PaleNxtTel
2015-05-03, 05:56 PM
I have changed my job many times in the past ten years. At one point of time, I was a drive-test engineer. At another, I worked as an in-building RF solution designer. Even more, I held a position as a software designer. And then there are the obvious ones: planning engineer and optimization engineer. And more.
Each position comes with its own suite of softwares and tools that you have to use to get your job done. While some positions will require only a few, others will need a handful of tools to do a thorough job.
Let us get more specific and consider the duties of an optimization engineer. These poor people struggle with hundreds of parameters that are intertwined in a complex way such that a change in one affects hundreds others. You know this very well when you wake up in the morning only to find that changing that 20-letters-long parameter for a single cell has brought to you ten complains in an overnight. No, regretting will not help.
At that point, your loyal tools come to rescue. Some of these tools, which you use on a normal day, are:
1. Email client. Your Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird is more important than what you think. Besides getting your payroll notification, other important things take place there.
2. Business Intelligence. Your data are big. Softwares like BusinessObejcts are necessary to see, manage and report the data generated every unit of time in a comprehensible manner.
3. Complaint Tracking. If you are (un)fortunate to be responsible for tracking customers complaints, then you need this.
4. Access to the Operation and Support System (OSS). This is provided generally from a vendor-provided tool that allows you to make the changes to the OSS.
5. Documentation viewer. When you work with hundreds of parameters, you cannot just remember the exact definition of each and every one of them. That is why tools like Erixsson Alex are needed.
6. Your (or your company) favorite planning tool, like Enterprise, Mentum, etc, to check predicted coverage maps.
7. Where on earth can you live without Google Earth?
8. Post processing. This can be anything from standard tools like Microsoft Excel to data visualization like Tableau.
9. Drive test tools are also important, depending on the exact job at hand.
I am sure there are a lot more but let us pause here for now and ask the questions: how many tools do you need to get the job done?
I tried to help myself by developing a simple tool to provide better data presentation, by being able to collect as much data as needed, all in one place. While that was a tiny step forward, what optimization, planning and network engineers really need is a global point of view that can combine, in a standardized way if possible, all the operations done in a normal way using one or two tools at most. While this might not be practical due to different reasons, including technical and marketing ones, I still think we can do something great while keeping all the other tools alive for when you need something more specific or comprehensive than a general overview. It seems to me that the advancements done in this regard are not in pace with the demand imposed on RF engineers in general. The presentation is the key here. That is, the functionalities already provided in the mentioned tools are general sufficient, but the good presentation and visualization need a clever way to integrate the outcome of these tools in a single place.
This is a call to the software companies to try to integrate the tools needed in a single suite that maintains the individual tools as a single entity while providing an easy access and a global view to all their results and outcomes for a better and easy presentation.
BR,
Abdallah Ali
Each position comes with its own suite of softwares and tools that you have to use to get your job done. While some positions will require only a few, others will need a handful of tools to do a thorough job.
Let us get more specific and consider the duties of an optimization engineer. These poor people struggle with hundreds of parameters that are intertwined in a complex way such that a change in one affects hundreds others. You know this very well when you wake up in the morning only to find that changing that 20-letters-long parameter for a single cell has brought to you ten complains in an overnight. No, regretting will not help.
At that point, your loyal tools come to rescue. Some of these tools, which you use on a normal day, are:
1. Email client. Your Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird is more important than what you think. Besides getting your payroll notification, other important things take place there.
2. Business Intelligence. Your data are big. Softwares like BusinessObejcts are necessary to see, manage and report the data generated every unit of time in a comprehensible manner.
3. Complaint Tracking. If you are (un)fortunate to be responsible for tracking customers complaints, then you need this.
4. Access to the Operation and Support System (OSS). This is provided generally from a vendor-provided tool that allows you to make the changes to the OSS.
5. Documentation viewer. When you work with hundreds of parameters, you cannot just remember the exact definition of each and every one of them. That is why tools like Erixsson Alex are needed.
6. Your (or your company) favorite planning tool, like Enterprise, Mentum, etc, to check predicted coverage maps.
7. Where on earth can you live without Google Earth?
8. Post processing. This can be anything from standard tools like Microsoft Excel to data visualization like Tableau.
9. Drive test tools are also important, depending on the exact job at hand.
I am sure there are a lot more but let us pause here for now and ask the questions: how many tools do you need to get the job done?
I tried to help myself by developing a simple tool to provide better data presentation, by being able to collect as much data as needed, all in one place. While that was a tiny step forward, what optimization, planning and network engineers really need is a global point of view that can combine, in a standardized way if possible, all the operations done in a normal way using one or two tools at most. While this might not be practical due to different reasons, including technical and marketing ones, I still think we can do something great while keeping all the other tools alive for when you need something more specific or comprehensive than a general overview. It seems to me that the advancements done in this regard are not in pace with the demand imposed on RF engineers in general. The presentation is the key here. That is, the functionalities already provided in the mentioned tools are general sufficient, but the good presentation and visualization need a clever way to integrate the outcome of these tools in a single place.
This is a call to the software companies to try to integrate the tools needed in a single suite that maintains the individual tools as a single entity while providing an easy access and a global view to all their results and outcomes for a better and easy presentation.
BR,
Abdallah Ali