Saturday, June 30, 2012

That explains some things

I have always been puzzled by the poisonous atmosphere between the Development and Support departments at the company.  An example of this is that for almost 2 years we have been working to institute consistent companywide software configuration management procedures and policies.  This process has been stalled for over a year trying to get the Support department to implement them.  The latest is that certain of their internal process that the “absolutely needed to retain” after their initial review over a year ago, and then became “optional”, have now become “these must be turned off before we can go live.  If they are still on we won’t implement.”  They formally informed us of this latest change this week, with a must implement date of the end of the week, and if it is not in place they won’t go live next month.  After talking with the Stray Cat about a seemingly unrelated delay tactic by another department, the Stray Cat spouted off that yea when he was supporting the Development department he would tell them ok, fine, you won’t go live.  Then he would “give them trouble” someplace else.  Now I understand why the other departments pull this last minute “change it or else” business, because in the past it worked for them, in that it was a way that they could employ to put off anything they didn’t want to do.  I don’t know what “trouble” the Stray Cat would give them, but for sure it is why we get such a poor attitude these days whenever we try and work with other departments on process improvements.  Just another rodent that needs to be cleaned up, except this one is decayed, smelly, and will be with us for a long while.