Yet Another IT Car Wreck

Okay, get this. We have have a mission critical web application here at Ivory Towers Inc. (let us call it Application X) that is wired into our main web site. Speaking of that web site, it has been determined that the code is woefully outdated and fraught with accessibility issues. (Don't ask me about the war I started with the ITEs over having the audacity to point out the fact that our accessibility sucks. How dare I imply that the thousands they paid for that site was wasted! But that's another post...)

Where was I? Oh yeah...the web site needs an Extreme Accessibility Makeover... Now as fate would have it, and as often happens in organizations like ours, instead of passing that task off to yours truly (and let's just say I have mad skillz in the areas of accessibility, web standards, and being able to make code do all sorts of things...not many can carry my mouse pad in that arena), we decide to contract the job out to Faceless Foreign Vendor. In other words, we're going to pay FFV at least twice the cost and increase the time to rollout of the product to about four times the waiting period to perform a task of which we had impeccable in house skills to accomplish.

But again, that is not the point of the post. Remember...we started out reminiscing about mission critical Application X, and there is where the real crux of the story lies.

The ITE project coordinator responsible for farming this project out to FFV is totally aware of Application X, and even considers himself an expert in Application X. Mind you without ever actually coding a single line of Applicaton X or sitting in on any of the planning or testing of Application X. However, for argument's sake, let's just let that piece of the puzzle slide on by and grant the ITE PC expert status. At least enough of an expert to realize that mission critical Application X is wired into the live site and that there is a difference between flat code and dynamic code generated by Application X. Still, ITE PC had made no plans on reviewing the code, monitoring exactly what FFV was working on, or a drafting a migration policy for the aforementioned Extreme Accessibility Makeover of the web site. Oh, and for the sake of brevity, allow me to say now that FFV has constructed nothing but a flat copy of the web site, a fact apparently lost on ITE PC.

So, yesterday morning, I see an email in my inbox from FFV to ITE PC (on which I've been graciously cc'd), announcing that they're going to move the their new code to the web server and TOTALLY replace the old code. ITE PC's response is an emphatic "Go for it!"

I'll take a dramatic sip of coffee while I let that sink in. It'll allow all you developers out there who know the ramifications take time to pick your jaws up from the floor.

So...we're going to take these considerably more accessible but otherwise flat as a cyberpancake pages and replace our old, inaccessible but extremely well-wired to Application X pages outright. (Mission critical Application X, I remind you).

On the live site.

No QA in a test environment.

No consulting the Other Faceless Foreign Vendor who built Application X.

Nothing. Just replace the code, page for page.

While there was an incredible temptation in me to just sit idly by and let all this go down, I must admit that I felt horrible at the prospect of the innocent web user coming to our site and not being able to purchase their desired widgets and doodads because some bonehead ITE PC didn't have the foresite to keep every ounce of MISSION FREAKIN' CRITICAL APPLICATION X from being stripped from our web pages!

Besides, they'd have just found a way to blame it on me anyway. As it stands, this incredible lack of planning on the ITE PC's behalf is sure to be saddled on me regardless. After all, since my only involvement in the project was to QA the work of FFV to assure it meets rigorous Ivory Towers Inc best practices, clearly that meant I was to have been closely monitoring the progress of FFVs product, coordinating their interaction with OFFV (the creators of Mission Critical Application X (tm)), and implementing a testing/migration plan as well.

UPDATE: While I rarely have a moment of sympathy for PHB, I must admit that yesterday morning I had just that. In a conference call between PHB, ITE PC, FFV's PHB, and other Ivory Tower Inc. luminaries, ITE PC was heard to exclaim loudly, unprofessionally, and most embarrassingly something along the lines of "Who was in charge in tech department of Ivory Tower Inc. that such a thing could happen?", the "such a thing" being the debaucle chronicled above. Unfortunately PHB did not answer "Well for this project, YOU WERE!"