Smoke Test

Smoke testing...just another joy in the world of IT.

After every major systems release, I'm the lucky bitch that coordinates smoke testing activities. This requires a keg of caffeine and a headset surgically planted in your ear. Smoke tests occur right after code has been dropped into production and right before all the fucktarded users come into the office to actually use that code.

This last systems release required smoke testing to begin at four o'clock in the morning. We had exactly sixty minutes to make sure everything went seamless; just enough time before the right-coasters came into the office to try out the new system and ask stupid ass questions."Why is there a button here?" "Why is the text color now blue?" "Can I have the old system back?" To which my responses are, respectively,  "because it's not there, because I like purple, and sure you can have the old system back if you pay me the $3.2M it took to rebuild the system." (Dumbasses.)

I am completely disfunctional prior to 9am, especially considering my first piss of the day doesn't happen til about seven. I'm usually able to conduct these smoke tests remotely but this time, I was required to be in the office. I told my boss the only way that was going to happen was to allow me to come into work in jammies and have coffee delivered to me every hour. He obliged.

I came into the office the next morning with my skulls and crossbone flannel jammies on and fuzzy boots. The floor was dark with the exception of my office. I noticed my door was unlocked and the first thought that came to mind was the cleaning people better not have been having sex in my office! (It's happened in someone else's office.) I was relieved to find a fresh cup of coffee sitting on my desk but no one else was in the office except me. The testers are in Mexico and the Philippines, so that was far from being a possibility. It freaked me out, nonetheless. To ease my fear, I flipped on MTV and turned the volume up and smoke testing commenced.

An hour went by and I just ended the final test call with my QA guys and went to the bathroom. I returned to my office, and my coffee cup was refilled. "What the fuck?" Still no one was in the office. I then received an IM half an hour later from Rico, another IT Manager, that said, "are you enjoying your coffee?" I was relieved but still a bit freaked out because there was no one in the office. I responded,

"Where the fuck are you?" 

"In the conference room on the 6th floor. I had to come in too and your boss asked me to make sure you had your coffee."

"Thanks, but why the fuck did you agree to that?"

"You know that rumor that's been going around about the cleaning people?"

"Yes."

"Well, it wasn't the cleaning people. Your boss caught me on my knees."

And here I used to feel bad for the guy because he was always the unlucky bastard that had to conduct smoke tests in the wee hours of the morning. Turns out, he was more than just smoke testing. He's been taste testing too! The IM thread continued...

"HOLY SHIT. What did you do? Or who did you do?!"

"You know that new asian consultant chick in Solutions Delivery?"

"Yeah..."

"Well. She delivers alright! I've got a thing for asian chicks right now."

"Rock on. And good thing I'm not asian."

"Yes, you are. But you don't have to worry about me. You scare me. I've seen the balls on your desk."

 I also have an inflatable donkey in my office. I wonder what he thinks about that?

BEWARE of TECH BABE

 After another disappointing call with the IT Operations Support Team...

 

Some people don't take warning's seriously. They'll learn.

Off-Site Meetings and Crawl Spaces

Unlike last year, Halloween in the office this year was a bust. Well, I take that back; not a complete bust. The two and a half day off-site meetings this week made it difficult to pull everything together. Even worse, they made us check in our Blackberries and iPhones to keep us from being distracted. That, of course, made it even more difficult to plan anything.

Day one was complete drag. Not because I was bored to death but because I was having anxiety attacks from parting with my geek devices. (No email, Facebook, or Twitter = Social Media Suicide.)

Day two's off-site was at a new fancy pants location - The Ritz. As soon as we all filed into the meeting room everyone had that "WHAT THE FUCK" look on their faces. We couldn't help but wonder how the company could spring for digs like this for a fucking off-site meeting with all the recent talks of budget cuts. We got over that real quick when they served us fancy meals with fancy drinks. The day was wrapping up and we were told we were all going to load into buses and be taken to yet another location for dinner. Destination unknown but a "surprise."

The buses came around and the first group filed in. HOLY SHIT! These were straight party buses complete with two 40" plasmas, laser lights, bumping sounds and a stripper pole! (The night just got better!) The immediate response from the meeting-goers was "fuck yeah!" (I included.) We all took a spin around the pole. (I made $5-cheap bastards.)

