Company Policies

[abhijit]

Hi Folks,
I would like to start a discussion about the various policies that you have inn your companies.

Like for example the shop where I work, you cannot touch the data inside a database. You have a 100 levels of approval for touching any data. Meanwhile the users rave and rant about things nto getting done.

Whats the story at your end?

Care to Share?

Abhijit

[sevenhalo]

That's how it was at my last job. If you wanted to expand a field from 12 chars to 20 to support international calling, you had to fill out a 3 page document of who's doing it, why it's being done, what systems it could effect, ect ect. Now I'm at my current job and I'm the alpha and omega of all things db related. I can make whatever changes I want or need.

The problem is, alot of the non-DB people here have decided that they would like to have that priviledge too. While they don't make the changes themselves, they do complain to all the right people. I try to explain to them that changing a combobox on a form to something totally different is not as simple as it seems (considering, all the relationships and integrity I have to maintain), but they make me do it anyway.

I have some tables that are descriptive of facilities, but now have been banged up to also include records like "supplies" and "misc items." No one seems to see the harm in this except for me (the person who's responsible for the data). That's just the tip of the iceberg though. In the entire company, there is maybe 4 technical people. Me (the DBA, web architect and app developer), a network admin, an electrician who does some vbscript, and an old school chemist who only uses Lotus.

In some aspects, I miss the 100 levels of approval. After someone tries to pressure me into making a change I know is damaging, I was able to say "it's out of my hands" and let policy handle the situation. Yeah, things weren't getting done as fast because of it, but I'd rather have things move slow then need too be rebuilt every year. Nowadays, they just go to my boss (the network admin) and he'll bend over backwards for people as long as he doesn't have to do it.

[abhijit]

Well the risk of having policies is in place is that processes are always over-ridden by people who have the weight behind them. Like someone once said "Some men are more equal than others". So what happens is that someone always manages to avoid the loop of red-tape. The users thing that person is great, but he is actually the real damage to the system in the long run.

Right now I feel it would be great if we could tell our users to shut up for a while. Even things are going well, they are not happy with IT anyway.

[sevenhalo]

The thing is, when someone oversteps a policy and it fails; you have a direction to point the finger. Without explicit policies and guidelines, the person forced to make the change against their best judgement has to bite the bullet.

[GaryMazzone]

The last job I had was as an Oracle DBA on a project for the Navy (I was a contrator). I was the only person who was allowed to make any changes to database design. At least the only legit person. If a developer make a change to a table on the sly and we did a rebuild well the change was gone. When they came up crying the comment I gave them was Did you follow the laid out procedures for database changes? If you did they would be included in the database build scripts and that is the only way a production system will be built. Yes there was some complaints at first but by the time I left every one was going to the DBA to ensure that all changes were carried forward. It also ensured that I a person just want a field to make his job easier well that did not nescessary happen. All changes needed to be justified for data integerty and to see what else was going to be affeted by that change.

[abhijit]

Mazz - that is somewhat similar to our setup. However what actually happens is
User one --> calls L1-Helpdesk "What the f*** are you guys doing? This s*** is not working for me.
L1-Helpdesk --> calls developer (me) "User is very irritated. He needs to process this record ASAP" (they call me about 4 times in an hour) (message me on instant messaging) *send me an email*
I realize that this change needs a db change. column xyz needs to be expanded from 8 to 9.
Me --> DBA - We need to change this. I have filled out this request in triplicate and copied to the whole department. They have not raised any concern so it looks like they are not going to get affected.
DBA--> Me - We can't change the column size. Get everyone's email on this change.

This has now cost me about 3 days. Meanwhile there are about 30 other users who are facing the same problem. So till the issue becomes big, we don't get the change done.


There are several such examples.

[Shaggy Hiker]

We have no procedures, and we have no controls.

Basically, if we ever get anything built it was because one or two people undertook it as a 'heroic' additional task. Therefore, there are no standards, and the only people who know how to make any changes are few and far between.

This isn't a system, this is chaos.

I tried to build a DB to conform to institutional standards so that it would have a prayer of being compatible with ANYTHING else. Nobody who had anything to do with any existing DB would tell me a thing. They wouldn't tell me how they named fields, they wouldn't tell me how they organized fields, they wouldn't even admit to being consistent in how they named fields. I couldn't even get anyone to admit to the spelling, let alone any kind of higher structure. Partly this is because all of these lone ranger DB folks don't WANT to have a standard so that they can freely do whatever they please, content in the knowledge that when they move on nobody will ever be able to take over for them anyways.

[Hack]

I've done a lot of contract work at a wide variety of different companies in different industries, but I observed a few constants.

One was that if a change to a database was needed by a developer, a form had to be filled out detailing the change and the reason for the change. This had to be signed off by my boss, who in turn, had to have his boss sign off on it, then it was passed to the DBA to make the change.

Coding and variable declartion standards veried from company to company. Some had none, others were so strict that I went through weekly code reviews to ensure I was following their standards, and others were somewhere in between.

[abhijit]

We have no procedures, and we have no controls.

Basically, if we ever get anything built it was because one or two people undertook it as a 'heroic' additional task. Therefore, there are no standards, and the only people who know how to make any changes are few and far between.

This isn't a system, this is chaos.

I tried to build a DB to conform to institutional standards so that it would have a prayer of being compatible with ANYTHING else. Nobody who had anything to do with any existing DB would tell me a thing. They wouldn't tell me how they named fields, they wouldn't tell me how they organized fields, they wouldn't even admit to being consistent in how they named fields. I couldn't even get anyone to admit to the spelling, let alone any kind of higher structure. Partly this is because all of these lone ranger DB folks don't WANT to have a standard so that they can freely do whatever they please, content in the knowledge that when they move on nobody will ever be able to take over for them anyways.

That sounds like my nightmare in the previous company. Suprisingly it doesn't take time for the heroes to turn into martyrs. :-)