Work Placement Report

Jose Ricardo De Sa
B00532510
Computer Games Development

British Telecommunications plc.

June 2013

School of Computing & Intelligent Systems
University of Ulster, Magee campus,
Northland Road Londonderry BT48 7JL

Table of Contents 1 Organisation and structure of BT 3 1.1 History and development of BT 3 1.2 Organisation chart 3 1.2.1 BT Technology, Service & Operations 3 1.2.2 Architecture and Global IT Platforms 4 1.2.3 Global Network Services 4 1.2.4 Global Infrastructure Services 5 1.2.5 Strategy, Service & Operations 5 1.2.6 Group Customer Experience 6 1.2.7 Research & Innovation 6 1.2.8 Finance & Commercial Management 7 1.2.9 HR & Comms 7 1.2.10 CIO BT Group 8 1.2.11 CIO BT Global Services 8 1.2.12 CIO Openreach 9 1.2.13 CIO BT Wholesale 9 1.2.14 CIO BT Retail 10 1.3 Function of BT’s Technology, Service & Operations 10 1.4 company management and department structure 10 2 MY role in BT 12 2.1 Job description 12 2.2 Technical skills needed (or acquired) 12 2.3 Diary outlining technical and other duties carried out 13 2.4 social aspects of placement 15 3 Learning undertaken and soft skills developed 16 3.1 Learning opportunities that the year provided 16 3.2 Expertise gained and skills developed during year 16 3.3 Personal development 17 4 Reflection 18

Organisation and structure of BT
History and development of BT
BT is the world's oldest communications company. It's roots extend back to the UK's Electric Telegraph Company. The world's first commercial telecommunications enterprise, incorporated in 1846 and the first company ever to build a national communications network.

BT's story is the history of communication technology in the UK and globally. BT's heritage is a fascinating weave of stories, consisting of corporate development and individual endeavor. Of public service and private enterprise, invention and technological innovation. It stretches from the birth of the electric telegraph in the 1830s to the explosion of the Internet and the rise of Broadband Britain.

BT has been involved in every major step-change in communications since, a long tradition that has enabled communications to shape the future.

The whole history is told through BT's archive collections, which UNESCO and Arts Council England recognize have global significance. BT’s historical documents, photographs and films record the leading role that BT and its predecessors have played in developing communications technology, from its very beginning. Illustrating the roll-out of each generation of communication services, their profound influence on society and their continuing impact on improving people's lives. As BT’s history is still being made.

It is a powerful, proud and humbling legacy. *
Organisation chart BT Technology, Service & Operations * * Strategy, service & operations
Strategy, service & operations

Architecture and Global IT Platforms * *
Global Network Services * * * * *
Global Infrastructure Services * *
Strategy, Service & Operations * * * * *
Group Customer Experience * *
Research & Innovation * * * * * * * * *
Finance & Commercial Management * *
HR & Comms *
CIO BT Group * *
CIO BT Global Services * * * *
CIO Openreach * *
CIO BT Wholesale * * *
CIO BT Retail * *
Function of BT’s Technology, Service & Operations
BT Technology, Service & Operations is responsible for the innovation, design, test, build and running of the global networks and systems. Also the delivery of the technical aspects of BT’s big customer managed service contracts. In fact BT TSO’s unit has been designed to help us work better together, right across BT, so that we can deliver a great quality service to the customers. If BT TSO can do this faster and more competitively then BT will become the choice for our customers.

company management and department structure
Being part of the Central Engineering Excellence team within BT I have had the opportunity to gain experience in all of BT’s lines of business and its main components. All lines of business have very different and complex requirements, according to what that particular line of business does.

List of lines of business and what they do:

BT Wholesale –Is responsible for the core communications network infrastructure at the heart of the UK, underpinning almost every communications business in the country. It contributes a substantial proportion of BT group’s overall revenues, and provides network services and solutions to over 700 customers (including BT Retail and BT Global Services). Our network management expertise and capability to drive broadband growth is critical to the group’s overall development

BT Retail – Is one of the four lines of business which are responsible for customer relationships. BT Retail sells not only to UK consumers but also to businesses who are end users of our services. Those companies who resell or rebrand a BT service are handled by the Wholesale line
BT Global Services – Has a unique breadth of scope, reach and capability. They bring together communications and networked IT products and services securely and efficiently. BT Global Services is also a global leader in the networked IT services market they have been recognized by the leading industry analysts (such as Gartner) and have the confidence and support of our customers.

