It should be apparent from my previous Side Bars, but I am currently working on a project we are doing with another company. Unfortunately, the other company is utilizing a development team in India. To help keep everything coordinated, we have teleconferences every Tuesday and Thursday morning. This story begins with our most recent meeting last Thursday.
The conference call had been going well, no major issues. This made Hanzo uneasy, as his turn to take the floor neared. If no issues were raised soon, luck was bound to not be with him.
"Hanzo," spoke Paul, hanzo's boss. "Did you have anything to discuss?"
"Yes. I pushed some changes to the ResolveTask service in the test environment a few weeks ago. I was wondering if the India team was ready for us to push those changes to the production environment."
"That shouldn't be a problem," said Shiva. "We'll just need 15 minutes to push the changes on our side."
"Great," said Paul. "How about we plan for 7:00 am Pacific time tomorrow?"
"Works for me," said Hanzo, ready to take charge. "Shiva, I'll email you when I'm ready to start on my side. I'll send you another email when I've finished with my changes. After that, just let me know when you've completed the changes on your side."
"Sounds good," agreed Shiva.
"Anything else?" queried Miles, Shiva's state-side boss. He was greeted with a chorus of "No".
As had been standard practice for the past month, Hanzo quickly saved the meeting minutes - after making sure that the plans for tomorrow were crystal clear - and emailed them out to everyone in both companies.
The next morning, Hanzo fired off his first email at 7:06 am. A few minutes late, but traffic had been a bitch. He immediately got to work on the planned promotion, which took all of 2 minutes, and then sent of the confirmation email.
Half an hour later, Hanzo started to worry. No word from the team in India. Not a peep.Maybe they ran into a snag? well, just keep waiting.
8:00 am, still nothing. Something's wrong. Time to fire off an email.
**To:** Shiva
**CC:** Paul, Miles
**Subject:** Promotion
What's your current status? It's been an hour since we promoted the update on our side, and you guys said you only needed 15 minutes. What's goin on ?
Hanzo
Another half hour went by with no response, so Hanzo did the only reasonable thing. He rolled back the changes.
**To:** Shiva
**CC:** Paul, Miles
**Subject:** RE: Promotion
It's now been 90 minutes since the scheduled promotion and I haven't heard anything from you. I'm rolling the changes back on our side. We'll try again next week.
Hanzo
Unfortunately for our brave hero, the story doesn't end there. On Saturday, Hanzo finally got a response:
**From:** Shiva
**To:** Hanzo
**CC:** Paul, Miles
**Subject:** RE: Promotion
Sorry. We are ready to do promotion. We will push our changes Monday morning.
Shiva
Before Hanzo could respond, another email rolled in:
**From:** Miles
**To:** Hanzo, Shiva
**CC:** Paul
**Subject:** RE: Promotion
Shiva,
Do not plan on being able to apply these changes Monday. Hanzo needs to be able to coordinate with the users to schedule a downtime. Wait for further instructions.
Miles
And that was it, until Monday morning.
When Hanzo got in Monday morning, he found out that Paul had arranged some downtime at 7:00 am Pacific time. He hurried and performed his promotion, and notified the India team. A few minutes later, this email came through:
**From:** Shiva
**To:** Hanzo
**CC:** Paul, Miles
**Subject:** RE: Promotion
**Attached:** ServiceRequest.XML
We were testing in production and got an error. Please verify.
Shiva
"What‽ Testing in production? What the hell were they doing when it was in test for three weeks?" Hanzo was grateful for his private office as he started yelling at no one in particular.
After he calmed down a little, Hanzo finally gathered the courage to look at the attachment that Shiva had provided. Not knowing what to expect, he was not really surprised to find that they weren't including the new parameter in the request.
**To:** Shiva
**CC:** Paul, Miles
**Subject:** RE: Promotion
Your request doesn't include the new required element that you were informed about when these changes were made to the test environment almost 4 weeks ago. That is why you are getting the error.
Hanzo
An hour later, Hanzo was in Paul's office for the IT team's weekly meeting.
"Hanzo, how are we looking for that promotion?"
"I don't know. The last I heard from the India team, they had screwed up and not even done their part right. They were testing in production. I told them they didn't account for all the changes, and I haven't heard from them since."
"Can we roll back?"
"Sure, but since I don't know what changes the India team did account for, I don't know how functional ResolveTask will be. It would be just as effective to leave things as they are."
"All right, I'll call Miles after we're done here. This is not acceptable."
Hanzo sat through the rest of the meeting, wondering where else this adventure would lead …