Lucky Nkolonzi

In this customer-facing role, I acted as the bridge between the customer and the developers.

This role allowed me to be in constant talks with the customer and learning how to best manage their expectations, while also advocating for their ticket to get a well informed workaround, and a permanent fix from the Developers.

My coding skills came in handy as it would be a seamless process for me to dive into the code and debug the blocker so that I can give a solid workaround to the customer, while their ticket is waiting in the developers queue.

I was also promoted on this role to lead the team in writing Knowledge Based Articles that were required before closing each customer ticket. This leadership role taught me a lot about the importance of implementing new changes from above the chain of command, with patience towards the team-members.

On this role I dealt with a lot of python code as the J5 product is built on mostly Python, but also a lot of SQL scripting for different Relational Databases, as our clients can choose which database they wish to use.

This role also helped me have an experience of how to debug slowness issues, which would mostly be caused by the application performance issues, but also, due to networking issues that we would need to escalate to the client's IT.

This year at the company I was assigned to a different retail client, I was in charge of uploading their web and mobile application promotions, every week.

This work required me to learn and understand the SQL script that was in charge of taking the promotions from a csv file, and converting it into table data that can be queried by an API.

I dealt with a lot of Linux bash scripts and a lot of networking basic understanding - this network and bash scripting understanding was necessary to this role, because all the DEV, QA and PRO Linux servers were headless, and were hosted on the clients private network.

So we needed to understand how to SSH into the DEV servers from our home networks, using our Windows computers, via a program named PuTTY, and then once we have accessed an available DEV server, we can then be able to SSH to all other servers within the customer network if one knows their static IP addresses.

I invested a lot of self-study time to understand sub-nets, the ISO model and some networking protocols such as the DHCP and the DNS, basically of the structure of the internet, specifically what happens in the background when someone types "www.google.com" on a web browser.

Due to having minimum coding experience, I was admitted on this role as a manual tester, who would verify if the retail application is working as expected, and log these findings on an excel sheet.

But due to my passion for dealing with code, I decided to continue training to become a manual tester, but also, to work on promoting myself to become a developer. This required me to wake up around 3am and work on a Java Spring Boot online course that was available within the company, before my 7am daily classes.

By the end of the 3 months, I had managed to learn enough coding tools to build a small http API application that returned JSON data from a database. I hosted it in Google Cloud using their free trial, and sent a link to the external facing load balancer to my manager, who promoted me from a manual tester , and into one of the developers on another retail project.

On that project, we built a mobile Point Of Sale (P.O.S) application, i.e. a Mobile "Till". Which was launched in Dubai retail stores. It helped reduce queuing in the stores as it allowed store assistants to help the customer pay after assisting them.

I was working with the backend API team, and I was responsible for building and testing the Customer related APIs, i.e, Customer query using Customer ID or cellphone number, new Customer creation API, Customer deletion API and the Customer Update API.

I used tools such as Swagger, Spring Boot along with the Spring Boot ORM to speak to the Oracle database.

More than coding, this project made me get used to working with team-mates who do not speak English as their first language. It made me learn how to adapt as I was the only South African on that project, and most meetings would be held in the Hindi language, so I learned to be independent and be able to submit a working code that does not need a lengthy discussion within each sprint.

As an Electrical Engineer in Training (E.I.T) I was tasked to rotate throughout the many Eskom Distribution departments, and each department would assign me a project to work on for 3 months.

Below are some of the noteworthy projects I was part of during this role:

1. Build an application that shows which customers are behind on their monthly electricity usage bill.

This project was targeting the big Eskom clients, such as the Municipalities. The objective was to search one of Eskom's database, and filter out the clients who have missed a payment, and display both the amount and the dates on a bar graph.

I was involved in the frontend team, we used AngularJS to display the bar graph.

This project introduced me to coding, and it is due to the self-learning I did here that allowed me to score a Java coding internship based India.

2. Collect stolen Copper Cables around polis stations and determine their total value

This project was assigned to me by one of the managers at Eskom, who needed to present the total monetary amount of damages, to the judge, so it can be part of the evidence against the suspects who were awaiting their trial date.

To determine the total amount of the copper, I came up with a simple formula using my physics know-how, this formula took into account the volume of each cable and its weight, and the known density of copper along with the trading price of copper per kilogram.

The formula was simple to write on paper, but to get the actual numbers, became the most challenging part of this simple goal.

The cables were separated by case numbers at the police station, so I needed to separate the weights by their case number, so that each case can have its separate total amount of damages.

So I needed to organize a team, made of a truck driver and at least two mens to help carry load the heavy copper cables to the truck. We needed to drive to Brackenfell for a measurement appointment. We were all residing in Khayelitsha and we could only start this project after 3pm, so the patience was already thin with my team-mates as they were not going to be payed for this extra time.

So you can imagine how challenging it was trying to get the exact weights, separated by their case numbers, while my helpers only wanted to go home. At some point, they left me alone, and said I am too sensitive with these numbers. And I had to load some of the cables alone back into the truck.

At the end of the day, we managed to arrive back home before it was dark, and I had the correct numbers to draw the reports the next day.

This project made me see the reality of trying to get the physics formula to be accurate, it is more than just arithmetic numbers, there are also human emotions involved, and that part requires an art and leadership experience to get it as close to accurate as possible.