BT Openreach – It looks after the ‘first mile’ of network, from the exchange through to homes and businesses. Our customers are not the end users, but the 450 communications providers available to the end user such as Fujitsu, Carphone Warehouse, BT Retail and AOL.

Openreach does not compete with these providers – it delivers the means by which they all, on an open and even-handed basis, run their businesses, and are in constant competition with alternative access technologies such as mobile and cable network providers.
MY role in BT
Job description
My main role as a placement student is junior developer and designer. My duties include completing tasks by a given deadline each week. Some tasks require less than a day while others may take a full week or more. My current supervisor Mark Neill, delicate our tasks while providing us with assistance as we carry out our work. There have been situations in which an emergency task, needing to be completed quickly would be given and these would take priority over any other tasks I was working on.

At the start of the placement I was given an introduction/training week. This included a crash course into the company history and a course on “BT How We Work”. During this time at BT I familiarized myself with new technology that I was never introduced to in University and superior software developing models, patterns and procedures. Testing was also a part of my duties and responsibilities. Each module built needed to be tested before handed over to my supervisor in order to ensure proper functionally and working order. This is done using Test Driven Development approach and is a huge part in the development process. More important in the design process of a program being developed is the design patterns and structures, and of course planning. Each member of the team including myself contributes to the design phase before we each split the tasks between us. This was crucial as it guaranteed that we were all on the same page and we all had the same idea about what we were planning to develop.
Another very important set of tasks that I was responsible for during my time working as a developer was research. Research was a very important and key aspect of our development. Each of us was expected to complete a number of research tasks into different areas. For all my research tasks, Steven Curtis is my supervisor.

Technical skills needed (or acquired)
My main activities for the rest of the work experience were numerous, covering a lot of different fields and technologies. From databases, web design, to module configurations and Java development. The technologies I use are the latest, also used by developers and the developing platforms they are the very best available in the field. My favorite was Perl development but I also really enjoyed T-SQL store procedures and XML. I also liked working with HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Everything was interconnected though so you had to use each technology in order to develop a full module. It was very good and highly motivating and all this played an important role in my learning experience.

I learned a lot from the research that I carried out regarding the work I was undertaking, especially from the company and industry’s point of view. It helped me to better understand how new products are being developed and why a company would decide a product over another. Perhaps the most important thing that I learned from this research was the Customer Driven Development model. This is a crucial approach to modern software design.

Also my previous and on-going development tasks were very beneficial in my learning outcome about the software industry, and full application product development. It helped me to learn a lot about the whole steps required when thinking about a product, the initial ideas and drawing board solutions, the actual product design, the technologies used to implement it and the testing phases. Also another important aspect is the constant maintenance of a launched product. Further testing and updates will need to be maintained in order to improve the quality and functionality of the released products.

Diary outlining technical and other duties carried out Note: Diary covers six random months of my placement; each identified by “Month #” paragraph is the start of a month.

Month One - Having to travel for the start of the placement was very exciting, as I was going with other placement students. The first day we all met up and started our guided tour of Adastral Park in Ipswich, the park encompassed a large area with several buildings, walk ways, parks with tables for employees to have lunch, the whole park is protected.

Although we were there only for a week we were not short of things to do. The placement coordinator had our week planned out down to the evening social events. Our day started with different inductions like Welcome to the Company, fire awareness, fire drill exercise, health and safety in the work place. After the inductions we all had lunch, then back to the office during the afternoon for mandatory training. After the day had ended we all had the option to attend social gatherings and events.

The second and third weeks I was back at my base office getting to know my team members Mark Neill our line manager, Steven Curtis lead designer, Steve Atkinson lead designer and Stephen Kennedy grad it was very easy to remember everybody’s names because I only had to say Steve to call someone.

Stephen Kennedy helped me get settled in the team. As he had joined the team in the beginning of that year, he had all the guides needed to configure and set up my work laptop. All developers including the placement students are given their own work laptop for their work.

