Tag: Systems Engineering
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Merge Conflict vs CI Check: Why a Pull Request Can Be “Mergeable” but Red
Open a pull request and you may see something that looks like a contradiction: a green "This branch has no conflicts" line, and right below it a red ✗ on the checks. Both are true at once — because they are answering two completely different questions.
One Project, One Global Scope: The Apps Script Collision That Hides in Plain Sight
Two files in the same Apps Script project each declared a list called the same thing. The values matched, so everything worked — until the day someone edited one copy and not the other.
03/04 Is Two Different Dates: Parsing Ambiguity You Cannot See
An invoice date came through in a spreadsheet as 03/04/2026. That is March 4th, or April 3rd, and the value itself will never tell you which. Guess wrong and a payment looks a month early, or a month overdue, with no error anywhere.
Show People Clean Names, but Send Other Systems the Exact Values
Your contact form says "Referral". The CRM it feeds only accepts "Refferal", typo and all. Your visitors should never see that, and your form must still send it back letter for letter.
We Built CI Governance for a Team We Didn’t Have
Over a quarter we grew a careful set of governance workflows. Over a week we deleted almost all of them. The bill was the trigger — but the autopsy found something more useful than an overspend.