SPOOF
After
Brett Gonzales was found to be ineligible for the European Tester
of Excellence award, the EuroSTAR offices were inundated with
requests for more information about his career. (Inundated = two
e-mail enquiries [both from brett.ignatius.gonzales@gmail.com
, as it happened] and an incoherent answer-phone message). So
after wide-ranging investigations, we would like to share with the
wider testing world further details from this giant of our
industry. This continues the "Great Testers of our Times"
occasional series, with previous entries appearing in the Norwegian
Midwives Journal and the Geneva City Newsletter as well as on the
Great Testers of our Times web site (www.you_are_having_a_laugh.com
).
The best
way to illustrate his long and productive career is to give
information on four projects Brett has worked upon. Four project,
four continents; how cool is that! Readers will be amazed at his
incisive insight, determination and sheer hard work as he fought
against aggressive timelines and internal company politics, forever
keeping his end-goal in mind: 'How can I ensure that I make myself
indispensible, and hence able to command large fees into the
future?'
Brett
was the sole tester involved on the Implementation and Conversion
for the Euro (ICE) project for Danish United Mutual Provident
(DUMP). He was brought in 5 months before the introduction of the
Euro, after his turbulent time at the Danish Cheese Board (DCB)*.
Design and coding had been underway for many months, and Brett
managed to turn the project around, and enable the immovable target
to be met. Or it would have been, if Brett had not revisited the
documentation four days before go-live, and seen that the whole of
the requirements, written years before, was prefaced by the words
"On the assumption that Denmark will join the Euro, the following
matters need to be covered in their entirety ........". This
signalled the end of THAT particular project, and sunk the
promising career of many of those involved. But not
Brett!
* At DCB, there were problems with the
production control software, and the organisation almost went broke
when unable to sell 15 tonnes of 'Danish Purple' cheese and 20
tonnes of 'Danish Black'.
In late
1998, Signor Gonzales advised the Malaysian government on Y2K
issues. His novel approach was the realisation that Malaysia would
not be the first country (in terms of sunrise) that would encounter
00:00 on 01/01/2000. There would therefore be over five hours to
solve the problem - surely this would be sufficient to fix one
defect, for "the Millennium Bug" was only the one problem, wasn't
it? Australia and New Zealand would have fixed 'the bug' first, so
Brett reasoned that he could use his extensive network of worldwide
testing contacts to "borrow" the solution. His action on this
project alone saved the country $millions; more that the combined
GDP (at 2010 values) of at least 14 sub-Saharan African
countries.
Brett
also saved millions when he worked for Bolivian State railways. His
initial suggestion for process improvement was to introduce
inspections. This was misunderstood (lost in translation, perhaps,
as his Catalan Spanish is sometimes deliberately deemed
incomprehensible in Latin America) and instead of software
inspections, ticket inspections were implemented. Revenues
increased dramatically, and Brett was awarded free rail travel
throughout South America for life.
Aside
from his usual role, Brett worked as Project Manager to implement
in-bound and out-bound passenger segregation at Johannesburg
airport on behalf of "a major South African airline". His idea of
using step-wise refinement was received enthusiastically and
embraced by the whole team. Subsequent recommendations for
escalator-wise refinement and corridor-wise refinement were not
implemented. However, the project completed within time, within
budget and was of higher than expected quality, yet another time
that Brett hit 'the big three' in his long and illustrious
career.
Ladies
and gentlemen, I give you Brett Gonzales; a true 'Great Tester of
our Time'.
SPOOF