I got called to an emergency meeting this week. The configuration data in our production system was not correct. There were some missing values. That called all the data into question. There were a bunch of questions about some values of suspect nature.I waited for a while. The guilty parties did not speak up. So I piped up that development did not have time to be thorough with some late development. I knew because I got called in at the last minute to help the developer figure out what the module was doing.
So the developer hard coded all values this time around. It appears he also left a remnant of the configuration data in the database. However this data was unused. Therefore the values in the config table did not matter. A manager was upset that he was not in the loop about these decisions.
Finally the developer who did the dirty work did pipe up. He said that all his decisions were peer reviewed by managers. Everything was written out and reviewed. I guess that really means the manager approved something he did not comprehend. Next time pay attention man.
I was tasked with putting together a plan to get us out of this mess. First step was to get the needed production configuration values out there and verified. Next we will need the developer to spend the time to use config parameters to drive the module. We will need a lot of such parameters. Then we will need to document all this stuff.
I like to be conservative. So I propsed we implement this is the next major release. And when we do roll this thing out, I will grab all the managers and explain the ramifications of everything we are doing. Luckily it is easier to explain that we are doing things the right way finally.
