Wednesday, July 12, 2006

I almost went postal

Yesterday, I could have killed my team lead and second line manager. I will explain why.
The department that Mark and I work in is a specialized IT group that is not part of the rest of the IT departments. Based on that there is a lot of political BS that goes on up at the manager levels about who supports what. Its become especially more prevalent now at our new company because everyone wants to suck up to the new adoptive parent and make themselves known as the good little children.



There is an application that is going to be re-architected. I guess its a big deal. People are still currently fighting over the scraps on this piece. So backtrack a month ago. I small piece of the pie needed to be fixed sooner. I am not sure where the decision was made but it was decided that this one piece (we will call it reporter) needed two new servers to replace the old one. At this point my department has nothing to do with Reporter's servers or application. This guy who I seriously dislike because he is the biggest ass in the world(though works for the company I support) decides he wants to change the rules to the servers and add additional network connections. Based on this all the current support teams throw their hands in the air and say they don't want anything to do with it and it should fall on our departments. I am pointed as the resource. For the next few weeks however they take it back and then give it back to us. So I do not know whether or not I am supposed to be doing anything only information I get comes from my Team Lead and Second line manager. Fast forward to last Tuesday or Wednesday. I get an email stating servers will be here on Friday and that I need to build them and get them into our DMZ at a different building by Saturday, July 15th. My first question to my TL is whether or not the proper paper work has been put in. In IT if you make any sort of change you are supposed to fill out a form called a Request for Change. Its a good idea however its implemented like a small retarded child at our company.
My TL tells me that my second line manager has submitted everything and they only thing I have to do is install the OS and Nic's on the server and then pass it off. I am thinking this is simple. I get the servers late Friday and start building them on Monday. Tuesday roles around and I realize that I still need more information on how to proceed. I contact both TL and SLM and they respond with they are not sure now whether any of the paper work has been submitted. Also neither of them is in the office this day. So I end up spending the next few hours trying to track down contacts and phone numbers for anyone who knows anything about this application. After talking to about 8 different people I am able to piece a good amount of it together. I know also find out that I am supposed to be doing the application install and then supporting the environment once its live. The old support team has walked away.

So thats pretty much where I am. The up side is that I finally got a grasp of the whole thing yesterday and this morning and I am not stressing as much. I sat both my TL and SLM down today and explained that communication needs to be severely improved going forwarded on projects like these because it only makes our department look bad.



Gotta love working for large companies.

4 Comments:

Blogger B.J. said...

Ours is called ChangeIT and in order to change a single file in production you have to fill out a ChangeIT which includes risk assessments, testing results, backout plans, approvals, etc.(unless it is a BAU - Business As Usual). I currently hold the record in my group for getting one done in 1 hour 45 minutes. I did so by assigning everything to myself except for approvals. Usually these things take days.

I completely understand what you are going through Dave...except I am just a resource, not in charge of anyone or anything.

6:55 PM  
Blogger mark said...

I am constantly changing things in production, and I never put in an RFC. The last one I did was about 9 months after I got hired, probably 3.5 years ago now.

I think I really have to start putting them in, though. My supervisor actually kind of encourages me to not put them in.

I see how they can help in theory. But they're a real pain in the ass, and a hindrance to actually getting work done. Ah, well.

8:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds like a huge PITA to me! Makes me sort of glad that I'm working in a smaller establishment... though I'm sure the money is much better at IBM! :)

As long as you don't have to take the work home with you (that is, stress about it when not at work or on call) its all good, right?

10:28 PM  
Blogger Hutch said...

I recommend a stiff drink.

10:17 AM  

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