Changing the Code

Jana came into my office, her eyes wary, teeth clenched, brow determined, shoulders stiffly back.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure, Jana. I was looking for you this morning anyway.”

She looked surprised.

“Oh, why?”

“We’ll get to that. What did you want to see me about?”

She paused. The determination on her face had turned uncertain.

“It’s about Carl.”

“Of course it is. What is it this time?”

She turned her head away, looking back towards the door. I realized I was pushing her away.

“Wait a second, Jana. Let’s start over.” She turned back towards me. “That wasn’t very welcoming. That’s not the way I wanted to start this conversation. I’m sorry. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Well, I’m not so sure this is the right time for this conversation. You don’t seem in the mood.”

“Jana, my mood is on me. It’s not on you. I really do want to hear what you have to say. I want you to feel free to speak. You’re our VP of software. You’re the best manager I have and your people, your whole department, are the foundation of this company. I need to hear what you’re thinking.”

She looked a bit more relaxed and looked around again, this time setting her gaze on one of my two office chairs.

“Can I sit?”

“Sure. Please do.”

She took the chair on the right. I moved out from behind my desk and took the chair to her left. I looked at her with what I hoped was a welcoming expression. As she paused, I moved my hands up a bit, turning the palms out and almost open. Ready and eager to listen.

“I don’t know how much longer I can work with Carl. All my people are concerned.”

“All of them?”

She waited a moment before answering. “Not all of them, no. I shouldn’t have said that. But some of them are, and they’re the most important ones. The biggest contributors. The hardest workers.

“Why?”

“Come on, Jason, you know why. He doesn’t deliver on time. He makes us wait before deploying our test software. He won’t give us access to the test suite until we prove we’re ready, and that delays our testing. We need to iterate quickly, to test as we go, and he just gets in the way. Then when we complain, he tells us to take it up with you.”

“Is that why you’re here? To take it up with me?”

“No, of course not. I mean, why would I? You’re not going to intervene. You’ve told us we have to work it out, to work together. But he doesn’t try. I can’t work with him, and I can’t ask you to go to bat for me every time. I need him to get out of our way.”

“Why do you think Carl is delaying your deployments?”

Jana looked at me. Now her hands were opening up, palm facing each other the way mine had a few minutes before, but not in an encouraging way. She frowned and shook her head before continuing. “I don’t ‘think’ he’s delaying our work, he IS delaying our work.”

“Yes, I hear that, but why do you”—here I used air quotes—“‘think’ he is doing that? What is his reason?”

“Oh. So you agree his operations people get in our way?”

“I agree that they’re not doing what you want, when you want it. What I want to know is, why do you think he’s doing that?”

“How would I know?”

“Can you wait here a moment, Jana?”

She looked surprised. “Um, okay, sure.”

I got up, left the office, and picked up an unused office chair from one of the cubicles in the open area outside my office. About half the cubicles were filled, mostly with Jana’s software engineers and a couple with Carl’s operations and build engineers. Jana’s office was at the far end.

I brought the chair into my office and set it down facing Jana. “Just one more minute, please, Jana.”

I left again, turning right outside my office and walking down the hall. Carl’s office was at the end of the hall, but he was rarely in it; he was usually in the server room. I found him there and asked him to come back with me. Carl was a big blonde guy with a ponytail. His face never showed anything. Because he was so much taller than me, his walk covered more ground than mine and he was a step or two ahead the whole way back.

I walked into my office. Jana looked up at me expectantly, then Carl walked in. Jana’s face fell.

“Sit down here, Carl, please,” I said, pointing at the chair on Jana’s left. But before he could sit in it, I picked up the empty chair and moved it to Jana’s right.

Jana’s face was filled with emotion. Carl’s, as usual, showed nothing.

When they were sitting next to each other, I sat in the third chair facing them.

“Let’s talk.”

“Sure, boss,” said Carl.

“About what?” asked Jana.

“A new way of doing business,” I said. “I need you both to reset your password.”

“What?” asked Jana.

“Why?” asked Carl.

“Let’s look at what’s been happening.”

I looked at Carl first.

“You have a set of rules. Your rules are important, and they’re strict. You don’t let code into your environment, even the pre-deployment test environment, until you’re sure it’s safe. You have a rich set of build procedures and test procedures and deployment procedures and everything has to go in a specific order. Nothing moves forward until it’s past the previous gate.”

I paused, still looking at him.

“Right,” he said.

I shifted slightly to look at Jana.

“And you have a rapid deployment model, new code coming in every day, and you want to use Carl’s environment to screen, test, and roll out this code, even during your daily sprints, long before it’s ready for launch.”

