The Monthly Twilight Zone- How the IT Guy Beat Me To It
This is a new section I intend to write each month- to shine a light on some of the more peculiar events I encounter. This month it's the story of "The Contract, The Customer and Windows Server 2003"
Part of my job is to solve problems on very-large-scale projects around the world. Usually I get called before a milestone is due, and there is some technical problem that if not solved immediately, will prevent the project management from collecting payment for the work done so far. Of course, everyone on the project team had a go at it, and their friends and relatives have also already had a go at it. At this point, there's no time left and everyone is ready to pay and do whatever it takes to solve the problem.
In this case, it was a project which relies heavily on web-services. The project management signed a contract that did not specify which operating systems the product will be deployed to. The system was designed to work on Windows server 2000. Now the games began…
The customer, after carefully examining the contract and the glaring loophole, decided to demand that the system be deployed to Windows Server 2003. The system was not developed for windows server 2003, was not tested on windows server 2003 and, surprisingly, refused to work on windows server 2003.
On Wednesday, with the milestone due for Monday, I began working on the problem.
After several hours, I narrowed it down to a problem with the way the web-services behaved, or rather misbehaved. Data was not streaming properly to the presentation layer, and that resulted in frequent termination of the user's session. In short- the user was logged on for about 10 seconds, and then kicked out.
A day later I was not getting closer to a solution. As the hours ticked away, things were getting a bit tense. Nothing I tried worked- changing the confing files, changing settings in IIS, changing the actual code for the web-services.
During a coffee break, with my reputation as a problem solver at stake already, an IT guy from another project called. During that five minute conversation, he heard about the problem and suggested we change a setting in IIS which makes Windows Server 2003 support Windows 2000 services. We did. It worked, without any other changes to the code or configuration. There was drinking and dancing and joyful shouting for most of the evening later on.
This story has all the elements of a predictable failure:
A contract that doesn't limit the customer's options and a system that was not tested correctly before it was deployed. It also has a happy ending- but only due to unseen powers, residing in the IT department, where people can effortlessly solve problems that leave developers bewildered.
Do you have any stories that belong in the Twilight Zone?