No good root cause analysis goes unpunished

This big manufacturer has operations across the globe, which means a software developer pilot fish who writes factory-floor applications has more than the usual challenges.

"Recently we began to have issues in one of our plants in another country," says fish. "The manager of the department sent out a long, disparaging email blaming all of the costly problems on my software because the enhancements he had asked for in the past were not working.

"And he included my manager and my manager's manager in the email chain."

Fish doesn't much like being blasted in front of his boss, but he responds by politely asking which systems at the plant are running his software.

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