Friday, June 23, 2006

System Rollout & Contingency

System: Auto Water-Refill System (AWRS) for Wong's Family Fish-tank EcoSystem (WFFES)

Business Case:
  • critical function - may have serious impact to at least 8 lives in the WFFES (including "Lemon Wong", "Yellow Wong", "Big Bride", "Small Bride", "Dory", a "doctor", a "dustman", a black "illegal immigrant") and may ruin the environment of the WFFES (e.g. the "Grass", and both Big Bride and Small Bride's home)
  • heavily relied on a single system operator to operate the function manually
  • most importantly, the system operator will be on vacation for 2.5 weeks starting from Jun 24 (that triggers the implementation of the System)
  • with this new system in place, it is targeted to have a new part-time system operator to "manage" the WFFES every 3-4 days
Planned Rollout Date: June 24, 2006 (Note: hard deadline, cannot be postponed)

Current Status (as of Jun 23): 3-days of test run failed, cannot proceed "production cutover" for the AWRS

Failure Reason(s):
  • schedule delay (late procurement of production/testing equipment, which delayed the testing cyle)
  • inadequate time for testing and fixing the problem (under-estimate?)
Contingency Plan:
  • the function will be managed by the part-time system operator manually every 2 days during the critical period (supposedly, this task should be done twice every day. As advised by the SME, "every 2 days" is the best option to maintain the WFFES effectively for the part-time operator)
Next Action(s):
  • document the manual procedures if necessary
  • conduct a quick skill transfer session shortly by today
  • deploy the contingency plan starting June 24

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

A list of To-Do before Departure


To-Do:
  • foreign exchange
  • hotel confirmation & payment (hopefully by tomorrow)
  • online reservation for "bull-fighting" (event on coming Sunday at Madrid)
  • buy stuff for the trip (e.g. 貼身袋, 日用品, 防曬/ 防蚊, etc)
  • Tax Return (via online)
  • 3-day of test run of the auto water-refill system for my tank (to be done by Mr. W)
  • attend a wedding ceremony at around 3pm at City Hall on Sat (on the same day of departure)
  • ...

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

4 days to go

Planned Itinerary for Spain & Portugal Trip in Jun/Jul 2006

6/24: HK --> Madrid
6/25-27: Madrid
6/28-29: Lisbon
6/30: Faro (Portugal)
7/1-3: Sevilla (Spain)
7/4-8: Barcelona
7/9-10: London
7/11-12: London --> HK (7/12)

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Stephen Hawking

When there is life, there is hope ...