A painfully detailed postmortem shows how a heavyweight change-management process added massive toil without improving release stability, and why engineering leaders must replace one-size-fits-all gatekeeping with bottom-up, resilient practices.
The article opens with a blunt admission: the centralized change-management system meant to raise release stability actually became a massive source of friction. Engineers spent a third of their weeks just filling out repetitive tickets, attending hour-long review meetings, and chasing signatures, while the process failed to move the needle on instability.
The workflow required detailed risk questionnaires, risk-based timelines, and a mandatory review meeting with an external team. Miss a meeting or an incomplete ticket and the release was blocked. The burden forced engineers to game the system, layer hot patches, and develop workarounds that further eroded reliability. Stakeholders were bombarded with last-minute approval emails, and turnover rose as people left to escape the toil.
The takeaway for leaders is clear: streamline gate-keeping, give teams ownership of their own release processes, and invest in real stability work-contract enforcement, SLOs, stress testing-rather than blanket checklists. A bottom-up culture that prioritizes reliability over relentless feature velocity can break the cycle of churn, reduce burnout, and ultimately improve both product quality and team morale.
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