Nur , how you handle your mistake?

Fuh, rasa macam nak tersembur nasi apabila member office saya tanya waktu makan lunch.

#flashback#

Pagi tu our leader dapat email dari unhappy customer disebabkan takleh nak buat UAT. Alkisahnya kawan saya ini ditugaskan untuk buat data migration dari legacy system to new system yang totally different platform.When I say different it is different.

Legacy platform duduk di server , guna RDMS , the database structure are mess. Some data in tables some data in XML - duh!

New platform duduk di cloud , guna it's own database - with new database structure which we design to cater issue in the legacy platform.

So that's the challenge.

Although he tried to be calm but I knew he was not happy. That day was nightmare for him. He is not a person yang buat kerja halai, he is very teliti. In fact, in our team including me has this type of spirit*ehemmm yes judging me judging me*. We are not playing around when working - I am not saying that we are very serious but yeah when we work, we work. We always take proactive steps, we chase our user although usually in real life - user chase developer.

I guess the mistake feels bitter when we try harder.

He was able to migrate the data successfully, no issue. He could see the data. He tested it thoroughly. Then we say to the customer, yes your data is ready.So customer is happy go and try but nothing.So they have all right to be upset.

The root cause is we forgot to test as user, and this is staple step in developer routine which we always do, however in this case, he accidentally missed it.

I kind of understanding exactly his feeling because long time ago I did it too. I have my own nightmare working as software engineer.

One of my experiences, I screwed up more than 100k claim record after I thought I was very careful enough. 100k record and each record contains value may be $1000 and other value was unlikely small value.It went UAT passed but somehow the bug come out in Production .The funny thing was, user only realized the bug after three months it live in Production and it was due to my stupid mistake.

While fixing the mistake, I didn't sleep for two days and only drank water and minimum food during that time(it was Ramadhan).Plus I was busy running errands as my younger sister was getting marry during Hary Raya. Until know, I still get shivering everytime I have to deploy something in production.I always make sure I will settle deployment in the earliest time just in case.

If you asked me how we should handle mistakes?

Well, nobody has the right answer because mistakes is exclusively for you. We can learn from other peoples mistakes but our mistakes is special because it is ours.

I am sure I will never done on dealing with mistakes but some key notes that I think it might be useful to share.

To Accept and Acknowledge it

To accept that is our mistake is a key to great lesson. We are human.Nobody perfect and we only can be better.To be better we need to improve and to improve we need to accept our fault and flaw.By accepting it then we able to open the understanding door.

What is done cannot be undone.It is a chance to learn

Bear in mind not to decrease our value. Our mistakes are gifted not for us to judge and lower our self. It is for us to learn. Sound confusing but the key is the mistake is not for us to feel unworthy.Feeling unworthy will prevent us from learning more actually.It's like to close the door for learning opportunity.Maknanya bila dah buat silap, jangan rasa looser giler, macam dunia dah kiamat dan macam kita dah tak boleh buat apa-apa.If let that feeling happen, it getting worse.

Lagipun accepting mistake will make us humble, not rude. We don't want to be rude.Orang sombong sangat rugi sebab they loose chance to learn from other.So consequently, they keep making the mistake.

Tentula kita tanak jadi macam tu kan.

To Be Honest and Learn from It

Last time I used to say sorry a lot of times.Then I moved to American based company. Sorry suddenly become not so good word.*please not judging all American company*

I learned something better.Replace the sorry with the action on how you are going to fix the mistake.

I have to review my email again and again just to make sure it sound like -the mistake was made but I got it covered.Kiranya I am fixing it, I got your back so no worries!

Which is good because for all this time we are abusing the 'sorry' without even try to fix it.

Then I moved to British based company and deal with people from London. I realized sorry was everywhere. It became confusing to me when people say sorry all the time in the beginning.It took sometimes to adapt actually;-) .

Slowly I learned something EVEN BETTER.

Now I learned to say sorry and include with action.

So it will sound like this,' Hi, I apologize for the issue. I have fixed it and now it is available in UAT. Please verify if you are happy with it.'

The reason is simple - humble and reliable human will seek forgiveness and will try to make it up.

Bear it mind that not all mistakes is fixable. Sometimes it teaches us about patience.

That's all, I highlight only TWO KEY 1) Accept it and 2) Learn from it. 

... and for muslim you might find solat taubat can train our heart to be humble.


I know it is not simple as it sound. We went through a lot of hardship when we were try ing to fix our mistakes however I leave that to your creativity because each of us have different ways to deal with our mistakes.

GOOD NEWS!! HOW BAD WE FEEL ABOUT OUR MISTAKE IT WILL ALWAYS TURN INTO GOOD MEMORY IN FUTURE

So be cool!!

Note : This post is one way to advice my self so do not make mistake by assuming I am perfect.