In healthcare, downtime is not an option
“We check all changes carefully before we deploy, but I’m always worried we’ll miss something. In healthcare, you can’t afford mistakes.”
Tracy Boggiano, Senior SQL Developer at Abarca Health
When providing healthcare services, where any mistakes can disrupt patient care, the stakes of a database deployment are high. For Tracy Boggiano, that means the process of checking change scripts can be stressful.
I feel nervous doing it. What if a change sneaks through that ‘locks up’ the Patients table? These mistakes can be costly. Even a 30-second timeout can violate our strict SLAs.
Because deployments are high risk, they happen out-of-hours, with a developer on hand for troubleshooting. “Off-hours working is stressful, but if we can live-fix a problem it’s worth it, because rollbacks are even less fun.”
When serious issues arise, pressure mounts on the team, and all other work goes on hold. “First, we deal with the rollback. Then we’re in meetings to figure out what went wrong, how to fix it and how to roll all the failed changes into the next sprint.”
Morale can dip as they deal with the consequences of these delays for teams and customers.
If there was a feature in the failed release that the Product team promised to customers, they want to know why it isn’t there! And they want it fixed ‘yesterday‘.
So, how can we avoid unreliable deployments and their fallout? Along with meticulous code checks, Tracy suggests testing the full deployment flow as early as possible. “It’s one thing to test changes bit by bit, as devs check in their code, but you can still hit unexpected issues when you deploy the whole batch to production“.
Even outside of work, Tracy has little time for downtime. She finds her release in volunteer work. She is a guardian ad litem for children in foster care, volunteers at church and just taught her first youth mental health class.
I stay so busy with all that, I don’t have time to think about work outside of work! The smiles I get from the kids are the best bit. I spend a couple of hours with them, just living life with them, and they’re so happy to see you. That’s what really matters.
If you’re inspired to volunteer like Tracy, there are plenty of charities looking for help!
For more information in the USA: www.volunteer.gov/s/
For more information in the UK: reachvolunteering.org.uk
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