She shook her head. “Not really. I don’t care that much about his scripts. I’m willing to use my own. My team can write our own procedures. But Carl owns the servers.”

I sat back a bit.

“So. Carl, why do you insist on such strict procedures and timelines? Why don’t you let Jana’s team put her code in your test environment, even the sanitized pre-deployment areas?”

“Because it’s not safe.”

I shook my head.

“And Jana, why do you resist following Carl’s procedures?”

“They take too long. We need to move quickly.”

I shook my head again.

“Wrong on both counts, both of you.” Jana looked a little bit outraged, and Carl’s face actually showed a trace of expression, though I couldn’t guess what his expression meant.

I looked back at Carl. “You insist on strict procedures because you want to look good at your job. You want to impress me. You want me to know that everything you do is buttoned down tight and nothing can go wrong.”

I then looked at Jana. “You use your own procedures because you want me to know that your team is the best, is doing all the critical work, is working long hours and producing great work, and you want me to know that Carl’s dev support team is in your way, is slowing you down.”

“I’m not sure why that’s relevant,” said Jana. “I’m not trying to show them up. They slow us down and it gets in the way. Does it matter why?”

“It does,” I said.

I leaned forward, making sure I was looking at them both equally.

“I’m going to ask you two to do something that might make you uncomfortable. Again, to reset your password. To change the code.

“What does that even mean?” asked Carl.

“Did you wonder why I moved your chair to Jana’s right?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Did you wonder, Jana?”

“Of course I did. I thought it was some little dominance game. You brought him in here without telling me why to make me uncomfortable, and then you put him in the dominant chair on the right side.”

“Nope,” I said. “And here’s where it might get uncomfortable. Jana, I want you to put out your right hand, and Carl, reach out to her with your left hand.”

Neither of them moved. My top VPs, on the same tier with the sales VP but far more valuable to me, and they didn’t do what I asked. I wasn’t surprised. I tried to look reassuring.

“Please do it.”

“Why?” asked Jana.

“Because I asked you to.”

“This makes me uncomfortable.”

“That’s why I switched the chairs, so you’d be using your right hand and he’d be using his left hand, so you would’t feel subordinate to him. I’m going to talk for another minute or two, but I want to do it while you two are holding hands. Changing things up.

Slowly, slowly, Jana’s right hand inched towards Carl. Carl didn’t move or react until Jana’s hand was hanging there in space, then he abruptly put his hand in hers. His hand dwarfed hers, but he closed it gently and only slightly.

“This is what I mean by resetting the password. Carl, you keep trying to impress me with how perfect and secure and exact your team is. Jana, you keep trying to show me how good and fast and flexible your team is. And Jana, you’re trying to establish that Carl is not your boss, is not more important than you, so you don’t follow his rules. Carl, you know that Jana’s team is the top dog here and that your group basically supports them, so you’re repeatedly emphasizing that you can be counted on to do your job right, and you want them to follow your rules so they appreciate what your team does. You want a little credit for how good your dev support is because you know that Jana’s team gets top billing.”

Their hands started to pull apart a little bit.

“I’d rather you keep your hands together just a minute longer.” Their hands stopping separating.

“Neither one of you is trying to make the other one succeed. To make each other look good. You’re trying to impress me.”

I shook my head slowly.

“And you don’t need to. Neither one of you ran a whole department before you got here, before I promoted you. I chose both of you over people who have been here longer. I upset some people when I did that. Georgie left over it. But I did it for good reasons. I trust you both. I don’t want you to impress me. I want you to work together.”

I saw a slight nod of Jana’s head. Or maybe I imagined it.

“Carl, I want your department to help Jana’s succeed. That means understanding what they need and finding a way to modify your procedures so they’re still safe, still secure, but they let Jana’s team move quickly, deploy untested code to a secure environment, use your build scripts, use your test scripts, without risking the production environment. And without slowing the team down. They’re an Agile team. Work with them.

“Jana, you look better, your team looks better, we all succeed more as a company, when you and Carl work together. You can help make his tools better and faster and safer by USING them. You two can be stars together, or we can all stumble and perhaps fail together.”

Carl looked at Jana and waited a moment until she looked over at him. His eyebrows were raised and he had a little smile. She smiled, a full broad smile. It lit up her whole face. She nodded several times.

I leaned back.

“That’s what I mean by resetting your password.”

“And you can let go of each other’s hands now.”

Both Carl and Jana looked at their hands and laughed. And they did not rush to separate their hands.