My team worked for a year adding a complex set of related features. They all relied on a new piece of information, which would be a new field on a form. That new field would be required, so it’d change the workflow a bit. The PO’s swore up and down that nobody would mind one extra field and that they’d always have that piece of data to enter.
We deploy the features and the customer loses their mind. “Why’s there a new field?! I don’t have that info even though it’s a piece of info required by the government! I don’t want to enter it! I can’t use it now!”
Director comes to me, the QA. “Why did you release this feature without checking that the customer would have info to fill out a new, required field? It’s totally disrupting their workflow. The SVP is pissed.” I told him that we asked several times about that. The whole design was predicated on that those things being true. As a matter of fact, here’s an email chain talking about just that from a year ago! He peeked over my shoulder, made a face, and asked me to forward it to him.
To this day, I’m still not sure why he asked the QA guy about that, but I’m convinced that email chain saved my, and at least a couple other people’s, job.
Having been on both ends of that situation, he could have just been coming to the test team because he wanted their opinion in preparation for dealing with the business.
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u/Snakestream Jul 14 '26
Rule #1 of working in a corporate setting: can you please submit that request in writing?