

Last Friday, Sir Calen talked about how competitive the Philippines is in the software industry. He talked about 80% growth despite not having enough support in the government. He talked about how a Mapua graduate went on to teach Massachusets Institute of Technology graduates. He saw the software business as a field in which Filipinos could excel in and be known for.

Upon entering the office, one will see a Philippine flag posted on the wall, and written under it is “This is who we work for.” I’m ashamed that I almost forgot why.

This week, I tested batch results for the first time. It was overwhelming, and a lot of times I made a lot of mistakes. I still hope I helped though. Half of this week, I worked with group 3 of the dev interns for their second machine problem. Felt like a BA in that exercise. We had a 5-hour planning session which I think helped a lot in the development. Though the developers worked on different layers of the system, the planning session made it easier for them to determine which tasks they should do, what data they need, and how they planned to present a certain part of the system. While they were programming, I studied the specs and made test cases for the system. I also created tickets for them! Too bad tickets didn’t work towards the end, because when crunch time kicked in, no one even cared to check emails! Hahaha! Learning: tickets are for projects longer than 48 hours. It was my first time to attend code review as well. Though my nose bled in some parts, I think I understood them most half of the time. I really have a high regard for O&B devs because they consider so many things in creating programs. Meeting the requirements was only 30% of the criteria. Devs have to make sure that the code performs well, and is readable, among other things. Attending the code review made me half hope I applied as a developer because I saw that I really have a lot to learn in programming. I’m enjoying work as a BA though, and I’m learning different things in the different projects that I’m in.

OH on a lighter note. Please watch the BEST trailer I’ve ever seen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6RBJdHbQBw

Now that I’m back in the more technical side, I want to be more useful than ever. I’ve successfully configured and connected DDSteps already though it is yet to be used in actual batch testing. Ryan and I are almost finished completing the UI test cases. I’ve gained a deeper understanding (i think) of our project again after Kathy showed and explained to us segments of the batch code. I must say, CARL is the SQL SULTAN. I’ve never seen a 300++ line QUERY in my life! This showed me that systems are sooooo much more complicated than our MIS121&122 projects. To add to the regular project work, the BA interns are also working on gathering and documenting requirements for an internal project and we’re hoping that we finish it by the 22nd of this month.

In the end, I think I realized this week, more than ever, that I still have so much to learn in the coming year. And I always have to keep in mind that whatever aspect of MIS I decide to focus on will always be different from what I learn in school. Real world is much more… fun.

I attended my first client meeting, sprint retrospect and sprint planning on my second week. And this time I saw how the team valued communication. A complicated feature is due the next sprint, so everyone really took the time to plan how they would attack it.

This sprint, Ryan and I are in charge of QA for the defects team. Some say QA is tedious but I don’t mind. I think I’ve had my share of projects that had to be redone over and over in order to pass some quality standard before actual implementation. So I see how significant QA is in the development lifecycle.

Also, I’ve been trying to study DDSteps, a tool for data-driven testing. Currently, batch testing is done by manually comparing the prepared sheets to the result of SQL queries. I think I’ve progressed substantially — I’ve already installed DDSteps on my machine and I was able to perform 2 simple tests already. While I’m out, I plan to connect DDSteps to my local MySQL DB so that I can compare queries already. So when I return, I can just edit the code to connect to the DB server in the office. YUCK ANG NERD KO, SUMASAYA AKO SA GANITO.

Of course, I won’t forget to mention the most exciting thing about being downstairs — the people. I got to meet a lot of new people. And I must say, there’s never a dull moment in the team — from the national anthem (Popopoker face… and now, Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog), the sudden outburst of musical songs and parodies, to eating mounds of chichacorn, hanging sandals on the ceiling, to random conversations about anything and everything. I think that kind of environment is essential in keeping the mood stress-free despite the size and complexity of the project.

More than anything, I don’t feel like Mara (from Mara Clara) in the team. Everyone has been very helpful in getting me to understand the project or even installing the environment on my machine. Looking forward to spending the next weeks with the team.

So far, we’ve been training about how O&B develops systems/software. It’s like 10 months of MIS121 and 122 crammed into 4 days. It’s nice to view old lessons from a different perspective.

The only thing I don’t like about OJT is the looooooong commute. Good thing the commute is worth it.

Oh I just need to share how crazy it can get in the office. Last Tuesday, a few people got locked in a room on the same floor we were having our training in. A lot of noise and screams were coming from the room but it took quite a while for any one to realize that they were locked in. Crazy huh? Kaya bagay na bagay ako e.