- Evaluated an environment supporting software developers
- Interviewed the development teams and provided a report of the current environment
- Developed a plan to address the issues within the environment with three options toward resolution
- Presented the options to management who selected one
- Implemented the plan from start to finish, including training users on the new processes
- Completed all tasks ahead of schedule
- Provided ongoing support as needed
Ahhh….1999….how well I remember thee. The fear of Y2K looming ahead and the concerns (many valid) of chaos that had been pushing people to address the issue for the past 2 years.
But not this small slice of Xerox. The next role I fell into was taking over for someone that Xerox had said, “Do not send him back. Find someone new.” What was I getting into and how were things going to go… (spoiler: it went OK).
So I started in February of 1999 and when I got on site and had everything taken care of, I was shown around and introduced to the developers that I would be supporting. There were between 60 and 75 of them and I was the only person who would be supporting them. A far change from the last position.
The first thing I was tasked with was to give management an evaluation of the environment. With Y2K coming up, Xerox IT Management wanted to know that people were getting stuff done. My predecessor had been talking about all the things he had planned, but management didn’t know where they stood.
Once I completed the evaluation, they were less than pleased. Here’s a highlight of the issues:
- Backups had a 1 day retention. The tape library was under my desk.
- Different people on the same team could be using different versions of a given tool. An example, the same team had 3 different revision control packages in use….for the same code trees.
- The Sun workstations hadn’t been patched in months (or more).
- The servers hand’t been patched in just as long.
- Nothing appeared to be Y2K compliant.
As I said, management wasn’t happy. This guy had been talking about all these things he had going on and I could find no sign of any of them. So I was asked to get a proposal put together within two weeks, taking into account all the requirements of the developers, prices for whatever was needed to make it right, and anything else I could foresee being needed.
We also had a sister organization (Xerox used to have a lot of them) on the west coast and working with them meant there were some delays (thanks to timezone differences).
After working with everyone to get information together, I put together three options with explanations. We referred to them as the Cadillac, Chevy, and Buick plans. Management listened to them, confirmed things with the developers, and opted for the Chevy plan (the right one in my book). This plan consisted of building up an entirely new environment with all Y2K compliant tools and work-flows in place. Then, each team would decide when they wanted to be moved over and we would migrate all users on a team at one time.
Everything went according to plan. All the groups were moved over and setup by Thanksgiving. Backup retention was at 14 days, and the only data loss was 5 calendars because no one informed me that they used them to track their vacation time.
After that success, the Unix environment was pretty much rock solid. There was only about 1 to 2 hours of support work needed each week so I asked about doing other things for the support team. I was given a resounding “No” that went so far as to have the statement, “You were hired to support the Unix environment, that’s all you’re going to be doing,” in a meeting.
I waited for a bit, hoping that a change of opinion would come along and when it didn’t, I reached out to the contract house again.