Had a project recently that was effectively “Hey other teams, you have until $date to make this change or you will lose $feature”
The deadline was extended by a month, and we still quietly didn’t make the breaking change on our end for another month after. Every team impacted (until they made the change needed) got emails weekly about it, even into the “quiet” extended deadline. Emails went to whole teams so it couldn’t be lost by one person going on vacation or something.
Day after breaking change (more than three months after first contact) I sent out the final email to any teams that still hadn’t done the needful. “Hey, looks like your shit was still wrong when we did the thing we warned about. It’s broken now.”
Over a week after breaking change, ten minutes before I’m off for the weekend: “Hey, we’ve been troubleshooting for a while trying to figure out why $feature no longer works. This is business critical for $reasons. How can we get this resolved?”
“Please see the attached email from over three months ago (attached).”
I get the “notified teams, they did nothing” frustration, but I have seen how it can happen with low-maintenance features in departments with turnover. Team has one tech-minded person who sets up $feature, it fills a team need and gets embedded in business routines and just works, no one has any idea where it came from other than, for a while, $techieTeamMember had something to do with it. Techie person moves on in their career, other team has turnover and as a result team completely loses even vague tribal knowledge of where $feature comes from, or especially if it is embedded inside another user interface, what it is called. Now notifications of $feature breaking are completely meaningless to the team - they don’t associate any words in the email with the thing they use.
“Okay, and here are your action items…”
Silence for two weeks thereafter. :D
Had a project recently that was effectively “Hey other teams, you have until $date to make this change or you will lose $feature”
The deadline was extended by a month, and we still quietly didn’t make the breaking change on our end for another month after. Every team impacted (until they made the change needed) got emails weekly about it, even into the “quiet” extended deadline. Emails went to whole teams so it couldn’t be lost by one person going on vacation or something.
Day after breaking change (more than three months after first contact) I sent out the final email to any teams that still hadn’t done the needful. “Hey, looks like your shit was still wrong when we did the thing we warned about. It’s broken now.”
Over a week after breaking change, ten minutes before I’m off for the weekend: “Hey, we’ve been troubleshooting for a while trying to figure out why $feature no longer works. This is business critical for $reasons. How can we get this resolved?”
“Please see the attached email from over three months ago (attached).”
I get the “notified teams, they did nothing” frustration, but I have seen how it can happen with low-maintenance features in departments with turnover. Team has one tech-minded person who sets up $feature, it fills a team need and gets embedded in business routines and just works, no one has any idea where it came from other than, for a while, $techieTeamMember had something to do with it. Techie person moves on in their career, other team has turnover and as a result team completely loses even vague tribal knowledge of where $feature comes from, or especially if it is embedded inside another user interface, what it is called. Now notifications of $feature breaking are completely meaningless to the team - they don’t associate any words in the email with the thing they use.