Dark IT Patterns: The Fall Guy

Scenario
A valuable customer is hit by a major intractable bug or a serious system limitation with your software.

Problem
Your company needs 6-8 weeks to resolve it, but the customer is demanding immediate action or else they'll walk away.

The plan
Get your company an initial 2-4 weeks of time with rounds of meetings and follow up meetings. At the same time, hire a business analyst (or project manager) who may potentially be out of their depth technically, but who can present well at a meeting. 

The new hire is given responsibility for representing the company's position to the customer, and asking for additional development time. At a final crunch meeting, put the new hire in the firing line to answer to the customer's main concern, e.g. exactly what is the technical plan going forward and exactly when and how will the issue be resolved?

Why it works
If they succeed, then you've got the required time you need to work on the solution, along with a truly useful new hire. If they fail, they are fired the next day, and now the customer knows you are serious about doing something. Due to the seriousness of someone being sacked, and the time needed to hire a replacement, the customer is willing to give you another month to complete the work.

Root cause

The root of the problem is just the reluctance of the company to end their relationship with a difficult customer - who they can't properly support. It can also be traced back to some out of control technical debt, resulting in an intractable bug.

Corporate ethics
No company should ever do this - it reflects badly on a company that they are willing to fire an employee for the sake of keeping one customer. This kind of behaviour is called corporate scapegoating, it needs to be called out for what it is and rejected by management.


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