CJ Chen, R&D CMN Team

One project one milestone, one team one project. As part of our corporate culture, the flexible project management is one of the specialized working styles in GDNT. Where there is a team, there is high working efficiency and abundant source of innovation, all is because of GDNT’s good working environment and open management style, which creates a simple and harmonious interpersonal relationship in the workplace. This will help every employee to realize his self-value, maximum the efficiency of a whole team, as well as actively response to the changing and competitive technical market.

Working Tackle Problems to Making Great Effort

The name of our team OAM PV stands for Operations Administration and Maintenance Product Verification. It is focusing on a series of management maintenance software of Nortel’s CS2K product. In this task, the Features within SN10 are very different from what we met before. For example, the database of IEMS (Integrated Element Management System) is migrated from Oracle to MySQL, upgrading of CMT (CS2K Management Tool) is adopting an intelligent script, upgraded versions of MFT Base under Security management changed a lot. We were well prepared for the problems in its IT-test phase, but initially we were unaware of and unprepared for when some sudden and critical issues appeared in the product verification phase.

The goal was set and could not be changed. In order to achieve it, we fought for the lab shifts on the labs (labs are shared within several teams in GDNT) and adopted every feasible verification methods. To ensure the quality, we needed to carefully identify and deal with every CR (Change Request); to capture the effective test data, we needed to be await till midnight. The busiest person in our team was always our prime. He was so diligent to motivate every one of us, gain more time, get more lab resource and human resource for the team, so as to enhance our overall competitiveness, as well as to effectively control the project progress, and the working time was never enough. The new version of IEMS introduced synchronization mechanism of coping changes into MySQL database; problems existed in switching and cloning of Cluster system. Test engineers Yu Guanchen and Wu Weiyong took the challenges. They made phone calls with several primes from verification team, support team and design team till the midnight. In spite of the huge pressure and tight deadline, they finally conquered all tackles to ensure the system’s smooth running. During the whole process, we were always ahead of schedule.

Every team member was active and passionate regardless how many problems and issues are in front of us. We made every effort to secure the milestone, then finally to deliver on time.

Learning Learning from Each Other

The efficiency in technical work depends on individuals’ capability; however, the capability should come from his knowledge and experience. A harmonious cooperative atmosphere will provide a good environment for our learning and our coordination. Helping each other, learning together, open knowledge sharing, applying the new knowledge into practice, all these will help greatly enhance our working efficiency.

Every manager in our team has set a good example for us. Their insistency on practical effect and their openness and trust fostered a positively active team. In the tense but orderly environment, every team member is motivated to exert their potential with an aim in mind - to get the projects done.

An effective communication within the team is a foundation for our learning and experience sharing, which can ensure every designer is well informed of the new knowledge. For example: Security Management, the basic for a product, includes the security service of Sun Solaris in the lowest layer, which is vital to multi-functions of OAM. Test engineers Xu Xinxin, Huang Xiao and Tan Peng started to work on the project in the IT test phase and accumulated abundant understanding and experience on the product, therefore, when we met a lot of problems on security management during product verification period, they could work out every possibility and provide useful suggestions to us, which were very valuable for our final solution.

The Fault and Performance management in network management is required to deal with a large quantity of equipments. The new comer Martin was growing very fast from questions. What’s more amazing is, he collected the key technical points from our experience and compiled into a guidance book! In addition, the engineers Guo Xiaohua who were studious on reading system performance document shared many valuable findings on system performance management issues from his plenty practice, which finally helped us to gain a lot of applause from design teams. Other engineers Esther, Davis, Priscilla etc. are all excellent and responsible people. We are all proud to be one of OAM PV team, a well-trained and cooperative team.

Future Looking forward with Enhanced Capability

Recollecting the past, I always can’t help wanting to write down what we had experienced on every milestone. All in all, our team efficiency was maximized during the whole process. To new hires, they applied the theory about Nortel’s development and test process to the practice of product verification, increasing experience and skill; to senior engineers, they enhanced their management and technical skills from many product verification cycles; to the whole team, the goals are achieved to add value to the Company. In order to re-align with Nortel’s overall R&D strategy adjustment, some of our team members will be transferred to other design teams and PV teams; some will stay for new projects. I am convinced that they all will continue to create values to the future of our Company.

Knowledge and experience accumulation is for future. In the competitive “Technical-First” market, every company, every team and every employee is facing huge challenges. Efficiency is our goal, innovation is our mission. Every one of us is required to accumulate experience, upgrade our knowledge base and get prepared for every fighting. It is very necessary for us to establish a learning organization, which will ensure the strongest execution ability and a satisfactory task accomplishment.