Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 66 (2000)

(Episodes 66 to 70 of Group Efforts originally ran as an online five-night summer special in August 2000.)

It's summertime - and Llewellyn is Trying Something On. Can Bernard and the All Stars foil his plans with a pincer movement at the management meeting? Who is Llewellyn's user-department ally, and who is 'Deep Upgrade', the All Stars' mole at the heart of the IT Lubyanka? Finally, what is the role of tough newcomer Matt Smedley, the man with connections at Broadleys HQ, in all this ?

Find out all this and more as the story unfolds...!

Monday
It's holiday season double-whammy time, with work pouring in and half the office away sunning themselves. Broadleys 'short term' moratorium on hiring temps has never been lifted (strangely enough), so we're struggling along with June, Sheila and Danny out, and Rose, Matt and myself in. If that isn't enough, this is also the time when Llewellyn traditionally Tries Something On, and the rumour is that this year he's going for the big one - a surprise Win2000 Professional upgrade of the entire building's desktop PCs.
        His motive, as always, is the removal of our NetWare servers, and having failed to get rid of them directly, his new plan is to surround them with W2K clients then play the common client/server platform trump card. It's a high-risk strategy that will cover him in glory if it succeeds, and leave the user departments in chaos if it fails - typical Llewellyn, in fact. At an emergency meeting of the All Stars' Resistance Movement (venue, Peg's), a two-phase counter-attack is agreed.
        The first phase will consist of a classic pincer movement, launched at tomorrow's management meeting. The left flank, led by me, will bombard Llewellyn with warnings of dire documentation delays caused by interface unfamiliarity, while the right, led by Andy Miller, will launch a barrage of reminders about the contractual penalties such delays would bring. If that doesn't make Costello hit the panic button, we'll resort to Phase II - Deep Upgrade, our mole at the heart of the IT Lubyanka.
        Deep Upgrade's identity is a closely-guarded secret, and he communicates with the meeting by mobile phone (albeit from the other bar, although only I know that). His mission, if needed, is to engineer a serious installation failure in the first upgraded department, thus calling the feasibility of the entire programme into doubt. If discovered, he faces instant termination, but he's willing to risk it for the sake of the innocent departmental users (plus the slight but enticing possibility that, in the event of a five-star fiasco, he might be able to take Llewellyn down with him).
        Across the ether, Deep Upgrade and I agree the plan. This will be our last direct communication - from now on even radio contact will be too dangerous. If we need to invoke Phase II, we'll post a message in the mailbox newsgroup of a popular computer magazine, with the title "Where's my bl**dy subscription copy got to?". I bid our brave agent farewell, but as I speak, the connection suddenly goes dead. Rushing to the bar hatch I, I look through and see a half-empty pint of lager on a deserted table. Deep Upgrade has disappeared, back to his lonely outpost in the Heart of Darkness.

Will Llewellyn launch his master plan at the management meeting? Can the threat of swingeing delay-penalties on Ruislip A force Costello to cancel it? Who can Deep Upgrade possibly be? Find out as our week-long Group Efforts Special continues in Episode 67!