9 cups of tea with tea

This is a story inspired by an incident of my DevOps team’s visit at Golden Tulip, Bhiwadi.

We reached at the hotel early evening, everyone was craving for fresh cup of tea to rejuvenate and start the fun part of the trip. We ordered 9 cup of tea. After 1.5 hours and 3 follow ups and 1 angry call we got 9 cup of tea, but no tea in it. We were in shock and more frustration. Then we ordered 9 cup of tea with tea again. During checkout the manager didn’t had any idea about this and other frustrations we went through.

Learning was pretty simple in day to day of DevOps activity we get more than 20 requests from different business and tech stack holders per day.

What was different from that day?

Communicate to deliver not to broadcast

Communication should be TCP, not UDP. Don’t communicate to show that you had said and later say, see I told earlier no one reads my messages.

Make sure message is delivered and acknowledged.

Escalate is to correct thing on time

Bitching and complaining are different from escalation. You anyways complain to his/her reporting manager. Which again is going to circle back to the same person with more frustration. Why not escalate to the right person at right time, so that if needed corrective measures could be taken?

Gather requirements before working on the task

Don’t jump to conclusion or start working as directed, understand and ask why a certain task is actually needed.

What is going to happen if the task is not done? Why it’s urgent? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the customers of that task?