While I was setting up my work station for development I was given a small task to document a small web app currently used in the team’s website. Also I attended an event called Robo’lympics, this was great fun. We were put in teams of two, three and had to build a robot out of Lego and use all the tools provided to enable the robot to follow a line on a circuit and win the race. We split the team in two areas the building of the robot and the programming, we all did a bit of everything. The race was very exciting and even if I didn’t win the race I had a lot of fun and was able to show case my team working skills.

The real work had finally started towards the end of the month after setting up Apache httpd local server and attending the planning session for the STATS dashboard. “STATS” was the name of the team I was assigned to and it stands for “Strategic Test Automation and Tools Suite”. The first task that I was assigned I had to integrate the batch tests into the “STATS Dashboard”. At the end of the first month there was a big social event for everyone in the company and was a very good way to meet new contacts in my industry.

Month Two - By November I was all steeled in the team and developing tools for the STATS tool suite, we had another workshop for the next steps in the dashboard development and continued integration of the central database. After the workshop the team had a code review including our off shore team members, a few stories and tasks where then assigned to each of us.

Because some of the data the STATS team can handle requires extra security clearance, I applied for the “Annex 2 Part B” which gave me the clearance I needed to preform my tasks and complete my stories. While I waited for the security clearance to be approved and knowing the final data to be populated into the database I set up a dummy table with some data and created the necessary SQL queries. Once my security clearance was accepted I started work on the “Verification Point Tool”, what this tools does is count all the points in a test that has any type of verification. The tests are written in XML and there were a lot of attributes in a lot of different nodes, I worked on this for the best part of three weeks.

The development process adopted for this application was TDD or test driven development, the first step was to write tests. Once the entire test cases where locked down and Steve was happy that I had all possible scenarios tested I then moved on to writing the main java application. As I was writing the code I used the tests as a guide for debugging and next steps to develop.

Month Three - After the new year I had already felt like I had been part of the team for a long time, we all get along really well and this has help me in improving my skill sets.
Work started back up with a few small tasks, had to modify some SQL queries to accept a date parameter dynamically. Another task I was assigned to add a new command in the verification code to exclude a specific directory; once this task was completed I added the new command to the build command in Jenkins. Jenkins is an open source continuous integration tool written in Java.

The development process BT adopts is “Agile” development, and being in the team that I am, any design changes we find to be beneficial to the project we can suggest and implement it without a lot of red tape. I was looking at some JavaScript frameworks on the web and came across a new table framework and recommended we use it by the end of the day I had integrated it in the web application and started to produce the first report using the new framework and everyone thought it was a great addition to the application.

One other change we implemented to the web application was routing and URL parameters JavaScript plugin, the reason we needed this was to parse parameters dynamically to our queries.

Month Four - With all the new implementations added to the web application, new reports and metrics where designed and implemented by me. First tasks I had to do was to alter the existing reports for all to use the same table framework (Data Tables), as I was actively developing the reports I came across a blocker (add conditional statements to table cells according to the data populated) but with the research I found a JavaScript plugin that could resolve the issue for me called Transparency. I was able to add the directives to the cells and produced a very cool looking report.

Further JavaScript development on the application was need for extra functionality in a way that it would be very easy to maintain the web application by property files. For any changes needed like a release cycle time frame that is set dates stored in an array in a properties file. The next task I had to do was populating a dropdown list from this array in a properties file and use it in a getter method to request the query with the new parameter. For the rest of that week I completed some cosmetic changes to the UI.

My first defect was picked up by one of the off shore team members in the verification point code, a semantic error in the code and was not counting some of the verifications that a tests preforms. To fix this I had a look in my log book for the dry run I preformed and altered the JUnits to lock down the all the return values. Last change I had to do was increase the Java heap size to 1024MB.

Month Five - Continuous development on the web application, a complex query was needed for one of our new reports. The twenty-four hour Beat test report with a dynamic view of all 12 test run every day, only after doing this task I realized just how powerful SQL really is. After I completed the query I added the logic to add the time of run in the table column headers and formatted the test name to replace "/" for” “(space) and a hyperlink to the test data itself.

