2009+s+1+Reed+Karen+seminar



= =     This is my contribution to the seminar site. It is about my two weeks of work experience with Jardine LLoyd and Thompson.

From the 12th of January 2009 to the 23rd of January 2009 I under took two weeks work experience in the IT Department of the Insurance Broking firm of Jardine Lloyd and Thompson (JLT). This was done in their Perth office. Although JLT are a global company and are Australia Wide it is the Perth office that has the biggest IT Department. It is here that the majority of their software development is carried out. It is also in this office that the support team for the company Australia wide is found. While I was working here I met people who were developing the JLT web pages as well as the intranet pages. Some people were also developing web pages for clients. JLT is primarily an insurance Broking firm that finds the best insurance available for their clients. It is primarily involved with corporate companies though it does get insurance for smaller companies but does not really deal with individual people. Some of the groups that are their clients are Village Life Retirement Homes, AFL Australia, BHPBillition and the Motor Racing groups. So as you can see their clients needs were very varied.

For the most part of my work experience I was in what was known as the testing department. It was here that any programs that the development departments made or altered were tested to make sure that there were no errors in their compiling and were user friendly. All programs and databases as well as the web pages and intranet that have been developed by the programmers must be as easy to use as possible because although the people using the programs were well versed in Broking most of them are very basic computer users. This meant that anything developed for them had to be very easy. They did not have the time to go looking through an interface for obscure button or command. It all had to be there up front. They also required programs that did the basic things like calculations for them as they typed in the information. Their templates for documents all had to be developed to suit the company and the individual. These were all developed in the IT department for them. So that this is made true anything developed for them needed to be tested and then tested again before it was deployed on the company system. This is what I did. I was at first given a job where I had to use the program that was developed for the Brokers to access all the information that they had on their clients. eg. Clients name, the company that they were insured by, how many claims that the client had outstanding and how many had been resolved. As you can imagine there was a lot of data kept by this program which by the way was known as the JBS (Jardine Broking System). So that the tester could change client or broker data all the testing that is carried out by the testing department is done in a test environment. This is done via a virtual machine. Although the programs and data are real we did not change any of the original data just copies of them. Although this program has been in use for some years it is constantly being changed. Through trying to do a large range of function on the program it was my job to break it. If anything that I did caused an error to come up I then had to follow the following procedure to report the error. First I had to recreate the steps that I followed to cause the error and document them in a word document. This was done by using screen shots of the step by step procedure that I used .Then I had to write a brief description of the steps. Once I had all this documented I had to fill in an error reporting form that had been developed for the IT department by the IT department. This form is used by all the departments within the company so that all errors be they hardware or software can be reported to the right area of the IT Department. Once the form is lodged via email to the right section of IT the developers then strive to fix the problem. There is a procedure that they use to determine which jobs are done first and which jobs can be left until a little later usually after a major deployment. Sometimes the errors reported are just of a cosmetic nature and others the more serious ones are of a running nature. Depending on the nature of the error the programmer may ask the tester to work with them in correcting the problem. If this is needed they will either liaise through the email system or they will work along side one another. This sometimes is necessary so that the programmer can see what the user would be doing to create the problem. What you need to remember is that the programmers are not responsible for the testing of the program just the development of it. Once the original error has been solved the program is then sent back to the testing department to be once again thoroughly tested. This is done because sometimes fixing the original error can cause a new error to occur. If a program has been thoroughly tested and no more errors have been found the testing manager will ask for an update to be done. This means that the company computer users are asked not to use a particular program for a certain amount of time so that the updates for the program in question can be deployed.

Whilst I was a JLT the IT department were working on a major deployment. They were, with the consent of Microsoft changing the way Microsoft Word 2003 looked and worked so that they could add some features that the Brokers required to make the documents they needed without having to change to different templates or different views. It was very interesting to see how the program could be changed to accommodate the front-end users of the system. Unfortunately due to security reasons I cannot go into any more detail as to the changes that they made. The Web designing team were all working on a new Web page for a major sporting group so that their members could access the information that they need on their accounts. It was interesting to watch how the programmers manipulated objects using different forms of technology available to them. Although I did not touch their database I was given a look at a simple database that was on their system. There were at least 100 tables for what was supposed to be a simple database.

During my second week with the company I was transferred to the Support team so that I could see the work that they did. This support team are the main support team for the company throughout Australia. So as you can imagine the telephones were running hot. They deal with many problems ranging from problems that they can work a user through to problems that need escalating to a department that is more equipped to deal with the problem. For example if the problem is hardware then they must forward the problem on to hardware. Having said that it is their job to determine the exact cause of the problem. Although most of the company offices throughout Australia have their own hardware and networking departments they did not have their own support team. This support team were able to help most of the users by using the company’s intranet and a server that is known as a VCN to actually view the user’s computer and see what they are doing to perhaps cause an error. If they can view what the user is doing and can see where they are going wrong then they can step the user through the proper steps. If they feel that it is necessary to manipulate the users mouse they can also do this via the VCN. It is actually very interesting to watch this happening. I had never seen this technology used before and found it interesting to see in action. The support Team member can also reset the users computer if they feel that it is necessary. The support team also were in charge of keeping the intranet information up to date. While I was there this meant updating the company phone book. I was given this job to do as I did not really have enough experience to help the users. I found this a very interesting job as I had to go through all the data on the phone books for all the offices for the company. I had to make sure that they all had the appropriate information in all the fields. As this job was previously done by who ever thought to do it the phone books were really a mess. However by importing the data from excel and then adding the necessary data into the phone book I was able to get several of the larger offices for the company up to date. Unfortunately I did have to rely on one of the other girls in the support team to make some phone calls for me as unfortunately some of data that I had did not match some of the data that I received from the excel import. I had people that were in the phone book but not in the information that I downloaded or visa versa. These irregularities had to be cleared up. This was one of the reasons why the phone book had to be taken over by one department. The support department were also responsible for taking care of the companies mobile phones and black berry phones. As a lot of the brokers travelled overseas a lot the support girls had to organise for Global Roaming and other such services for the Brokers. One of the requests that the support team had while I was there was how do you put a number on the bottom of a page. As the broker was in the Perth office one of the team members went to their desk to show them how to do it. So you can see the difference between a User and an IT person.

JLT – Jardine Lloyd and Thompson a global insurance Broking firm. JBS – Jardine Broking System this is the system that the broking side of the firm use to input and access client data. Programmers – The people that design the programs that the company uses to keep all their client details and document templates. Testers – The people that test the programs that the programmers develop Brokers – In this company the front end users who work with the programs that the programmers develop.