08 · Implementation & go-live · Switches and privilege
An extra switch lets the same document walk two ways
The configuration consultant turns signed rules into parameters. He does not make a second law on the floor. A definition is not a switch. “Try it for a week” goes through change.
Can be configured: amount threshold, print template, warehouse privilege, cutoff time. These have values in the requirements.
Must not be configured: a unique definition product already decided. There is only one value. The floor does not add a switch.
What is kept: the value of each item, who changed it, and which requirement it maps to. Configuration with no requirement number does not enter production.
The configuration consultant turns signed sentences into parameters
A lot of enterprise software lives on parameters. What marks this role is that a parameter has a source. A twenty-thousand approval threshold comes from the requirements table, so he sets twenty thousand and writes the requirement number in the note. If the business says on the floor “change it to ten thousand and try,” he requires a change. He does not change production directly. After a direct change, the path that was tested is void, and nobody knows which edition of the rule is running. Whether in-transit counts as available, and whether over-plan can post, is decided by the product manager. This role does not make a second law on the floor. It only refuses to turn a signed unique value into three switches.
The boundary with development: only when hardcoded values would hurt differences across customers does it become configuration. A definition that serves one customer and is already decided, written as configuration, is a hazard, because the next person will flip it to another value. The configuration consultant has the right to refuse that switch, and to write the reason: the signed value is not allowed to fork.
Privilege is set by duty, not by personal habit
The actions of warehouse clerk, supervisor, and finance come from security architecture and the requirements. The configuration consultant grants privilege by role. He does not open export because “this person also looks at reports in daily work.” A personal exception must have an expiry date. At expiry he retracts it. He does not rely on memory. Print templates use only the edition the visual designer froze. Fields are not dragged around in configuration.
The try-it-out threshold
On go-live day someone asked to change the fifty-thousand general-manager approval into everything needs approval, “try it for a week.” The configuration consultant did not change it. He asked the other party to sign a change sheet, accepting that from that day every purchase document would walk a path that had not been tested. They withdrew. Production configuration kept the reviewed value. If the policy really changes a week later, it goes through another test edition. A process that was only tried out will not return to an auditable state by itself.
A configuration export is kept in the project files and handed to implementation. Without that list, the next consultant cannot know why the system walks this way. On every change the configuration consultant exports before and after values. A record with only the after value cannot show what changed. He attaches the export to the change sheet. Testing adds one case against the new value. A configuration change with no extra test, even if it only changed a number, does not enter production. Change the number, and the approval path is not the one that was tested. When several warehouses share parameters, he does not copy and paste. Copy brings the previous warehouse's printer and cutoff time. Each warehouse's values are confirmed on their own. The same value still has to be signed once each. Same does not mean it can be inherited. He writes the configuration notes for the next consultant: why this warehouse turns lot on, why that store turns gifts off, why finance is not allowed to change price.
With no why, only a value, the next person will flip the switch back under customer pressure. The moment it is flipped back, every document already finished under that rule loses its explanation. Configuration is therefore part of scope, not a leftover after go-live. He lets only a few people change production configuration, and a change must carry a document number. When many people can change it, in the end nobody admits who flipped the switch. A switch with no owner makes the tested path a matter of luck.