The project received a few new consultants and as such they were not completely aware of all the rules that they would have to adhere to. They created a fix for a production problem in the form of a script and as luck had it new fixes could be installed on the pre-production environment in a few days.
The next day the consultant was going over the list of patches and fixes to be released but was a bit surprised to see that his changes were not on the list. He went over to discuss this with the release manager who explained that this fix could not be installed on the pre-production environment – it must first be tested successfully on the customizing environment. Once it is successfully tested, it will be installed on the pre-production environment
Simply put it cannot be installed as the list of what fixes need to be installed was completed last week and this fix simply was not on that list. The only way this could be installed would be if you used a time machine to go back in time and submit this change before the list was made.
The consultant took away two things from this impromptu meeting
- The release schedule is not at all flexible
- If he has a time machine he can get this change submitted
Having a few free minutes and a sense of humor he decided to check out time machines on the Internet and found that it was indeed possible to purchase a “flux capacitor” on Ebay. The “flux capacitor” was a part used in the movie back to the future which involved traveling through time in a Delorean. Deciding to have a bit of fun he submitted the link to the package manager suggesting that with only 400 dollars it would be possible to submit this piece of work and perhaps more.
The release manager, who apparently was also a big Michael J Fox fan, decided to take the joke one step further. He submitted the part to the purchasing department who did confirm that 400 dollars was within the range that did not need a big boss to approve it. Either the person from purchasing wanted to see how far this would go, or didn’t understand this particular brand of humor as he pushed the purchase order through to be approved by the department head. It is not known if the department head had a sense of humor but he did not believe that the project needed a flux capacitor and canceled the order.