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ms.akkineni
ms.akkineni
1/25/2016 1:27:13 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Technology Hick Ups....
 

Couple months ago I had to deal with a missing production release of one of the IT projects that I have been managing. It was an interesting multi layer application which involved couple of different vendors that rendered their services related to their product(s) besides internal IT teams that support their respective technology areas, SharePoint being one of the popular area.
Interestingly all deliverables were completed and required signoffs were completed as well. Things were pretty much set for release for a scheduled deployment with in one week. The following monday morning one of the tech teams called in for a meeting where they also included business stakeholders. There was no time for me to reach out to get an insight on the purpose of the meeting. In the meeting we found out that that specific team continued their test efforts and notified the whole team that they had observed some system exceptions, out of memory issues etc. Nothing to be surprised, confused business team made a call to hold off the production deployment.
A bit more about the issue: In the application a business user would go to an administartive console where they review letters prior to approving them. One issue is a letter attachment wouldn't open only in a selective case / scenario. Even that is not very consistent behaviour. A second one is it takes very long time for letter preview to display. But it wouldn't time out, request comes back. Final one is timing out and throwing a memory exception. It had to do with bunch of PDF generator tools , multiple browsers, Sharepoint crawling issues etc. First two were kind of known and not very consistent and hence were conditionally signed off for release. Last one was the real issue that called off the release.
There started my challenge to group / regroup the entire team (alost 15/20 heads from different area) for trouble shooting effort. I almost had to have these trouble shooting calls (for 2/3 hrs) for continuous 4/5 weeks. There was lot of coordination required as teams had to add traces all through the life cycle of a request start to end. Only to make it even challenging, these product support teams from external vendor teams had development teams offshore all over. So every small change had to go through many teams and we had to deal with lot of latencies due to time differences.
During the trouble shooting we found out that the reason for 'Out Of Memory Exception' was due to an incorrect large size file used for testing by a speciifc technical team. That large file was meant for a batch process and hence was not able to process successfully when ran on demand. The other two were also trouble shooted and proper fix was applied either by changing configurations like heap sizes, sharepoint rendering timeout chnages etc.
Following resolutions I had to convince the business stakeholder that there is no reason to be jeopardized about system crash or memory exception issues as that horrified them thinking that these issues may abruptly interrupt their BAU operations. But sure enough to say I was so embarassed as a front facing person to explain that it was technical team that used an incorret file and horrified the team by bringing up concerns with serious system issues. Business team was convinced and later in couple weeks the project was deployed and is now live in production with no issues.
I come from a heavy technology background and understand challenges in each area very well. But I would like to highlight something interesting here. At this time we are more into shared services model. So there is lot of coordination between multiple teams. Often times there is not much visibility into each others areas. In this case here a developer placed bunch of test files in a shared location. A middle ware team resource picked up a file and started testing and dealing with issues. Then a Sharepoint resource comes on board from repository end. In between there is a product involved for administrative Console which is supported by external vendor support team. Certainly there are pros with shared services model but there are equally challenges when you have to deal with such challenging situations. Again that takes a lot of coordination, undersatnding of technology, ability to follow / question teams appropriately as opposed to just to listen to what is being told. In my experience my technology exposure and background always comes in handy for situations like these.

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ms.akkineni
ms.akkineni
1/25/2016 10:45:21 AM
User Rank
Platinum
My Story with an Unwilling Customer.....
 

