The Curious Case of Paul’s Holiday: A Software Saga

This is a story of how you can find a bug before users report it, but don’t end up fixing it due to other priorities or communication breakdown.

I was trying to investigate a bug with our software, and ventured into a related module to try and configure it. However, it crashed. After looking at the code where the crash occurred, I found the developer that had likely caused it, and it was a change he made in the previous month. I sent a message directly to Paul to alert him to it. There was a chance the change hadn’t been released yet, and he could fix it in time. Or if it had been released, then it probably needed to be fixed urgently because the feature looked unusable as far as I could tell.

Paul replied stating that he had realised his change had caused a bug elsewhere and this was essentially the same mistake, so he would add it to his list of things to fix. However, he was going on annual leave in a couple of days so would need to hand it over to his team.

He sent an email to his team and copied me in.

Recently my change had caused a bug in Resource Manager. If you archive and unarchive a template it causes a crash. It became evident that there is the potential for two more crashes to occur that are related.

Schedules (clicking on any folder, demonstrated by Praveen)
Assessment (found today, but we believe this only is used by 1 site)

Root cause is that the control that I changed is the same in these other areas, however these “resources” do not have a file size.

I have created a bug for it, and raised a draft change which I believe would fix the issues (I have done some local testing but more required).

This could be picked up by someone else in my absence if it needs to be progressed asap (code is live and not behind a feature flag).

These discoveries have been through our own efforts, not through Support.

Needless to say, this feature has had its fair share of issues, and I will write up a report/lessons learned document upon my return.

A few days later, Paul returns back from his annual leave.

[15:13] Paul Marshall 
you know that bug in assessments module you highlighted the other day?  
Major Incident raised. Only 2 complaints so far, but we have found more occurrences when browsing the error logs. 
 
[15:35] Paul Marshall 
I raised the PR (draft) but did not progress it as I was literally going on holiday that day. I emailed a bunch of folks and gave the full picture to them, including all the evidence and PR but it wasn’t moved on. 
When I was back I raised it and it sat there not reviewed by the team even though I asked repeatedly to have it reviewed. 

Sorry, bit of a rant there....   
its moving now 
 
[15:40] Me 
let's write a blog post for Viva Engage about how we came close to preventing a Major Incident 
others foiled our attempt

Emails were flying, managers were sighing, and somewhere, a developer was crying.
AI

The Curious Case of Paul’s Holiday: A Software Saga

Once upon a time, in the not-so-far-away land of Software Developmentia, there was a developer named Paul. Paul was a diligent worker, known for his sharp eye for detail and his love for datagrids. One fateful day, Paul made a change to a datagrid that was nothing short of genius… for a certain group of people. For another group, however, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Paul, with his developer senses tingling, caught the potential calamity before it unleashed chaos upon the unsuspecting second group. He crafted a fix as elegant as a ballroom dance and sent out an email to his manager and team, detailing the issue, the solution, and the testing needed. It was a masterpiece of communication, a symphony of technical jargon and urgent pleas. And with that, Paul packed his bags and set off on a well-deserved holiday, visions of bug-free code dancing in his head.

But alas, in the twist of all twists, Paul’s team, perhaps too mesmerized by his email’s eloquence or too entranced by their own holiday plans, did nothing. The fix sat, lonely and unimplemented, as Paul’s toes wiggled in the sand and his out-of-office reply cheerfully told people he’d be back soon.

Upon his return, Paul found his inbox flooded with the digital cries of users caught in the datagrid debacle. The issue had gone live, and chaos reigned. Emails were flying, managers were sighing, and somewhere, a developer was crying.

What can we learn from this tale of holiday woe? Perhaps it’s that communication, no matter how clear, is only as good as the action it inspires. Or maybe it’s that one should never go on holiday without ensuring their work is done… or at least assigned to someone who isn’t equally holiday-bound.

So let us raise our mugs of coffee to Paul, the developer whose holiday will forever be remembered in the annals of Software Developmentia. May his next vacation be free of datagrid disasters and full of completed tasks.

And to all the Pauls out there, a word of advice: double-check your team’s to-do list before you hit that out-of-office button. It might just save your holiday… and your datagrids.

Early Morning Meetings

We had our daily “Stand-up” meetings at 9:45, where the team states what they did yesterday and what they will aim to complete today. In our “Retrospective” meeting, where the team reflects on what went well and what didn’t go well over the last 2 weeks, and also what improvements could be made, one developer questioned why we have our meetings at 9:45 rather than 9:00.

Most people in the team start their day at 9:00, so to do a bit of work, then have to go on the meeting seemed like a distraction. After thinking about it, the longest serving team members said they might have set that time due to the previous Product Owner having several teams and it was the best slot for them to attend. Then no one questioned it and so it remained.

