Everyone in B2B data one day struggles with a backend system, often an ETL, with no documentation.

Personally, I have seen this several times over the years.

Obviously I Will Fail And Be Fired

The first time was when a regulatory change affected a mission critical system for Extract Transform Load (ETL). I had scrappy documentation and none of the original engineers. Everyone knowledgeable was working on Y2K projects. I young, keen and knew I was screwed.

Puzzles Are Fun

But what changed for me was a tester saying in all seriousness "You have the most fun project." And as soon as that clicked, I started to understand that overcoming fear of the "black box system" wasn't that hard—I was just doing the wrong thing.

Here's how I changed my approach:

Own The Thinking

I stopped looking for some old ghost to do my thinking for me.

The tester knew: we see the inputs, we see the outputs, it is only logic in between. We can work it out. It will be fun.

Sometimes the simplest way is to stop looking for an easy way.

Get stuck in to the detail, expect it to be messy and see it as an interesting puzzle.

Simple and easy are not the same.