Change Management is Hard
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Work |
I’m plodding along, doing my Unix like duties, finding inefficiencies in various software applications installed in our production environment…you know, the day-to-day tasks.
It just so happens, we finally got word from the SAPpers (you know, those folks who “run” SAP) that they only need us to retain 30 days worth of log files from our batch jobs that start ABAP programs, BI process chains, and so on.
“Great”, I’m thinking, this is good news. I can finally start purging old log files we have been keeping on our production scheduling server for some time. So, I fire up our trusty “Change Management” tool to create a request to implement a new change. I want this purge job to run from inside our scheduling tool instead of via cron…it provides better documentation of what is done to keep the environment in working order, plus cron is stupid by default.
I need to pick a title, it should be something descriptive, so you can see at-a-glance what the change will be modifying. Bam! There it is…”The CR Title is limited to 10 words.”
WTF? Why? What could possible happen that would require our Change Management team to limit the title of CRs to 10 words or less. Folks are always complaining that those who create the CRs never put enough information in the title understand what is actually being modified.
Well, my friends, the answer is quite hysterical. Feel free to take a few stabs at this one, I’ll buy a beer (or two) for the person w/ the closest answer. I’ll post the answer in a day or two.
All for now.
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6 Responses to “Change Management is Hard”
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Oh, I’ve totally got this one. It limited to 10 words or less b/c anything longer is too much information. They all have ADD and can’t focus for longer than 10 words.
Am I right?
@ MJ: Close…you have the “too much information” part correct. No ADD, though.
My guess is 255byte limit on the field. And because it’s SAP, if you wanna change anything, you’re kinda screwed.
…although with a 10 word limit, it may be a 127char limit :)
oh, those crazy germans. they know _everything_, why would anyone else want to do it differently?
god I hated having to use SAP at Bell.
@ kev: God, I wish it were a technical limitation. That would be even nicer. AFA SAP goes, I have been fortunate enough to remain, mostly, on the sideline. Though, you would not believe the red tape we have to go through just to rename a printer on the AIX side of things.
Ugh.
[...] now that I kept all 3.14 of my readers on the edge of their seats, here is the reason why Change Management is Hard. This goes back to a post I had a few days ago about a 10 “word” limit in our CM tool, [...]