FW: Concerns with Status of Enron Integration Testing

Andy:

Please review the comments below. As I stated in our meeting on Friday, I
have been pushing our team for the February 16th deadline. Unfortunately,
there are some issues that have not been resolved and may be putting our
deadline in jeopardy. I wanted you to review this summary of the current
state of affairs and compare it to your team's opinion on the situation.
Again, this is Maria's view of the situation, which might be totally
different from your team's perspective. We do not want the situation to
become an "us v. them" mentality, so I am taking this opportunity to solicit
your feedback. Dennis and I are hoping we can work diligently to make up
this time and resolve these issues in a joint effort. We look forward to
your comments and completing this link once and for all.

Please let me know if I can provide any other input.

Best Regards,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: O'Neill, Maria [mailto:Maria.O'neill@Enform.com]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 5:07 PM
To: Chris Edmonds (E-mail)
Cc: Dennis Crum (E-mail); Richard Toubia (E-mail); Wayne Crane (E-mail);
Stewart. Clark (E-mail)
Subject: Concerns with Status of Enron Integration Testing

Chris,

Dennis asked that I send you a note expressing our concern with the delays
that we have been experiencing with the Enron Integration testing.

We have essentially not made any progress since we began testing "Enron
Posting Prices to True Quote" on January 17th. First, the test did not work
because there was a problem at Enron with price updates not posting
correctly to their integration server. This problem was resolved and we
were asked to repeat the test a week later on January 24th. This test was
also unsuccessful because the data we received did not contain any spaces
between words. As of today, it has not been determined whether the problem
is on Enron's side or ours. We have been continuing to research the problem
on our side and so far it looks to us like the data is arriving on our
server without the spaces. Enron's Operations group was planning to do a
test today to "sniff" the network to determine how the data is actually
leaving their firewall, but they have had other problems that have prevented
them from working with us today. Last Friday they were not able to spend
any time working with us because they were getting ready for their
maintenance window.

Our concern is that each time we have encountered a problem, it has taken
several days to resolve the issue before we can move on to the next series
of tests. Understanding that the due date is only 3 weeks away, the True
Quote team is concerned that Enron is not providing enough resources to work
the problems immediately and resolve them as quickly as possible. Part of
the reason for some of the delay on Enron's side may be that the group that
is involved in the testing has had to go back to the developer group for
assistance each time they have encountered a problem (at least that's our
understanding). We don't believe that there is anyone in the developer
group that is dedicated to resolve our problems as soon as one is reported.

The reality of this situation is that we have one project but many different
disconnected teams working on the project. As we move forward we would like
to make the following recommendations to improve the speed of our testing
activities:

1) Rather than working as two disconnected teams (testing via conference
call), it would be helpful if we had an Enron person here in our office each
time we test and communicate back to Enron the results that we are getting.
That person should be someone that has a direct link back to the developers
group, the operations group, and the products group.

2) The Enron resource should have as their priority to work with the
necessary groups within Enron to resolve issues as quickly as possible.

3) The developers group needs to address problems that are reported by the
testers as quickly as possible.

We welcome any other suggestions that you or Andy have to improve the speed
of our testing and implementation process. Please let me know once you've
had a chance to speak to Andy if there is anything that he can do to provide
us resources to proceed with our testing more expeditiously.

Regards,

Maria F. O'Neill
Senior Manager, EnFORM Technology
Enterprise TransFORMation Through Technology
3 Greenway Plaza, Suite 800
Houston, TX 77046
office (713)350-1891
cell (713)416-3308