‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the cubes
Every creature was coding – yes, even the newbs;
The post-it notes, placed on the kanban with care,
Fluttered as muttering cluttered the air;
The stakeholders were nestled all snug in their beds,
While the dev team toiled on in their hoodies and Keds.
The group had their Mountain Dew, Red Bull, chai tea,
their Starbucks and Dunkins, their Coke and Blue G
When out in the server room rose such a clatter,
The release manager said “FML, what’s the matter?”
He sped to the data center quick as a flash.
Which belched smoke and smelled like it threw up some hash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
But not in the rack room, LED’s barely lit,
North Pole Ops is down! They were now in deep – um – trouble.
So too were the stakeholders – good kids in their slumbers,
This release date can’t move – the team must hit their numbers!
North Pole ops dev needs to be whistling and humming,
Come on folks, it’s time for emergency scrumming!
“Now! Herbie! Cornelius! Guys, stop your kibbitzin’,
Can’t reach hardware support- come on, put your mitts in!
Mind the blades! Prime the racks! Juice the power supplies!
“OMG, it’s working – Santa, quick – hit the skies!”
As they iterated madly to guide Santa’s way.
Obstacles, shmobstacles! They maintained SLA;
In the twenty-first century, Santa still had a map.
User stories were clear – “The big lug needs an app!”
Those old lists of toys, deeds and kids from each nation.
Really, who needs all that documentation?
Their Christmas Eve app worked through snow, sleet and ice
and dynamically segmented naughty from nice,
The GPS twinkling guided each reindeer hoof
As the Google Earth inset showed each nice kid’s roof.
It featured a chimney circumference gauger,
And an FAQ help file – lean – just a two-pager.
He still dress’d all in fur, but that sack was so last year,
The just-in-time inventory feature put it to pasture;
It displayed toys requested by each Ben, Jack and Caitlyn,
And auto-adjusted for the International Dateline:
No time for QA, yet it worked from the start
And Santa was so pleased he soon did his part.
He sent a delivery to fill the dev team’s bellies.
Warm donuts – Chocolate kreme and some glazed and some jellies.
St. Nick met his deliverables, and he sent them an IM,
“Toys are under the trees – parents won’t have to buy ’em!” :
And they heard him exclaim, “Thanks! You’ll all get advancements!
Happy Christmas to all! Hey, about those enhancements…”
Happy holidays to all!
Best,
Cathy
