The soul crushing weariness of trying to use GTD in an environment that is design to be inefficient

apastuszak

Registered
Forgive this rant, but I need to vent to someone. I feel like my company is designed to make things as difficult as possible to get things done. Here is the story of my week.

I work in IT. Names have been changed to protect the innocent in this story.

I was given a server name and port in order to have my server connect to a Oracle database server. We set up the needed config file and had someone deploy it on the server. We were unable to verify that the change actually worked, because we were waiting on firewall rules to get applied.

2 days after the change we learn that we had the wrong port number. Easy enough fix. Log into server, edit file and change the number 1525 to 1535 and save. Two minute rule. Should be done now and I can move on with my day.

But NO... I'm not allowed to do that. I need to open a trouble ticket. I open a trouble ticket and have it assigned to a support team. They log in the server and tell me they don't have rights to edit the file and it needs to go to another team. I contact team 2. They tell me that I need to open a change ticket for them to do work. So, I open a change ticket. But you can't just open a change ticket. A change ticket required 5 days notice and you need to represent it on a call with the "Change Commitee." Team 2 also tells me they need a detailed implementation plan. I tell them that we are literally changing a 2 to a 3 and saving a file. They send me a 30 PAGE template to fill out and send back to them. It takes them 3 days to review it and they tell me they need the name of my project manager and a project code. I tell them we don't have a project. And they want me to spin up a project in order to edit one stinking file.

So, I spin up a project. And get a project manager assigned. (This was easier than I expected, since I didn't need funding) And I enter a change ticket. I go on the change call, and my change gets rejected, because they want to know why the first change failed. I explain about firewall rules, etc, etc, and I am told my change cannot be approved without a detailed step by step verification plan. I get emailed TWO templates. One is a 20 page verification plan template, and the other is a 3 page template to explain what steps have been taken in order to ensure that this kind of "problem" doesn't happen again.

I fill out the forms, submit my change ticket again, and wait another week for the call to come around. In the mean time, every person who has a task on the change, needs to approve it. So I need to chase down teams and beg them to please approve the change ticket before the call this week, so it doesn't get rejected again because it has not been properly approved.

So, here I am, 2 weeks into trying to get a TYPO FIXED by hitting backspace on 2 and typing a 3 to replace it.
 

BadHairDay

Registered
Next time, you may want to ask for permit No A38 (check out The Place That Sends You Mad Scene in the movie "The 12 Tasks of Asterix" if that reference is unfamiliar).
On the bright site: Your GTD system might very well enable you to be productive working on other stuff while the IT department get their stuff sorted out. It's one of the genious aspects about it, after all.
 

Ravine61

GTD'R 4 Life
Hi Apastuszak;

Just curious - how did your situation turn out? Any changes that you were able to make to help yourself feel more in control of the situation? I have no concept of working in IT, but your scenario seemed very daunting, to say the least! I hope your week improved, and best of luck!
 
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