The Workaround Became the Operation
On Monday, Metro's Russian business said it was operating as normal and meeting its obligations to shoppers. The same day, its German parent said it had lost operational control.
Both statements can be true. A presidential decree placed Metro's Russian assets under temporary management by a company registered three weeks earlier and owned by the head of its Russian business. The 91 wholesale stores can keep serving customers while the parent no longer controls them.
From the customer view, nothing looks broken.
Saudi Aramco shows what continued operation can hide about capacity and cost. After attacks shut its East-West pipeline and halted exports from Yanbu, it sold more than 60 million barrels for ship-to-ship transfer off Sohar in Oman during September and October. The transfer area reached capacity, with some transfers stretching from five to seven days to nearly ten.
The pipeline restarted at a low rate on September 22, but full restoration was expected to take weeks. Reuters reports Aramco is considering discounts against official selling prices to offset record freight costs. One source put the proposed discount at around US$9 a barrel. The workaround is still needed, and its commercial terms are being reconsidered.
Imagine the program version in a status report. The new system went live in March and the interim process is holding, so every week the report says operational. Underneath, two people rekey exceptions every night and nobody has worked out the cost per transaction since go-live.
Still running tells you too little about whether the recovery is sustainable.
I'd put four questions next to uptime. Who can make decisions now, and is that the person accountable for the result? What does each unit of output cost compared with before the failure? How long can the workaround hold before it hits a limit? What would have to be true for you to stop or redesign it?
Leaving those questions unanswered lets a temporary arrangement accumulate cost without prompting a decision. The people doing the extra work become part of how the system runs, while the report keeps saying it works.
Keeping an operation alive can justify extra cost for a while. Someone still needs to decide how long “for a while” can last, and a report showing who decides and what it costs gives them a basis for that call. 🔧
On the last recovery you were part of, what would the status report have shown if it had tracked cost per transaction alongside uptime?
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