A Lesson Learned

An extract in the life-and-times of a project:

Wednesday….

09:31 Mazinga, Chief We have an urgent probelm in Production with neting! Please address with utmost prioiruty!!!!
09:32 Developer, Dude Need a description of the issue and some background info. When did the problem first appear?
09:35 Mazinga, Chief Buisness can you providde feed back?????
09:35 Genius, Guy Please find attached a full description of the error. The problem appeared on Monday.
09:35 God The file contains a single sentence: “Netting does not work”. But is adorned with a title page, table of contents, signoff list, revision history and is of course Rebrand-Compliant.
09:40 Developer, Dude Ummm, thanks. We’ll get on to it.
09:41 Mazinga, Chief Any newss???
09:42 Developer, Dude Please stand by. We are addressing the issue with top priority. Will update you at 10:00.
09:43 Mazinga, Chief Thx.
10:00 Developer, Dude We are not sure what’s happening. The netting code is extremely complex and trying to understand the inner workings of this vendor code will take some time. We need to use an empirical approach and focus on the changes that were made when the problem first appeared. We will keep you posted. Sorry that we do not have a quick solution. Update at 14:00 at the latest.
10:05 Mazinga, Chief What change??? Was its authoirized??? Why did we make a change that cuased paroblems??? Need to addresss uurgently!!!!
10:05 God I wish I could bring Moses back
14:00 Developer, Dude We have analysed and retested the code changes which we brought live immediately prior to the appearance of the problem, can definately say that these cannot be the cause. Business, can you confirm when the problem first appeared?
14:35 Genius, Guy The problem appeared on Monday.
14:35 God This is the moment when it’s time to ignore causality and assume that the information given is incorrect.
14:41 Mazinga, Chief Can you action please????
14:42 Developer, Dude Yes.
14:48 Mazinga, Chief Newss??????
17:02 Developer, Dude We have isolated the problem. Production has been fixed. It is due to a change made on Wednesday to the configuration. Business, why did you say the problem appeared on Monday?
17:02 God Get serious. It’s after five. BAs have gone to the pub.
17:18 Mazinga, Chief Excellent job, thx.
17:18 God Joined by the manager, who has a blackberry.

Thursday….
07:12 Developer, Dude Fix has been confirmed. Business, why did you say the problem appeared on Monday?
11:35 Genius, Guy Well, usually it takes the users a few days to detect a problem, so we assumed it started on Monday.
17:18 Mazinga, Chief Excellent job, thx. Good team effrot.

2 Comments

  1. Correction(s):
    * BA left 17:07 (!)
    * DEV would never update at 14:00 if promised for 14:00 (!)

    PS: Which Website should be stated in this form? The one I just visited or the one I’m going too now?

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