ed_ification
Knight Commander
Force Alignment: -385
Posts: 4171
Darth Cronfios
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« Reply #7240 on: July 28, 2018, 01:08:49 AM » |
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Time for a story. I shall attempt to be generic, in deference to wanting to stay employed.
So, no s***, there I was (I've been told that all good stories must start with this phrase, and so we shall). I work in software.
Software's an interesting field - much different from what I used to do, which was video editing, in some ways. The similarities are that, as in most things, one gets what one pays for, and generally speaking, precision counts for a lot.
Moving from editing to software wasn't as difficult as I expected - I still build rapport with clients, and precision still counts for a lot. But, the downside of having to look, quite literally at times, at 30th of a second pieces of screen time for small imperfections means that I have quite stringent standards. Those standards, have, generally speaking, served me well. I have, at this point, been working for years on my primary product, and taught almost everyone at my company about how it works (and, in my department, the level of work that I expect; quite frankly, if you work with me, your work reflects ON me, and I will have no one say that I skimped on your training).
As we've aged as a company, we've had to move away from wild west coding. Wild West works when one is young as a company - it shows your clients how much energy you have for them. But, wild west cannot scale, or at least not well. We've moved to a more disciplined change review process, where we assess the risk of a change and how likely a problem is to arise. IF a change is too risky, a group of change overseers get involved.
That's our preface.
So, approximately 2 weeks ago, we had a release go badly. It went badly because certain changes were missed.
Well, I say missed. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that one team, working in a different office, decided that their changes did not need to follow the review process. Typically, when I have encountered this attitude, the reason for it is that those involved feel that they are professional enough that they don't need someone checking their work. Of course, when a change goes bad, that puts the lie to that thought. They've had sufficient time to know the process, and have been coached on it before this point.
This team, however, failed to learn from this going badly. Some of you may be young enough to recall being grounded when younger. When one violated one's grounding conditions, typically, one's parents, if anything like mine, would come down all the harder.
I don't believe these folks ever experienced this.
Flash forward to yesterday. I am requested onto a call with that Team and our maintenance managers (who get involved when things get squirrelly as they have here). I join on, and I am asked about how we get to the change overseers.
I am surprised, but reply that we can schedule a meeting, but that any change should be assessed prior to that meeting. The team begins... to complain. Complain about the process, that it is imposing an unnecessary delay, that they weren't informed before about this NEW process, etc. Thankfully, we had a member of senior management on, who basically said that they could take up their complaints with the department head later, but that this was the process to be followed.
No real points if you can guess what happened next.
They failed to prepare.
More than that - they could not answer questions from the change overseers. Basic questions, like, how have you tested this, how will customers be affected, etc.? The sorts of things one might ask.
Our change overseers are senior employees. People with a lot of years, a lot of expertise, and a lot of demands on their time. Their time is precious. I actually give the Change Process training, and I stress to my trainees to prepare, prepare, prepare, ESPECIALLY when going to the oversight team.
The oversight team does not respond well to the failure to answer, and begin to press for the answers that are needed. Someone on the team requesting the change had the temerity to interrupt a senior VP on the oversight team.
Have you ever seen a vein on someone's head throb in anger? I watched it happen, as the interrupted VP got to a state of, as I want to put it, incandescent rage. To his credit, he kept his calm, but it was in that moment that I watched, in essence, several people's careers with us die. And not undeservedly, I would add.
We end that meeting with a decision to proceed, but a stern warning that ALL changes must go through the oversight team, due to current fragility.
Of course, overnight, someone decided to get really creative, and made a change without testing it.
Things did not go well, as one might imagine.
Flash forward to this afternoon - another emergency request. Not 10 minutes before, the VP whom I mentioned previously asked this team if they had assessed the risk, and was told that yes they had, that all was ready.
Meeting starts, and we ask for the risk scores.
We are told those aren't ready.
Senior VP, staying calm (which REALLY ought to be a warning sign to anyone with the intelligence of the common gnat), calls the meeting then and there, telling the team to prepare their scores, and that we will reconvene in 20 minutes.
The thing that gets me is that I CANNOT understand this behavior. When I have fouled up, I own it - I have said before that I would stay on the clock to get the thing corrected and out on time. And I have - I've stayed at a job from 8 am to 2 am to get something out the door, and was back at 8 the next day since I didn't have previous permission to be late for my start. If I foul up, I ask how I can correct, and then I do my darnedest to follow that correct process, and I also expect to have someone check me until such time as I can prove that I have a firm grasp of the procedure. These folks just don't seem to care, or understand WHY they are getting checked - even now.
The aftermath should be... entertaining, in a gladiatorial bloodsport sort of manner...
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