Known as the greatest technology sleuth in the city, Detective Dash has been hired by Legacy Bank to solve the mystery of its troublesome customer portal. Follow the case by reading the all of the chapters in his story: Chapter 1,Chapter 2,Chapter 3,Chapter 4, Chapter 6, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.
Chapter 5: Making a Mountain out of a Mole Hill
All night, words like “Kubernetes” and “microservices” danced in Detective Dash’s head.
“Not exactly the sugarplum fairies I expected,” he grumbled as he poured his coffee the next morning. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. This case has my brain twisted in knots trying to figure out just what’s going on with that customer portal. No wonder I’m having nightmares.”
As Dash reviewed his notebook, he realized that more and more just didn’t make sense. Old School needed a modern app platform that would allow him to modernize Legacy Bank’s customer portal app. He, like others, knew what resources he needed but just wasn’t getting them. So, they just kept on doing things the old-fashioned way. But who was the bottleneck to modernization?
“I suppose I’ll take a visit to my favorite IT department,” he muttered between sips.
On the operations floor, Dash wandered the hallways, peeking into rooms and listening when he could. Just as he began to get frustrated at not finding anything new, he picked up a conversation in the break room.
“I just don’t understand,” a voice said. “We have to change the way we do things, but no one seems willing to push forward.”
Another voice answered. “Like the Mole always says, we don’t have the resources.”
“The Mole,” someone else responded, and sighed. “The Mole.”
“The Mole?” Dash asked himself, jotting the name down in his notebook. “Who on earth?”
Dash turned the corner to ask the huddled employees about the Mole. “Excuse—”
He paused mid-sentence. Just as he turned the corner the chatting group fell silent, looked about and hurriedly moved away from the break room.
Dash looked back over his shoulder in time to see someone stroll into an open door farther down the hallway.
“That must be the Mole!” he said to himself.
No one responded to his knock, so Dash pulled open the door.
A man paced across the room, back and forth and back and forth. He was rubbing his chin and muttering to himself. A large, hairy mole adorned his cheek.
“Hello?” Dash said. No response, so Dash continued anyway. “I heard your development team needs a modern app platform based on Kubernetes. Shouldn’t IT be able to build this platform so the developers can modernize the customer portal?”
The Mole paused briefly to consider Dash before he continued pacing.
“I just don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“Anything! Everything is too uncertain. I just don’t know. At least that’s what I’ve been telling people around here whenever they ask why we haven’t made progress.”
“So, you’ve been sowing doubt in the minds of your teammates?”
“I suppose,” the Mole said and looked up. “A few people have told me that they have second thoughts about their work after our conversations.”
“Well,” Dash considered. “How about Kubernetes specifically? What about modernization? Why can’t Legacy get that done?”
The Mole stopped. He put his hands on the sides of his head and took a deep breath.
“That would require additional time and training. We just don’t have the expertise. The IT team must teach ourselves how to create this new platform, but we barely have time to maintain what we have.”
He lowered his hands, looked back toward the floor and continued pacing. “That’s what I tell people, anyway. I just doubt that we’ll get this done. Ask anyone around here, they’ll say the same: ‘I doubt it.’”
Dash tried to press him on more details but the Mole was lost, asea amid his own doubt. It was his doubt, but he was clearly infecting others with his lack of confidence.
At home, the daring detective once again reviewed his notes.
A few things were clear:
Plenty of people at Legacy Bank understood what they needed but felt they needed more support or resources to follow through.
Mole doubted IT had the expertise and training necessary to build a Kubernetes platform.
Dash made some notes and poured another cup of coffee. Only once had he heard the term “Kubernetes,” and it made him wonder. Maybe that was another missing link. The Mole and his doubts might be a bottleneck, but it seems this technology was another source of confusion.
Did Legacy not have experts?
Was it a challenging platform to use?
But if that were the case, why would the development team need it so badly? Questions swirled, and Dash needed answers. To find those answers he’d have to find someone else who wasn’t full of doubt. Someone who could help the rest of Legacy’s team connect the dots and determine if this task was even possible.
