Last week I got a message from the testers that the application was broke. There seemed to be a lot of excitement over this problem. At first some people thought it might be due to missing database access on some objects.I digged into the problem. Found that some new SQL in the application did an improper join. So now queries were always returning No Data Found. I provided the responsible developer with the code that would fix the problem. And I told them to release the fix to test.
The following week test reported that their progress was halted because they never received the fix. A manager asked if I could step in. So I searched for the release that fixed the problem. Turns out it was never done. Even worse, it was scheduled, and some Clearcase labels were applied to the code. But no executable. And no documentation.
The configuration management team had left for the day. So I resorted to emergency procedures. I generated a builf myself. Created the documentation. Did a smoke test on the fix I had pointed out originally. Luckily there was one developer left at work for peer review. The show will go on. But something is seriously wrong here.
