Ford VOWs

Question:
“Can you explain how you resolved a production issue?”

Interview Bullet-Point Guide (STAR Format):

Situation:

• Ford’s new Vehicle Ordering system (VOWs) introduced instability in the existing monolithic system, impacting business operations.
• Ripple effects disrupted critical business processes.

Task:

• Identify the root cause of instability and resolve it without negatively impacting ongoing business operations.

Action:

• Conducted detailed log tracing and monitoring to diagnose the root cause.
• Identified and resolved a problematic interaction causing instability (e.g., ripple effect due to monolith dependency).
• Collaborated with relevant teams to address a previously undetected memory leak issue.
• Enhanced monitoring and load-balancing practices to ensure continued stability.

Result:

• Successfully resolved system instability.
• Restored system reliability, enabling business continuity and ongoing migration efforts without disruption.

Suggested Answer (STAR format):

• Situation:
  The new VOWS system was causing outages in the exissting monolith creating a ripple effect across the business.

• Task:
  To resolve the issue, I needed to understand the root cause of the problem and to implement a solution that would not impact the business. This involved log tracing and monitoring the existing system to understand the root cause of the problem.

• Action:
  Identified the issue as being a sticky session issue where traffic was being routed to the same instance as the user was logged in to. This was resolved by implementing a load balancer that would route traffic to the correct instance based on the user’s session. Alo identifed a memory leak in the existing system and worked with that team to resolve the issue.

• Result:
  System is now stable and the business is able to continue with the migration.