Slow, Growing Pain

The old procedures hurt and it makes perfect sense why.

As with the frog in the cool water coming to a boil, the old procedures evolved unknowingly past the point of standard pain.

At the beginning — and we're on version 3.6 of the paper document — a note or two helped.

Every — and I mean every — mistake by anyone ever became a new checkbox or field on the paper document.

All 86 items on the paper checklist and the multiple spreadsheets used to calculate some of these answers spawned from a single human error.

Did I mention it was a paper document which had zero direct impact on the final product?

You cannot copy and paste from paper to a keyboard.

The old guard plowed through the procedures with gritted determination like settlers with a broken axle and 240 miles to go in 12 days.

Because I love M&W, and I default assume I'm a rube, I plowed through training without asking: Why is this so painful?

One day M popped around the corner with sheets in each hand and his normally well contained frustration boiled over.

"It's right here and wrong here!" In one hand, a handwritten, 86 point checklist, correct, and a TPS Cover Sheet, incorrect and a violation.

The zero-direct-impact issue triggered him.

As I said, I watched someone fine wash out.

I started coding by then, and if I were more efficient I may have saved this good person's job.

This hurt.

The Engineering Department came online in my mind.