It was back in 2001 when I accepted a new position in NYC. Within several months I got into a new role to lead and manage a huge effort. The initiative was to migrate an existing finnacial application which had been in mainframe and to implement  a brand new more robust web application.
The challenge began. I was handed over a sheet of paper which had just three brief paragraphs. That is the only documentation that was available at the time. There was just one person who was supporting the application that time who unfortunately passed away with in couple of months. My only source was the business team where I can learn about the current system by analyzing their needs for a better potential new system. I developed a plan to have daily user meetings where i wanted to watch their daily operations and start documenting the process.
I had to start with a manager on business side that leads the team  who had been with the company for almost 25-30 years using that legendary MF system. In my first meeting with him, he told me on my face :There were many people who started just like this and they just gave up because this isn't easy. So be ready to follow the same path". I still remember how demotivating that first reaction was. I can't explain how extremely difficult it was to get any analysis or requirements work done just because of the fact that HE DIDN"T WANT A NEW SYSTEM. He would repeat that again and again. I didn't want to give up. I had to use all my tons of patience that I had reserved for my next two decades.
I just had to have the preservance. I had to use lot of self motivation techniques. I continued with my meetings / documentation. The first turning point was when I called for a meeting with leadership team on both business and IT side. I got a chance to demonstrate my understanding of the system so far and objectives of potential new system with help of a proto type clearly highlighting merits of new system. I got a positive response which was kind of assurance for my initiative.
But that didn't change anything with my unwilling stubborn customer. Knowing that he is the only one that has SME and always didn't want to share anything completely. I just continued all myefforts to work with him and get my job done. I had to mention that I often thought about escalating this but at the same time not to forget matters like these are pretty political at work places especially when you are dealing with business stake holders you  being on IT side.

Eventually I progressed with the system and delivered it. During the course of time, this person passed on a comment 'You have a patience like a saint'. I thought it rather was a complement. But I must say it was not just the patience as that alone wouldn't do much. When dealing with business teams you also have to have certain negotiation, withstanding, affirmative and preservance skills. You need to apply right one tactfully and get going. I strongly believe that is what did the trick for me.
He was a very difficult customer and adamantly refused to understand how easier and efforless his future system would be as opposed to run his operations on batch mode. He was so afraid of loosing his power and as a matter of teh fact he always thought he would loose his job / position. He was so afraid of change without even understanding that this change will add efficiency for him. After the system went live this person resigned himself. But starngely he use to call his support staff to check how new system was working as he hardly believed that any new system will work better.
It's been over a decade and I am not in that job any more. But I am aware that my little new system is still alive working fine over there. But that was a great experience in my earlier days of management experience. If i think about it today after 10+ years I surely think there could be couple of things that I must have done differently for more effectiveness but I surely did the best at the time I knew was the best of my knowledge. I always feel pride of the delivery of that system despite of challenges.

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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli
1/24/2016 1:19:55 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
I know what you mean.  At my parents' it can sometimes get temperamental simply from one end of the home to another.  (And god forbid you attempt to use the cordless phone at the same time you need your Wi-Fi.)

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Mike Robuck
Mike Robuck
1/23/2016 12:08:34 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
We're in a single level house. We had both router and modem in a secondary living room at one end of the house. They're in a much more central location now. My father in law lives in a brick house, and he's tried repeaters, but his Wi-Fi still drops a lot from one floor to the next. 

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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli
1/23/2016 12:03:14 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
@Mike: Out of curiosity, where did he move the router from and to?  Are you in a house or an apartment/condo?  Did he move it simply to improve reach of the signal, or because of interference from neighbors?

(I'm curious because of my own issues.)

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Mike Robuck
Mike Robuck
1/23/2016 11:12:52 AM
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Author
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
@Joe, he found a better place to put our Wi-Fi router, and noticed that we had an older modem. Both led to improved broadband. 

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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli
1/22/2016 9:19:42 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: BLOCK
> But the users, on the other hand, expected high tech solutions from the IT dept so they kind of scoffed at the procedure.

Users are funny that way -- and easy to fool/have fun with if you're an IT person.

Case in point: Google "Google Ultron."

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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli
1/22/2016 9:16:19 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: customer service
@Mike: Of course (and not to add cynicism to your experience; I'm sure the tech was being honest), what a terrific and easy way to "improve" the customer experience: make up an imaginary problem and tell customers they had this problem they didn't even know about but not to worry because you fixed it.

Not an honest (or entirely lawful, I suspect) way of doing business, but that's an easy way to put a good feeling in a customer's heart...until you're caught lying.

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batye
batye
1/22/2016 12:33:08 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: BLOCK
@vnewman  I could not agree more as this days customers want it now high tech solution.... as technology is here...

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batye
batye
1/22/2016 12:31:11 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: That continuous reboot issue
@Mike Robuck  this day Co. must value they customers... but many Co. offer lips services instead of providing proper services... sad reality when Co. trying to save on customer support...

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