This week was very exciting for me, Mark handed me my own VM and asked me to find a new backlog tool for the team to use because the one we currently where using was very buggy. After a few hours of research I found the perfect tool called Agilefant, did a short presentation to Mark and he like the tool and asked me to use the my VM to install it and manage it.

Never really having used Linux before I was thrown a bit in the deep end but the learning outcome was too good to let this task be pushed off to someone else, I started with the install guide and found out what other software I might need to install on the VM. Once I got all the requirements I started by installing Java JDK/JRE and set all environment variables. The application needed its own database to store all the data so I installed MySQL and created the database from the template that was provided by the application.

Once all the core software needed was installed I still needed to run a web server to host the application, Tomcat was the recommended service to use. Once it was installed I had to configure all the listening ports and start the service. After all the requirements where met I set up Agilefant jar file in Tomcat and started up the application then set up communications to the database after all configuration was done I started up the application and ran a few smoke tests and found a broken pipe to fixed the pipe and created a cronjob to archive the logs and save disk space on the VM.

Month Six - During a task I had done a few weeks back I had noticed a procedure that everyone on the team used to do, when I had extra free time towards the end of the day I started writing a Perl script to recursively find a list of message files with only knowing the test run id and returns a JSON object. And another script to find and return the system test report with the same test id, once I had completed this maybe a month later after completing my main stories I showed the code to Mark and he asked me to integrate it with all the other tools currently being used.

After Easter I had returned to the verification points code to extract a method and move it to our STATS commons library, the control file walker is a powerful piece of code that can run through an XML document and return nodes, attributes in a binary tree linking parents to children, siblings and vice a versa.

After all that was done I returned to the web application and found that I couldn’t really easily manipulate and alter a JSON object so I created a new JQuery plugin to deal with this problem. I first started by identifying what I needed to do to the JSON object and added the required logic to deal with this problem. Every so often when I need extra functionality to the plugin I simply add it and extend it as much as possible so one day I can publish it as an open source library on the web and also to my portfolio.

social aspects of placement
Through my placement experience I have greatly developed as a person in numerous ways. My knowledge and skills have greatly improved. However my social skills have also significantly improved. Being on placement has positively impacted on my life. I have arisen and completed tasks I would have thought impossible. Due to my placement I have become more confident in my personal life. I feel that BT has helped me find myself. I am very lucky to have found a job I am very interested and also talented at. BT has enabled me to develop strong relationships with my co-workers and is a nurturing environment.
Learning undertaken and soft skills developed
Learning opportunities that the year provided
Accredited Learning Pathways are internal accreditation programs that provide BT with a structured way to develop skills in strategically important areas. They typically combine internal and external training and exams to create a BT based accreditation that demonstrates technical or process based competence combined with BT product/proposition knowledge.

The skills and knowledge acquired are used to support key customer contracts or underpin key products and propositions that help BT to win new business or increase its penetration in emerging marketplaces. The Accredited Learning Pathways for software engineering are designed to provide BT people with the knowledge and experience to develop software, using practices, frameworks and tools that enable true engineering and innovation in software development. The pathways are an essential part of the continuous learning that is necessary for every software engineer to grow their understanding and expertise, and deliver the new applications that will drive BT forward. The pathways allow people to gain knowledge of a number of programming languages, but more importantly understand how those languages can best be applied to create reliable, manageable software that can be easily enhanced and re-used for new scenarios.

In addition to software development, the pathways include specialized areas for more experienced developers, such as software performance, application deployment and management, and software usability. These will allow people to build on their core skills to become subject matter experts in the areas that will be essential to taking BT forward and supporting others in the software engineering community.

I have always been a strong believer in the need for creativity, good engineering, and continuous learning in all areas, and I see the Accredited Learning Pathways program as a very positive step in giving people that have a thrust for the opportunity to develop these skills that are highly-valued in the IT industry.

Accredited Learning Pathways contribute to the four goals: * Ensuring that our people understand the BT capabilities and use them in our customer designs * Align our top accreditations with our most important customer programs * Differentiate the level of capability in BT from that of our competitors * Build the organizational skills and capability that BT needs now and in the future Expertise gained and skills developed during year
BT supplies its employees with all the best resources to further their expertise and skills; I personally have been developing my Linux knowledge because of the extensive use of our managed servers.

