Intermezzi
Intermezzo II. The Production Basement
A production basement: two hundred and thirty-seven bugs hanging, one hundred and eighty-nine P0s recoded to P1, P1 to P2, P2 to technical debt, technical debt to a workshop in the next quarter (which is still being planned). Agile methodology as the formalized avoidance of programming. Four huddles a day to synchronize a team that produces nothing between them. A satire sharper than any post-mortem.
What this intermezzo is about. A production basement: two hundred and thirty-seven bugs hanging, one hundred and eighty-nine P0s recoded to P1, P1 to P2, P2 to technical debt, technical debt to a workshop in the next quarter (which is still being planned). Agile methodology as the formalized avoidance of programming. Four huddles a day to synchronize a team that produces nothing between them. A satire sharper than any post-mortem.
The stairs down ended at a door with a sign «Production. Authorized Only.» Alice found herself in a basement where servers hummed, diodes blinked, and cold pizza smelled. Behind the monitors sat three: a woman with the posture of an opera prima, a thin programmer in Ray-Ban glasses (a fake from the Sadovod market), and the familiar striped cat, tapping on the keyboard with all four paws at once.
«Oh, the girl has come to the huddle!» the woman said. «My name is Margarita, I am the product owner. Behemoth maintains the legacy code.»
«Legacy code cannot be maintained,» the cat purred without looking up. «You can only have a relationship with it. A complicated one.»
«A huddle?» Alice repeated. «But it is noon.»
«The midday one!» the bespectacled man beamed. «We have four: morning at nine, midday at one, evening at five, and the midnight planning at half past eleven. For better synchronization.»
«And what do you synchronize?»
«Tasks!» Margarita gestured with the air of a hostess showing the family silver. «We have two hundred and thirty-seven tasks hanging in production. Very productive.»
«And how many have you fixed?»
It became so quiet that the hum of servers from the next room could be heard. The programmers exchanged glances.
«Sire,» the cat purred, «the girl is again asking the wrong questions.»
«We do not fix bugs, dear,» Margarita explained patiently. «We prioritize them. P0, P1, P2, P3. Plus criticality: A, B, C, D. Plus color coding by area, for better visualization.»
«And what does P0 mean?»
«A critical bug,» the bespectacled man stated. «To be fixed immediately.»
«And there are many of them?»
«One hundred and eighty-nine!» Margarita said with pride.
«And they get fixed?»
«What for? They are moved to P1. When new P0s appear.»
«And P1?»
«To P2.»
«And P2?»
The cat finally looked up from the laptop: «To technical debt. And technical debt we shall clear in the next quarter.»
«That is, never.»
«Why say never at once?» Margarita took offense. «We have scheduled a workshop on technical debt. For next year. We are currently planning the workshop.»
«And what are you programming now?»
The bespectacled man looked at her in astonishment: «We do not program. We do estimates and planning. We have an agile methodology.»
«Then who is programming?»
«Automation!» Margarita said with importance. «The build and deploy pipeline.»
«And does it work?»
«It falls over every day,» the bespectacled man reported cheerfully. «But we have monitoring! It shows very beautiful graphs of the failures. Would you like us to print a calendar?»
«Sire,» the cat said, «wouldn't you like to show the girl our velocity?»
Margarita snapped her fingers, and a graph flashed on the wall with lines in all colors of the rainbow.
«Velocity has been rising for the third month in a row!»
Alice looked closer. The vertical axis showed «story points,» the horizontal, sprints.
«And what are story points?»
«A unit of task complexity,» the bespectacled man said. «Assigned by collective decision-making. Planning poker: each shows a card with a number, we take the maximum.»
«Why the maximum?»
«For safety. If the task turns out to be more complex, there could be questions.»
«From whom?»
«FROM THE STAKEHOLDERS,» all three answered in chorus, and even the servers seemed to hum more quietly.
«And who are the stakeholders?»
Silence again. The cat stopped typing.
«Honestly?» the bespectacled man whispered. «We do not quite know. But they are very important and they constantly ask about deadlines.»
«And what deadlines?»
«The next sprint,» Margarita nodded. «Always the next sprint. It is a very convenient deadline: it never arrives and it is always close.»
The cat chuckled and began to wash himself.
«What if you tried,» Alice suggested carefully, «just to make one small fix? Instead of all this planning?»
The faces of the programmers twisted in horror.
«Without an estimate?!» the bespectacled man whispered.
«Without planning?!» Margarita gasped.
«Without the approval process?!» the cat exclaimed, pinning back his ears.
«This is chaos engineering!» Margarita said severely. «We have acceptance criteria. Definition of ready. Definition of done. And a policy.»
«What policy?»
«No one does anything without approval,» she explained proudly.
«And who gives approval?»
«The Committee for Collective Decision-Making.»
«And when does it convene?»
«Once a quarter,» the cat said, returning to the keyboard. «We are currently planning the next meeting. The agenda: approval of the agenda.»
Alice slowly walked toward the stairs. Behind her came:
«Korzhikov was right,» Margarita sighed. «The girl does not understand corporate approaches.»
«Perhaps we could arrange an introduction for her?» the bespectacled man suggested.
«A good idea. Let us plan a master class on planning the introduction process.»
«And I shall meanwhile reconfigure the monitoring,» the cat said. «I have lost my taste for red failure alerts. I shall make them burgundy. Burgundy is nobler and less nerve-wracking for stakeholders.»
¹ IP discipline note: per intermezzo-1 note 1 — character names of Bulgakov's Woland retinue (Woland, Behemoth, Koroviev, Azazello, Hella, Margarita) given per canonical English renderings (Michael Glenny 1967 translation, Collins); new dialogue in these intermezzi rendered in the author's own English for voice-register consistency across the series, per the rule established in chapter 4 note 1. No verbatim quotation from copyrighted contemporary English translations.