I started writing on Monday. But its now Wednesday. So, on today’s Monday Wednesday Ramblings I’d like to present a story about the time I came to hate the letters M, E, and S when combined, how I started getting fat again, and my one and only trip to Ohio. As a consultant working on SAP implementations, I eventually got to a leadership role. This, was my second such implementation in this role.
Things started out well. They typically do early in the project before time gets crunchy and deadlines press back. This implementation was simple enough. Take an existing SAP system and convert its data and some customizations over to another company’s more up-to-date SAP system.
SAP to SAP. Surely, there has never been an easier implementation ever. Knock on wood, fingers crossed, half a dozen Hail Marys… won’t do any good. Sometimes what sounds easy is just doomed.
I ran a pretty tight ship around status updates. I was able to communicate progress well to the client. Doing so was helping stave off some troubles. See, in the mix we had two major problems:
- Labels that needed created and printed on a zebra printer when only one dude had zebra designer (and wasn’t even on my team)
- An interface program to send data back and forth to the MES system at the plant.
The first problem is it’s own story. But simply put: things went well until they didn’t. And when they didn’t was when a test printer finally arrived and the whole label needed rotated 90 degrees. This is a chore without designer…
The other problem was near and dear to me. See, despite being the technical lead for the on-shore/out-of-sight-out-of-mind team was I still had to develop. This MES interface sounded like something that would run over one of my less experienced team’s members. So, I bit the bullet and took it on.
Things are never just simple in SAP. “Just” is a curse word in programming. My requirement for the MES ended up being: “just copy it over and make it compile”. This was a single afternoons work. On to the next thing.
Much like the printers, once actual testing was possible, problems arose. “There’s a bug when we do this obscure thing we didn’t tell you about” “There’s an issue with the UoM on this bill of materials coming back from the MES.” The list went on. I fixed them as they came along.
As more things came up, a new thing happened. Instead of running things through a functional consultant, I was hooked directly up to an employee at the client site. The subject matter expert on the MES as it would happen.
As time was going on, an odd occurrence would happen. A bug would be found. I’d have it resolved. But my emails would go unanswered for an hour. During stand ups I’d get questions on how close it was to being done. And each time: it’s 99% done.
As more time passed and more bugs were found, “should we just rebuild it?” To which I’d shoot back: “are you crazy? It’s done. Why go back now?”
This continued on for a while. A random bug appearing. Me staying late and fixing it. “Jeff-of-all-trades, the clients are worried should we start over”.
Folks, the bugs they were reporting had been there 10+ years. They had lived with them. And we were now rooting them out. Had we a full test scenario to run through to begin with, we’d have saved months of headaches.
I continued along. A beacon in the dark. A ray of optimism. A voice of reason in a frenzied crowd. I kept the crazy at bay (though my team swore I ended a call with my pain in the rear SME WITH “k, love you bye”). Until, I took vacation.
I’ve never seen such a faster about face folks. No sooner than the rental RV and I had left the state did I get a phone call from my company’s VP: “the client is nervous about the deadline and wants us onsite.” On vacation I’m now on status calls and trying to argue against this. But, against my judgement, we caved.
It was setup to have each member of the team that could, rotate into going on-site. I was unavailable for some of the early travels and one other team mate couldn’t either. I later caved and went in the last wave to keep other folks from being pressured into going.
Some things noteable things I enjoyed while just trying to get there:
- We missed our connecting flight because a guy was being an asshole at the terminal about the lack of first class seats.
- We accidentally bought beers at a Five Guys for breakfast and “accidentally” lost the receipts since under $25 didn’t require one for Per Diem.
- We spent a better part of the day in a Sam Adams restaurant working off one dudes hotspot.
- We arrived onsite entirely too late to get any more work done and went straight to a bar for the night.
Having finally arrived, we discovered Tim Horton’s in our search for coffee. Ohio Tim Horton’s I’m told is not as great as Canadian Tim Horton’s… But the Timbits man. The Timbits. I blame them for the start of my weight regain.
So, earlier I mentioned that when one little thing would go wrong with the MES interface, I had this lovely little hour or so of peace to fix it before having to defend the decision to not rebuild it. I finally experienced why. See, during my time in Ohio, I was given a cubical to hang out in. Right across that cubical was Janet (changed for my own safety), my SME that I’d been working with (who turns out I DID say “k, love you bye” to).
Janet and I had hit it off despite the troubles we were causing to each other. But, on day two of this lovely trip to Ohio… she stood up, informed me of an issue with the MES and then left. I spent all of 5 minutes making the fix. I knew where it was at. The interface and I knew each other intimately at this point. It was again, a bug from the original program that had been there for a decade.
Upon fixing the error I went to tell Janet it was fixed, changes pushed, test again please, etc etc. But couldn’t find her. So, I decided to go use the coffee machine I was told about. It was a K-cup machine sent by hell to pollute the planet and choke baby penguins or something. This K-Cup (which thinking now I presume the K stands for Kills baby penguins) machine was located in a room where several of the functional folks from the consulting firm and SMEs were housed. Janet was there.
Come to find out, every single time a bug would come up. I’d get the brief notification, Janet would jump up and run into this room (a feat in its own as she was quite the large individual), and spend an hour complaining to the higher ups and folks “in charge” that the whole MES was broken and was never going to work. This is one of the joys of being onsite.
I was able to join the conversation this time. Point out that it was fixed now. Mention that it was an error old as time that even if we had built from scratch we would have encountered anyway since its a special case. With the fires put out once again (and at the source) we were able to get back to being productive and work on other code.
Epilogue
The interface continued to be an issue off and on. But, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Janet, was determined to become a missionary and go help folks overseas. She was starting this endeavor a month after I left Ohio.
Exactly one month and one day after I left Ohio, the MES passed final testing and never had another bug reported to me. No telling what happened when I rolled off the project.
I did hear that the project did not finish on time (not buying printers for testing doesn’t help) due to many hidden requirements that nobody bothered to document during the blue printing phase. But, I chock a lot of that up to “its just a copy and paste, SAP to SAP, easy peasy lemon squeezy”.
The other technical lead and I continued to refer to MES as a dumpster fire. Not only for the interface but other issues as well. I still send him pictures of dumpsters on fire from time to time. Most recently I sent the photo from this post. A candle I made inspired by the internet.
Remember folks: We do these things not because they are easy but because we THOUGHT they would be easy!
Jeff of All Trades 