Spin The Wheel

Vito and I were laughing so hard yesterday, I started having a coughing fit. 

Why?

More rope.

See, the development team "leadership" decided that Vito and I, who used to be called build managers, would now be more like build lackeys.  They had a meeting on Monday, with no build managers present, where they decided to not have a build schedule.  They'd just ask for builds whenever, and, well, Vito and I would simply have to do them.  After my less than useful meeting last Friday, and Vito's experiences with attempting to enforce any kind of process, we decided, what the hell, let's just do it and see how long it takes to seriously screw something up.

You know how in those pirate movies there's always that one scene where the captain is fighting the wheel in a storm?  And then something happens and he lets go of the wheel?  And the wheel just starts spinning out of control and the ship sinks?  Well, we're not sunk yet, but that wheel could power lower Manhattan for a month.

We did 10 builds and/or deployments between 11 AM and 7 PM.  Every build got worse, because no one knew what was supposed to be fixed by what time.  We had complaints from the developers because every time we do a build, they have to update their copy of the code from our code management tool.  Each update can take up to 20 minutes, depending on how busy the server is.  Considering the build load, I expect it was pretty busy.  Updates block all other activities.  So that's, let's see, 20 minutes times 10 . . . heck let's just call it three hours per developer of lost productivity.  Yesterday.  Not over a whole week.  In one day.

More rope.

And the builds?  Are they even being tested?  How can they be?  A deployment takes time.  The servers have to come back on line.  In one instance, Vito finished the automated test scripts and was asked, before he was able to send out the results, to do another build.  There's no way that was actually tested to confirm the supposed fixes were working.

More rope.

Almost every build we did had to be done twice because some developer had some extra code to check in.  Why?  How can we blame them now?  There's no schedule for them to even try to adhere to, even if, for the most part, they didn't adhere to it when we had one.

More.

Rope.

We got a suggestion from one of the team leads to put up a sign with the build schedule, because all the e-mails we were sending out were confusing (we announce the build, the deployment and the test resutls - that's at least 30 messages every person on the development team got from us in 8 hours).  First of all, what schedule?  Second of all, half the devs are on the other side of the building, and won't see the sign.  Our counter proposal was for me to hold the sign above my head and walk around like one of those girls at a boxing match announcing the round number.  I even offered to wear a bikini.  The other counter proposal was to have one of those scrolling LED signs to announce the build schedule like a stock ticker.  I'm actually working on that now, to put it on our build SharePoint site.  It's required me to get Visual Studio and learn how to make Web Parts.  It's a waste of time, because no one is ever going to bother looking at it.  But, let's remember, I'm a build lackey now: they ask, I do, that's my role.

More.

The crowning achievement in the world of absurdity was this: Vito, very slowly, very carefully, very clearly, explained that each build was getting worse because there was no coordination, and no one could tell when anything was going to happen, or what fixes were supposed to go in which build.  Case in point, one of the introduced failures was because of some updates that went in without the knowledge of any of the team leads because the team leads spent all day asking for builds, rather than LEADING their TEAMS.  The team lead's response?  "Why is it like this?"  My jaw very nearly dropped right off my face.  Vito just explained it to you.  Do you want pictures?  A pop-up book? 101 Ways to Fuck a Project in the Ass?  Perhaps a copy of Listening Skills for Fucking Retards?

Rope.

Vito and I were literally falling out of our chairs laughing about this. 

The best part?  I worked 15 hours yesterday.  Fat load of OT.  And we accomplished exactly nothing.  And today looks like it's going to be another side-splitter.