I suggested that we start at 9:05, given that if we turn on our laptops at 9:00, we will end up being late. Often if team members request help at the start of the day, they often reply “let me get my coffee”, so it made sense to allow people to finish their breakfast and get a drink. People seemed to think it was a good idea.

However, the next week, the meeting invite was set at 9:00. I questioned some of the team members.

[Monday 09:19] Me
has Sam ignored my idea of starting at 9:05 instead 
 
[Monday 09:20] Dennis
must've
 
[Monday 09:24] Dean
what was the 9:05 idea? can't remember that  
 
[Monday 09:25] Me
I said if we start at 9, it gives us a chance to get logged in, and you get your coffee
then everyone was like, "yeah dude that is sick idea mate", and you kicked off about being falsely accused of wanting coffee  
 
[Monday 09:26] Dean
haha  i don't fully understand
i get logged in and get my coffee based on what time the call is
T - 5 mins
doesn't matter whether that's 9am or 9:07

Dean had previously criticised me for being late to a meeting that was arranged for 8:30 (before my 9:00 start), and I had missed another that was arranged less than an hour’s notice. I felt like he was using this as another opportunity to question my attitude towards meetings.

On the third day, Dean then says he is finding it really hard to get used to starting at 9:00 and might consider asking for it to be moved back to 9:45. He finds it hard to wake up and be alert for the meeting. Some days he will be late from childcare because it’s a bit of a rush back and can be hard with the traffic.

Quite interesting how he made out he always starts working before 9:00, and made sure he is ready for any meeting 5 minutes before it starts. Then when it comes down to it, he admits he starts late some days due to childcare, and other days he isn’t fully alert to work efficiently. So when we had our meeting at 9:45, it seemed like he was never really working at 9:00 like he claimed, whereas I would be ready at 9:05.

Self-Assessment

Recently, we were filling in our forms for the end of year performance reviews. We have tried all kinds in the past, but have settled on something simplistic in recent years. It’s basically structured around open questions of “what went well?”, “what didn’t go well?”, “What have you learned?”, “What would you like to learn?”.

Since we had already just evaluated ourself, it was a surprise to get an email directly from the CTO wanting us to evaluate ourselves.

Hope you are well.

We are currently conducting an assessment exercise across our Portfolio to establish our strengths and areas for improvement, with the goal of growing our capability as a department and to drive to our long term vision of moving to development on our new product.

To facilitate this process, we have developed an assessment questionnaire that will help us understand your capabilities and your career trajectory.

Could you please complete this form by selecting the option that best reflects your current capability or skill.

It’s an unexpected email, states urgency, and contains a suspicious link. All the hallmarks of a phishing email. I waited for a colleague to click the link before clicking mine. Given that it asks similar questions to what is on our performance review, as well as many others that are specific for our job role; why wouldn’t they just standardise the review process in order to get the information?

Clicking the link loads up a Microsoft form with Employee ID and Name filled in with editable fields but the question says “Please do not change this”. My name had double spaces in it which was really annoying. What would happen if I did correct it? Does Microsoft Forms not allow you to have non-editable fields? Seems a weird limitation regardless.

The questions were labelled with the following categories:

Delivery, Code Quality, Problem Solving, Accountability, Technical Proficiency, Domain Proficiency, Cloud Knowledge, New Gen Tech Stack Proficiency, Joined Up, Process and Communication, Innovation.

I really didn’t like the way the questions were written. There are 5 answers labelled A-E, but C is often written to sound like a brilliant option when you would expect that to be average. B and A just sound like behaviour reserved for the Architects/Engineering Managers/Principal Developers.

Given that the answers just seem to link directly to your job role, then it reminded me of those online quizzes where it is gonna decide what TV Character/Superhero you are, but you can easily bias your answers because you can see exactly where it is going. In this case, this assessment just seems like it is gonna rank you Architect, Expert, Senior, Junior based on your answers.

Some of the wording for the lowest answers seem like a strange thing to admit.

“Only engages in innovation efforts when directly instructed, showing a complete lack of accountability. “

Why would you admit to showing a complete lack of accountability? Most people probably don’t “innovate” but selecting an answer with “showing a complete lack of accountability” seems crazy.

So given that some answers are never gonna be selected because it’s a difficult thing to admit, and given some answers were clearly based on your job description; then people would just select answers based on what they SHOULD be doing, rather than what they ACTUALLY do. So therefore, it’s a pretty pointless survey. Also there is bias that it was given during the review period so people would suspect it would be used to decide pay-rises and promotions rather than just for some team reshuffle.

This one on Code Quality is weird because B and C seem similar in standard, but then when you read D, it sounds like you admit you are an incompetent Software Developer.