Some of the areas that I have developed are in the list below with a brief description after the title.

General Coding Best Practices – Best practices for writing high quality methods, expressions, variables, arrays, loops, and ‘if’ statements, and to describe recommended practices for writing readable code

Maintaining Quality Code – The primary techniques of refactoring, and to discuss the best practices for reviewing, testing, and debugging code

Object-oriented Coding Best Practices – Best practices for defining and using classes, and determining how best to use inheritance or its alternatives
Programming Techniques and Strategies – For the high level considerations for producing good code

Automated Deployment – Is the practice of being able to deploy or upgrade an existing application (with a back-out in the event of failure) with a single keystroke. Automation places knowledge of how to perform deployments into scripts, rather than in peoples' heads, minimizes manual errors and leads to greater consistency across environments

Test Driven Development – Is the practice of writing all production code alongside low-level tests which assert its behaviour. TDD done properly has many benefits, including;

* Driving the creation of production code from executable specifications of its expected behaviour helps you discover the best design and structure as you develop the code. * The tests act as executable, self-verifying documentation of the functionality of each unit of code in an application, helping new developers to understand the behaviour and protecting them from accidental mistakes. * Changes which break other behaviour are detected and corrected immediately * The tests provide the infrastructure to replicate and fix bugs in production code * It provides a safety-net to allow Refactoring (the process of adapting existing code to meet new demands) to happen without risk

Subversion Tools – Is a centralised version control system. The "master" of a versioned item is held in a Subversion "repository" server and users have local versions which they work on concurrently. Local versions are synchronized with the repository by the Subversion client by the actions:

* Checkout — a local version is created from the repository * Update — changes from the repository are integrated into the local copy * Commit — changes from the local version are integrated into the repository

Personal development
I have actively developed my programming and design skill ether by reading the “Head First Collection” in Java, HTML, .net and systems.

I have also designed a game during my placement that I intend to develop for final year as my final year project.

I feel that this year has helped me see the industry in a new light, and a realization that I will always be a student. Never ending cycle of new information and technology’s that will shape all our future.
Reflection
As part of my work experience, I worked as a junior developer and designer for British Telecommunications plc. (BT). BT employs tens of thousands of people at the moment and a few other abroad contractors and collaborators.

The main area of development was module development. From the start I was assigned to work on creation of different modules working solo and also within a team. My main activities for the rest of the work experience were wide and covered a lot of different fields and technologies. I know that my work to date was delivered with the highest standards, and I am continuing to develop more system and modules for our platform. My experience has changed a lot from what I initially expected. I have learned a tremendous amount and developed a lot of skills in the past months. During the past months working for BT, I have acquired a great set of skills. I have learned advanced programming methods and I have developed good coding habits. I have learned a lot of Java and I’ve greatly improved my HTML and CSS skills and even Perl witch in my opinion is a very powerful language and should be thought in University as a way to learn how to use Linux because in Perl you can use Bash commands. My experience has helped me to develop a better understanding of the career world and I am glad that I picked this vocational path. I wish to continue to work in this field. I am glad that I had such great opportunities and great learning environments to develop my skills for future development. My biggest challenges were perhaps attempting to comprehend the complexity of the systems and trying to learn so much in such a short period of time, but I was fortunate to have such good colleagues that are industry leaders that helped me along the way and was able to accomplish any difficult tasks with their help..

I sincerely believe that the work experience program is a very important and great part of the SCIS degrees and I definitely recommend that it should be provided for future generations as it stands. However I would recommend that a better system for placement students be implemented to help us and our supervisors with more resources and guidance with reports and feedback.

Through my placement with BT I have developed a number of exceptional skills that make me a valued employee. I have grown socially and also developed as a worthy contribution to my team. As BT is such a large company and I have undergone training in numerous areas my skills can be easily transferred and applied to a range of professions. I have learnt to work well and also to deal well under pressure while working to strict deadlines. My placement has resulted in more improved social skills and increased self-confidence around my co-workers and management. This will enable me to promote myself for employability. I have greatly enjoyed my time working for BT. I have greatly improved in numerous ways resulting in BT contracting me for a conditional job opportunity. I will be working part time for BT while I complete final year and if I achieve a 2.1 or higher I will be given a full role within the company.