Lessons Learned from the Shut-Down That Wasn't

Late Friday night Congress averted a lapse in appropriations that would have caused most of the federal government to shut down. The run-up to this event required careful planning and preparation. Below (in no particular order) are several items that are important to keep in mind if there is ever going to be another shut-down.

Verify a complete backup of the data for each system that you manage. A lot of times we have a full backup of the data either weekly or monthly depending on the amount of traffic in the system. That full back-up typically occurs on either Saturday night or Sunday night. Because parts may have been closed on Saturday or Sunday, I wanted to make sure that there was a very specific point in time in which I had a complete data back-up and would have fewer differentials to worry about. I asked for a manual backup and that was verified for me.

Next, if the Agency might be closed down for a week or two, be sure to cue up the most important things to work on upon your return. On one project we have a release in the pipeline, and on another we have an iteration. But in addition to all of this, we have a big patch Tuesday coming from Microsoft. I made sure to communicate these things to my development teams. Further on this issue was knowing how long the contractors can work without direct government oversight. Since all of my contracts are Firm Fixed Price and a lot of the development work actually occurs on the contractors' hardware, they can perform some work without me. I had these dates ready.

Update the call-down list. You must know the numbers for the people you are responsible for calling in situations and take the additional step of verifying your numbers with the people who are supposed to call you.

We have to work on our euphemisms a little more. We have one down, we don't use the phase, "laid off", we use "furlough". But we have these other terms that just don't sound good. We have "Non-essential Personnel" and "Excepted Personnel". We all understand the intent of these terms, but they are unfortunate. Nobody wants to be thought of as non-essential or non-excepted. We are all here to do our jobs and because everyone does his or her job the wheels of the government keep spinning. It doesn't matter if you are the lock-smith or the program analyst or a Project Manager. You are a part of the team and your part is just as essential as everyone else's.

Finally, make a plan for what you are going to do if you don't work. I actually had several things I intended to do in the event that we are closed. I just hate to be idle. Anyway, I'm glad we're not closed, because those projects are what weekends were made for.