Code Quality 
(cq.a) Established as code guru and plays a key role in shaping optimal code quality in the team through effective reviews, acting on insights from tools, identifying and resolving inefficiencies in the software and process. 
(cq.b) Effectively uses insights from tools like Sonarcloud and influences team quality positively by enforcing standards and showing an upward trend of improved quality and reduced rework. 
(cq.c) Upholds the highest standards of unit testing, coding practices, and software quality in self-delivery and ensuring the same from the team through effective code reviews. 
(cq.d) Rarely identifies refactoring opportunities, misses critical issues in code reviews, and struggles to positively influence the team's approach to code quality. 
(cq.e) Engages minimally in code reviews, allowing issues to slip through; unit tests are skipped and/or yet to begin influencing the code quality of the team.

This one seems applicable to only the top people, or ones that love the limelight and want attention from the managers.

Joined-up
(ju.a) Designs personalised learning paths for team members to ensure comprehensive skill development. 
(ju.b) Takes ownership of training needs, seeking opportunities for personal growth. Takes the initiative to identify advanced training opportunities for skill enhancement. 
(ju.c) Demonstrate robust team communication, encourage team to contribute in weekly Lunch and Learn sessions, actively recognising peers, support juniors wherever needed. Be active in recruitment. 
(ju.d) While excelling as an individual contributor, there is an opportunity to engage more with team members by sharing ideas, seeking input, recognition and offering support in team/organisation initiatives 
(ju.e) Need to start taking on a mentoring role by sharing knowledge, providing guidance, and offering constructive feedback to the juniors help them grow and succeed.

I think it is difficult to make meaningful surveys or assessments, but you need to put some thought into the value, and the accuracy of the results.

DataGrid & The Custom Row Selection

We have one module where you select rows from a grid, then can perform actions on multiple entries. The first column in the grid contains checkboxes. So whatever is ticked is what the actions should apply to. However, if you check the box, it also highlights the row. So there are actually 2 things visually that show the user what is selected.

Clicking anywhere on the row should highlight the row, but since highlighting and the checkbox shows what is selected, then we need some custom code to also check the box when the row is highlighted.

My team had made a tweak to the underlying control, which had broken the checkbox being ticked when the row is selected.

When we recreated the bug, we realised that – because there’s 2 ways of selecting (highlight and checkbox), when you click buttons to perform actions, it actually checks against what is highlighted. So even though we had introduced a bug that it no longer checks the box, it doesn’t actually cause any problems at all because the checkboxes are merely a visual thing.

A simple fix would be to just remove the column since it is redundant. Then a lot of code could be cleaned up.

“One thing we have noticed is the tick box isn’t actually needed, highlighting the column gives you all the same functionality as selecting the tick box.”
Tester

However, our Product team said that even though multiselect behaviour has always existed, many users weren’t aware and so clicked each checkbox one by one. So it sounds like some users like clicking rows, some like using checkboxes, and some like using keyboard shortcuts.

The keyboard behaviour seemed rather strange too and caused extra complications with the code. You can press down/up which selects/deselect the row below/above the row that is currently focussed. However, there is no visual indicator of which row actually has the focus. Other shortcuts include pressing Spacebar which toggles the checkbox on/off. Pressing ctr+up/down jumps to the top/bottom respectively and checks the box (but if it is already checked, then it doesn’t uncheck it; which is inconsistent with up/down without the Control key). You can also press ctrl+a which selects all rows, but you cannot deselect all rows.

It really illustrates how something basic can be complicated to make all users happy. Then the more custom code you add, the more likely there’s bugs and other inconsistencies.

I was noticing inconsistencies with the shortcuts. So when I had implemented my fix, I was convinced I had broken them.

private void ListData_KeyUp(Object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
	if (listData.CurrentCell == null)
		return;
	
	if (e.KeyData == Keys.Down || e.KeyData == Keys.Up)
		HandleGridRowSelection(mouseActionOrSpaceKey: false);
	
	if (e.KeyData == Keys.Space)
	{
		_isSpaceKeyPressOnCheckBox = listData.CurrentCell.ColumnIndex.Equals(_checkBoxColumnIndex);
		HandleGridRowSelection(mouseActionOrSpaceKey: true);
		_isSpaceKeyPressOnCheckBox = false;
	}
	
	if ((e.Modifiers == Keys.Control && (e.KeyCode == Keys.A || e.KeyCode == Keys.Up || e.KeyCode == Keys.Down)))
		HandleCheckBoxHeaderClick(combinationKeys: true);
}

I thought I had broken the functionality because sometimes I saw it highlight all rows but it didn’t select the checkbox. Then when I was looking at the code again (which I hadn’t modified), I noticed it was called from Key Up. The ListData_KeyUp code would expect you to let go of A whilst still holding down Control. Although most people would do that due to their hand positioning, sometimes I was finding I was basically “stabbing” the keys so was releasing them roughly the same time. So in the times I had actually released Control first, then the IF statement doesn’t pass and therefore the checkboxes aren’t selected. I think the standard implementation is to check OnKeyDown and not UP.