When the software failed, my boss knew that he was going to be in seriously deep water over it - he had afterall, at his own insistence, managed the project. Understandably, his first response was to ask to see the problem first hand - to which the business manager duly obliged. After seeing the fault recreated several times, it was time to think fast.
"Blame the developer" is always a good start, so my colleague got it in the ear first - how had he made such a monumental error? Not to be the victim of this management oversight, the developer produced the functional design document, highlighting the area where the problem was. Now, in full view of the senior project manager, my boss was shown how the requirement stated, ">=" and not "<=". Unperturbed, he continued. To me.
I had written and performed the test scripts, and passed the software as successful. Surely this was my fault? The gathering crowd turned its attention to me, whilst my boss queried how I could have possibly passed the software with such a glaring error. Flicking through the test scripts to the relevant page - I knew before this charade that I wasn't at fault, but playing on it allowed the situation to build a little - the resultant fall of this flailing coward would be much more satisfying if I could first offer him a glimmer of hope. "This is the one here, marked as "Pass"," - he was closing in on his kill - "it references the requirement here...".
The test scripts had obviously been written to the functional design specification, and where they had incorrectly specified ">=", the test scripts had correctly tested that ">=" was indeed true.
He was sunk, and he knew it; everyone who had crowded the desk knew it too, so did his boss who, head in hands, had retired to his desk. His final assault was not against anyone in particular - the rest of his team would have probably been impervious given the performance the senior management team had just seen - no, his final assault was against everyone's common sense:
"The version number on the software is 0.7 - it's not even been released and signed-off yet. If it's not Version 1.0, it's not ready. You're not pinning this on me", he yelped, just as the sign-off documents were returned to him by his manager with an emotion-free, "You'll probably need these back."
Last I heard, he was still working in Project Management.
