not sure about that
Welcome to my world. Our change control team will happily wave through a change and then when an identical change is submitted further down the line reject it for a multitude of (usually unfathomable) reasons previously un-mentioned. A simple "please see 'insert previous change details' and get back to me for any required info" usually suffices.
By coincidence it is my first change control at a new place today and I had one to put through - adding a security package to a pair of low priority linux servers. Back out plan, remove the package again.
"But what if that does not work and somehow parts of the package remain, have you checked a full restore from backup will be possible?". Even pointing out that in over 20 years of dealing with Linux servers, that has never happened. It is not how linux package management works, and there is a single user boot recovery mode we can use, all of which were backed up by the linux admins on the call.
Still, please delay the change while you go through this pointless exercise because I feel there is sufficient doubt. The sufficient doubt was raised by a user services manager who admits they would not even know how to login to a linux server.
I am convinced most change control members have a wheel of random statements they spin, just to show they are "adding value" to the process. Working at 3 different places, there are certain meetings (project planning/review is another one) where a small cluster of non-technical people subconsciously decide one of them must make a comment and send back questions on technical issues they know nothing about. If they don't say anything, someone might question why they are there.
I had a rant at a project approval meeting at my old place when a project approval was going to be delayed. It had been through the technical teams, through the architecture team, planned with the vendor partner, presented to and approved by the head of IT infrastructure and then approved and signed off by an assistant director. It should have been an easy sign off.
But the user comms manager raised a question about something that made no sense and fundamentally was not her responsibility and had nothing to do with comms. Not getting immediate approval would mean we would miss the only time of the year we could do this work, then lose the budget and have to reapply for it. Dancing to her tune would add 12 months and probably 50 hours of additional staff time. Meanwhile maintenance on the system we were replacing was in the £10-£15k region.
It took a lot of fighting and me upsetting her by referring to her question as inane and irrelevant, to keep the project on track. It was one of the few derailment fights I actually won. She never spoke to me again after that, so it was a win win really.
