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The Migration
I've been with my current company going on 7 years. I started with
them in 1995 as a contractor. They referred to my position as a Technical
Advisor. In essence, we were fourth level support of a network system
for one of our major contracts whose name shall not be stated. We were
the "last line of defense" before the manufacturers had to
be called. At the end of 1995 I performed a task that locked me in as
a permanent employee of the company starting in 1996.
The task that locked me in as a permanent employee occurred over Christmas
break in 95. Our technical advisor team assisted one of our customer
sites in going from an old network and desktop configuration to the
latest that our program team has released. This process involved converting
all the servers and desktops over to the latest operating systems with
all the manufacturers patches and enhancements. The site team was to
perform the actual work; the technical advisor team was only there for
guidance. By midweek the conversion was, at least we thought, done.
I gathered the site team together for a presentation of the new features
system features. During the presentation I referred back to the actual
system we were demonstrating on for reference. But, we began to notice
that what we saw on the screen wasn't exactly what was supposed to be
there. I skimmed over the first two hiccups as flukes to be investigated
later. But when the flukes began to appear more often, and more severely,
I stopped the presentation and informed the site that something is not
right and that our tech advisor team had to investigate the problems.
The site team, and site manager, kind of got a little concerned.
Our tech team looked closely at the issue and I instructed them to
look into each hiccup with a fine toothcomb to get the exact cause of
the failures. What came back within the next couple hours was the worst
scenario that we could've imagined. What happened was the site was the
very last site to migrate from version 1 of the system to version 2
and all its' patches and enhancements. However, the migration process
only worked for the sites that did the migration within the timeframe
it was designed for, this site was way outside of that timeframe. Therefore,
all the patches and enhancements that were to have been in place did
not exist with the site implementation. Barring total system failures,
it was the worst-case scenario of site implementation. The site was
to have been up and operational for their users the first week of January,
the work the site need to perform to get caught up would take about
2-4 weeks to implement and test.
We called back to our main office for instructions and they said do
what we felt was necessary, but to keep in mind we were not to do the
work for them. With that commitment of non-committal, we had a meeting
with the site team and leadership to discuss the issues we discovered.
They were not pleased at all with the situation and their leadership
became very, how shall we say, animated in airing their frustrations.
We pointed out that it was their slowness of converting over that caused
them to be in the situation they found themselves and that it wouldn't
be until mid-January to mid-February that they will be back up and operational.
To them that was unacceptable, but I did have an alternative.
During the analysis of the problem I looked closely into what went
wrong and began to formulate a solution to automatically do the work.
I turned to my friend who was the tech team leader for this project
and told her that I have a possible solution that I'd like to present.
She was a little reluctant in implementing the idea but when faced with
the alternative, it was the only "logical" course of action.
I stopped the meeting and the entire finger pointing that was beginning
to occur and announced a possible solution. They were all ears when
I told them that what we've seen so far could be addressed with an automated
process of system updates. They were very interested and they asked
for exact timeframes of when we can have the process in place. My response
was that I will not give an exact time as we need to do further analysis
to see if it is fully feasible. The site manager said that answer was
"unacceptable." My response was, "if you don't like it,
we'll take our tools and go home, our task here has been fulfilled."
And the site project team quickly pulled him out of the discussion.
I spent the rest of the day with our team lead going through each
problem, issue, and hiccup and correlating it to the list of patches
and enhancements that were available. After going through and documenting
the issues the first time, I sat back and then pieced together what
an automated process would require and what would have to be done in
what sequence. Throughout the day, the site team sat idle waiting for
our instructions. A couple times the site manager was concerned that
his team was sitting around doing nothing, I told him to let them go
for a while but they will be needed later.
After the full analysis was finally completed, I informed our tech
team that the solution can work. We presented the findings to the site
team and informed them that we will put together an automated process
and made it clear that we are sticking our necks out on the line as
we were only there for guidance. Again, the site manager wanted a firm
time of when we would have the task in place. Since I did not know the
exact details as we were putting this together ad hoc and this has never
been done before, I again said that I couldn’t give out that information.
He again said that was unacceptable and I again responded, "If
you don't like it, we'll take our tools and go home." The site
team again pulled their manager out of the discussion and I informed
the team that if the manager ever came back into the room again like
that, then I would stop the task and have our team pack up and go home.
The site team then provided us their full support and quickly set us
up a war room where we could develop and coordinate the change implementation.
Beginning late that afternoon, I sat down in my "programming"
chair and with the analysis document, began to work on a program that
would automatically implement each required patch and enhancement in
one process. Over the next 15 hours I did not move from that chair other
than to visit the restroom. The tech team leader stuck by me throughout
the whole process. Only once, around 3am, did the site manager come
flailing into the room demanding statuses, updates, and timeframes.
I did not even look at him; instead I turned to the site team lead and
said “get this guy out of here else we are packing up.”
The site manager was quickly pulled out and we again returned to our
task.
By 7am the next morning I had ready a fully tested, and workable solution
for the site that included a set of instructions and a floppy disk for
each team that was going to implement the changes. The process was straight
forward and simple: the person was to turn the machine off, put in the
floppy disk, boot up the system, answer a couple basic questions, then
let the automated process run to completion. Before we cut them loose,
I gathered the server team together and oversaw the automated change
process they needed to perform first. The server updates took less than
a couple hours and upon completion we let loose the desktop teams for
their process. Within the next couple hours all the desktops had been
cycled through and after the teams were done, the tech advisor team
personally visited each unit to ensure the task was completed (I also
created a quick verification sheet). The whole change implementation
went through without a hitch.
That afternoon we restarted the presentation and recapped what went
wrong and how it was fixed. By Friday, the site had a fully implemented
network with all the latest patches and enhancements. In fact, since
they had every patch and enhancement up to that point, we informed them
that they became the most up-to-date site. They were quite pleased,
including the site manager.
I took the information that I learned in putting together that consolidated
update process and filed it away for future reference and implementation
on a broader scale.
At the beginning of the year I started my full employment with the company
as a reward for my efforts. Little did I know what that “reward”
entailed. But, those stories are for another session.
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