We arrive at our dinner destination...Hell's Kitchen! Not exactly, but just about. Everyone was a chef that night wearing aprons and chef hats. I, of course, turned my apron into a mini-dress, as expected. They broke us up into teams and assigned us to our kitchen stations: Salad, Dessert, Chicken and Flank Steak, Pizza, Grilled Veggies, and the Alcohol Pit! While the kitchen looked intimidating, being assigned to the salad station wasn't so bad. I quickly completed my task so I could move on the the bartending pit. Giving me full access to top shelf and premium spirits probably wasn't such a great idea. I was bombed! After kitchen duty and getting all liquored up, we were in for yet another treat! A Halloween maze!

We all loaded into the party buses again and I have to say the stripper pole was put to good use! Again, we were broken into groups and I gave my Halloween Maze disclaimer: "If you're a dude, press up against my ass. If you're a chick, I may dyke out momentarily. Point - STAY CLOSE! I also grab." Those instructions were closely adhered to when we went through a crawl space. Our group may have held up the line just a bit, but being smashed between two other girls was encouraged.

The night came to an end. I still had enough in me to make it to Tequila Thursday just in time for last call.

The entire department strolled in at about 10am the following morning. To liven things up a bit, I had my team dress up as jackasses to align with the donkey pinata and inflatable jackass hanging in my office. I gave them each a set of jackass ears, jackass tails and jackass teeth. We will forever be known as "The Jackass Crew" going forward. So not what I had planned for Halloween in the office, but given the amount of time we had to plan, we came through.

Sick Day

Apparently calling out on a sick day doesn't mean jack shit when you've got a company issued blackberry, laptop and VPN. Got hit with that nasty stomach virus and flu that's been circulating around the office for the past two weeks. I blame the kids. That's right. I fucking said it. Those little germ-infested rug rats pass it on to their parents, aka my co-workers who offer me Krispy Kreme doughnuts. (Fuckers!)

So to make up for my working sick day out of the office, I'm going to go into the office tomorrow and do jack shit! #fuckmondays

Change Control Board

The Change Control Board (CCB) is made up of Business Stakeholders, Project and Program Managers, IT Leads, and monkeys. The purpose of the CCB is to manage overall project scope, or de-scope, in this case. To submit a scope change to the CCB for review, the requestor is required to submit a formal ‘Change Request,’ otherwise known as a ‘CR.’ The past two weeks presented a series of deficiencies with the CCB process:

• There is no end date to submitting CRs; meaning, changes can occur throughout development and testing phases, making the overall project very difficult to manage.
• The CR process is being abused, based on the lack of skill set and knowledge of how to support a business requirement.
• A CR is required for any change to anything. That includes changing fonts from Times New Roman to Arial Narrow on project documents;
• Everyone on the project team keeps their own version of a CR log without sharing it with others and they proceed with the change anyway;
• Sending a CR to someone’s admin does not constitute communication and approval of the change; and
• Having to submit a CR to move whiteboards from one war-room to the next is not okay.

Needless to say, my boss and I had a field day, or week, rather, having to deal with the CCB’s non-sense. The CCB is nothing more than yet another layer of bureaucracy in the world of Project Management. We gave it a fair shot in the beginning, but refused to sit in a CCB Review meeting to discuss what side of the screen an ‘ENTER’ button should sit on or to dig through our overspent budget to support the move of whiteboards. We stopped attending and left it up to the monkeys to notify us of any changes being submitted that was worth our time. This, of course, bit us in the ass.

According to the project schedule, we were in the testing phase. All testing failed due to missing business rules and key functionality. When we asked why these things were missing, we were told, CRs were submitted to the CCB to defer these pieces until a later date. They basically de-scoped the project without filling us in. Why? Because their dev teams in India weren’t working to observe some religious holiday week and their on-shore dev teams were too busy working on personal hot chili recipes for blue-ribbon submission in a fucking strawberry fair. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

My boss and I spent the latter part of Friday afternoon to write-up and submit our formal and final change request:

CHANGE REQUESTED: Stop the CCB Process.

REASON FOR CHANGE: It sucks ass.

IMPACT TO PROJECT: Our own sanity.

IMPACT IF CHANGE NOT IMPLEMENTED: Do you recall where the term “postal” came from?

There’s a CCB Review meeting next Tuesday. Let’s see how this goes over. In the meantime, I'm taking the weekend off to refresh and recharge. Yes, that includes high consumption of alcohol and getting laid. I *heart* my job.