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Home > Topics > Test & Evaluation > Detail: Par for the Course
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Par for the Course
By Patrick M. Bailey
  
Summary: What can happen over a game of golf? You learn what you don't know, you learn more about what you do know, and you learn to listen to what others know. See how two managers and a caddy team up for some valuable lessons about staying out of the rough. | | |
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Each step kicked up glimmering droplets of early morning dew, which soaked into the shoes of the two golfers and Willy, the caddy doing double duty.
“Nice!” said Bud Sawyer, director of support for Link2People Software, when he got a birdie on the first hole.
"I feel lucky for my bogey," replied Janet Knight, Bud's new boss, as they approached the second tee.
Janet was in her third week as director of software development and support, and when Bud heard she was an avid golfer, he was anxious to invite her to his favorite course. Bud had more than golfing in mind. During eighteen holes of golf, he hoped to interject a few concerns. His opportunity came sooner than expected.
"So, how's work, Bud?"
Bud wondered if it was too soon to bring out his big concerns, but he thought "why not?" She obviously wanted to leverage the time, too.
"Not bad," Bud said as he bent over and measured the height of the tee with two fingers. An almost ceremonial silence reigned as Bud took a practice stroke and addressed the ball, followed by the sound of the metal club's sweet spot connecting with the ball. Ping!
"Sorry to see the slice," Janet said. She then completed a drive, leaving her ball centered and visible on the fairway.
"So, work is 'not bad'?" Janet picked up as the three proceeded down the fairway. "I was hoping you would say it is great."
"I would, but we had another system rollout two weeks ago." Bud gripped his club's handle with its shaft resting over his shoulder as they walked.
"Problems?"
"Big time."
"Like what?"
This was Bud's big chance. "It's a repeat of the usual. The code transition to level two support was fine, thankfully."
"That's a problem?"
"Yes and no," Bud said, squinting to protect his eyes from the early morning sun. "I'm always tickled the way my support team finds improvements for the code after it's been in production."
With somewhat amused curiosity, Janet pursued this. "And that's a problem?"
"Not really, I guess. But there are so many things we fix. It wasn't a big deal after the first system the support team took on, but by the fifth or sixth, it added up."
They stopped at Janet's ball. "This is horrible."
"Well, the code isn't quite that bad."
"I'm talking about my ball's lie,” Janet said. "This is a horrible position to be in." She realized the fairway was practically a semicircle, not just a simple dogleg to the right. "I should have looked at the course map. Argh!"
Bud greeted her frustrated look with a wink. Again, another hole Bud had mastered. Janet remained upbeat and did the best she could.
Throughout the course, Bud enumerated his concerns with Janet’s encouragement. He wasn't sure he was getting through, though, because whenever Willy suggested a club, she usually declined the suggestion. Bud wondered if this was a sign of how she did business.
"It boils down to two things," Bud said toward the end of the game. "There is concern about the quality of the code written by the development teams and the lack of needed tools available to the maintenance team."
"What's wrong with the code quality? Do we have a problem with testing?"
"Testing is fine. The developers are testing exactly what they designed. It just seems like in many spots we're always finding a better design. One example I can think of was this crazy, homemade queue used in lieu of the operating system's resources. I understood the developer's concerns, but once it was in production, it created more problems than it addressed. Fortunately, the code was constructed in such a way that we could easily plug in a completely different module to handle the message passing."
"Oh, I heard about that," Janet said. "I saw the help desk calls went down considerably when the change went in."
"Exactly. That's one example where we find things in a production environment that we think should be obvious, and then we have the extra pressures of downtime to worry about."
"Sounds like we need to get the developers to talk with your folks."
She was listening!
Janet smiled and added, "I only wish I had a help desk call for my golf game today."
The three arrived at the eighteenth tee. Only 108 yards, the end was near. Bud felt victorious in more ways than one. Besides having twelve fewer strokes overall than Janet, he felt he expressed his concerns at an appropriate professional level that didn't border on whining.
As they waited for the group ahead of them to finish putting, Janet asked about the second issue.
"Tools," Bud said. "It seems maintenance people don't get development tools without a lot of budgetary concerns."
"Well, why would you need as many tools as new development?"
"Mostly, it's because we are the 'buckstops here' department. We own about twenty times more lines of code than what comes out with a new product. We're also dealing with system interaction issues in our testing environment."
Janet nodded, elevating Bud's confidence to a new level. It may have been the reason his drive easily made the 108 yards, making a hole in one. "Yes!"
Janet congratulated Bud. "Well, you're certainly not making it easy for me." Bud wondered if there was double meaning to this.
"This is a short hole," Janet said to Willy. "Probably needs a five iron."
"May I make a suggestion?" Willy asked.
"Of course."
"You might want to use a seven iron."
"Thanks for the suggestion, but I feel better about my five."
To Janet's dismay, she finished the last hole with a disappointing four strokes--the drive itself overshot the hole.
Janet looked at Willy. "You were probably right about the seven iron. How did you know?"
"Given the power of your swing and what I know about the hard turf on this hole, it seemed more appropriate. I've caddied for a lot of people here, for a long time, and I get a pretty good idea of each situation. You did OK, though, for being out here the first time. Mr. Sawyer had the advantage from the beginning. He's played these holes over and over again and knows every nook and cranny."
"Sounds a lot like the world of maintenance developers," Bud said as he puffed up his chest.
"On the other hand," Willy continued, "we really don't know how well Mr. Sawyer would do on a course he's never seen before."
Janet shot a glance at a humbled Bud. They shared a smile, tipped Willy, and headed to work. {end}
Who has the most challenging job, those doing new development or those doing software maintenance?
Join the conversation below or start a new one in the Member Comments section.
About the Author
Patrick M. Bailey teaches information systems at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. He has more than twenty years of experience as a software developer and manager with his experience evenly divided between new development and maintenance organizations. Patrick regularly speaks about IT leadership subjects at non-profit-oriented conferences. His first paying job was as a caddy when he was twelve. Email Patrick at pmb4@calvin.edu.
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