Have you ever had your manager tell you to put a “quick update” into production without going through formal change control? And then what happened – perhaps you’ve repressed the memory?
We had a database administrator do just this – implement a DB2 SLIP trap – to share data on the mainframe – which seemed like a great idea at the time. But because the change hadn’t been analyzed or tested anywhere, it caused the mainframe to max out on CPU – which is something no mainframe operator EVER wants to happen. Since this change was not formally captured anywhere other than in DB2 in production, it took a week of someone walking around asking developers, database administrators, IT operators and infrastructure engineers what they had been doing recently in production. To alleviate the problem in production while the root cause was determined, operations had to add 2000 MIPS to their production environment – an extremely costly and temporary workaround. Finally, they found the database administrator who told us “sure – I put a SLIP trap in DB2, because my manager told me to do it while we were chatting over coffee in the break room!”
Wouldn’t it have been better to quickly log a change request in our work item collaboration tool so that everyone had visibility into the change? Then the entire team could analyze the idea and test it in a pre-production environment to determine if there were any unforeseen side effects.
If this scenario sounds familiar or resonates with what is important to you, you don’t want to miss this upcoming Google Hangout live panel discussion. Come listen to these experts share their perspectives and insight.
We’ll discuss how new technologies and practices like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) can help you better plan and manage your production changes – no matter how big or small they appear to be.
Be sure to join us on October 19th at 12:30pm ET… Click here to register, and to submit your questions to our experts.
Leave us a comment with topics you’d like to see discussed and questions you’d like to see addressed. If it’s important to you, it is important to us. Don’t come alone. Bring a friend or a colleague!
Panelists:
Richard Knaster, Principal Consultant, SAFE Fellow
Harry Koehnemann, Director of Technology, 321 Gang
Amy Silberbauer, Executive IT and Solution Specialist, SAFe and DevOps, IBM
Marianne Hollier, DevOps Solution & IT Specialist, IBM
Roger LeBlanc, DevOps Offering Manager, IBM
Moderator: Nik McCrory, IBM Special Events Infrastructure: New Technology & Integration Architect