Episode 22 Bug fixing camp

“The company might go out of business”: Mounting sense of crisis
Steady recovery work Six months to completion

Since the bug issue concerning “Ichitaro Version 4” was discovered, I have been spending more and more time in the president’s office. Hatsuko, Managing Director, said that I looked depressed to her eyes. In reality, however, I had no time to be depressed, as I had to consider how to deal with the situation. Once we recalled the product from the store, we devote all of our energy and attention to working all the bugs out.

Debugging, or bug elimination, is an integral part of computer software development. In the past, we had introduced a playful approach, such as giving employees a bottle of beer for every bug they found. This time, however, the fate of the company was at stake.
Then, it was Tomoaki Fukura who suggested that we camp together for debugging. He had started working for JustSystems as a part-time employee while he was still a student at Tokushima University Faculty of Dentistry, and by this time, he became an employee who took a key role in the development of the Ichitaro series.

For the boarding site, we chose a public facility in Naruto City, a short distance from Tokushima City. There, employees do not have to return home and can concentrate on debugging around the clock. At JustSystems, we often used to camp together, where employees can discuss ideas for development in a relaxed atmosphere. This time, however, the atmosphere was extremely tense.

All employees were gathered together in a large room, with their computers being connected with LAN cables in order to link everyone’s work. Fukura, the head of development, took the lead.

We set up a large whiteboard and each of us wrote down a bug. As the work progressed, Fukura would call the persons in charge to his seat and give them instructions, eliminating bugs one by one.

Each time the program was updated, the engineers remaining at the head office in Tokushima would verify it on a daily basis. Debugging is like a cat-and-mouse game. As soon as a bug was found and eliminated, another one would appear. But we had no choice but to steadily repeat the process.

This process continued day and night. All employees, including those gathered at the boarding site in Naruto and those working on the verification at the head office, did their utmost to deal with the situation. Of all the employees, the most notable was the leader of the team, Fukura. He devoted all of his time, except for napping, during the two-week boarding, literally working around the clock to supervise the other staff members, and worked persistently on the debugging.

While updates were released along the way, debugging work was finally completed, and Ichitaro Version 4.3 was released in November 1989, more than half a year after the release of Version 4.

I will never forget the deep emotion I felt when the master version incorporating Version 4.3 was completed.

Addressing the problem did not end there. Our remaining task was to regain the trust of our customers. So, we decided to distribute Version 4.3 free of charge to our existing users. The number amounted to 230,000, and the total cost was roughly one billion yen. It was certainly a huge burden for the company at the time.

I gathered the employees and told them this.

“By doing this, the company might go out of business. Still, I’m determined.”

Thus we came to launch Version 4.3. After its release, we did not receive the flood of phone calls with complaints that we had received previously. Sales at stores across the country were tallied and reported daily. The graphs on the wall soon began to show an upward sloping curve. We got over the crisis. And in the end, the Version 4 series became a huge bestseller, selling a total of 630,000 units.

Employees bringing equipment to
a public facility in Naruto city (1989)