Late Again

The customer alerted us to a multi part problem they needed fixed. The project manager asked our team to estimate how long it would take to correct each piece. We procided a high fidelity estimate. That resulted in a schedule of release for each part of the fix.

On the day when the first part of the fix was supposed to be delivered, the customer asked the project manager if we were sending out the fix. That resulted in him asking the developer assigned whether this thing was ready to go out. I came in to work and had a call from that developer asking what exactly the customer problem was. Fail!

Luckily the first part of the fix was a well known issue. I walked the developer through the steps to reproduce the problem. Then I showed the developer the database table that controlled the erroneous config info. The developer proceeded to generate a fix. However the fix was not ready until late at night. The test team was surprised that they were asked to do the fix late in the evening. Thus it did not get done.

The project manager warned this developer to make sure the second part of the fix was going to be on schedule. Let's hope the developer takes this lesson to heart.

Saved by the New Girl

Last week there was a high priority problem from the customer. Initially I was not involved. However the problem was not getting solved. One of the customers mentioned my name. That was because I had dealt with this part of the system before. I was trapped.

I did my best to walk my team lead through the duplication of the problem in his development environment. It took a while. But we got it duplicated. I feared that I would have to implement the fix. But my plate is full with new development. Luckily the work got assigned to a new developer we have. Nice.

Then another problem kept coming up week after week. I asked the big boss if I should work on the problem. He told me the customer needed to submit a trouble ticket. I went to the customer, and she had no trouble opening a ticket. Once again the actual work got assigned to the new girl. I like how this is going.