A local fix just spreads the problem
“You fixed a bug in QA — great! But did that fix go into version control and get tested and deployed everywhere? If not, you just created drift, and more problems down the line.”
Peter Kruis, Microsoft SQL Engineer at Monin
Fixing a bug in the environment where it appears feels like progress, but without a proper process, it creates fragility everywhere else. That’s what Peter Kruis learned supporting software for large manufacturing customers, where a failed deployment could halt the production line and leave 500 people unable to work.
You’re lucky if something breaks straight away. Worse is when there’s a delay before the client reports a problem. Now you’re three days and 300 changes too late, and trying to unpick a very tricky knot.
The root cause? Environment drift. Manual fixes and one-off changes broke consistency across dev, test, and production. Something would pass in acceptance but fail in production, and the fix would need to be quick, often under pressure and scrutiny. “You’d get very unhappy calls from the customer asking, How could this happen? Wasn’t this thing even tested?”
Rollbacks weren’t easy either. “Sometimes, you’re not just reversing the bug but also the problems it caused, like corrupted or incomplete data, and that takes time you don’t always have.”
Peter’s advice? You need automation and proper change control processes. “I’m the kind of engineer who loves solving hard problems,” he says, “just not the same problem over and over again!” Instead, fix it once, but fix it properly, in source control. Once the team started using Flyway and a DevOps toolchain, better discipline followed.
We cut out the manual ‘quick fixes’. Now, we put the fix into version control, raise a pull request, and it runs through the same automated deployment and testing process as everything else. That way we know it works, and we avoid drift.
And how does Peter find his own consistency and calm outside of work? He loves to play soccer and spend time with his children.“I still play football for a local team, although I probably consume more beer calories afterward than I burn off,” he jokes. “I also coach my son’s team. Just watching the kids play, kicking a ball around, it gives my mind a rest. I come back with the energy to solve more tricky problems!”
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