Comments on: Sometimes it’s best to leave old software systems alone.

By: Duane Dykes

Duane Dykes — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:47:47 +0000

the project manager(s) should be blamed first, it sounds like a bunch of IT cowboys getting all hard over the technology and forgetting about the real point of the software function - to help people do their jobs.

By: Egghead

Egghead — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:15:01 +0000

Back in 1998 I was working for a large German company. In their IT centre they had the motto: “never touch a working system”. And they knew this for good reason: they had a mainframe that was doing its work since 1970. I guess it works still.

By: ChrisP

ChrisP — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:44:52 +0000

I have been working in the IT industry for nearly 20 years.
I have seen a lot of good and bad projects.
This is a perfect example of Change for the sake of change.
There are far too many I.T. folks out there that have more balls then brains. I can see the concern about very old back end equipment. The concern should be what will happen of this old equipment fails and cannot be fix or replaced. The fact of the matter, it was working and therefore there should have been no reason to rush a change like this. In my experience the greed of the consulting company that makes such costly recommendations can never be underestimated. Think about who has the most to gain and who has the most to loose. If this was done entirely inhouse then the motivation for the recommendation needs to be strongly considered. The most responsible person here was the manager in charge of IT. He did not perform due diligence when considering this change. There are an huge number of “Paper only” MCSE’s in the world. They think they have all the answers. There is more then one way to skin a cat as they say and that is where experience and prudence comes into play.
Its an expensive lesson for everyone. I hope the Manager that gave the recommendation has learned from this and he is now a better man from the experience.

By: Simon Farnsworth

Simon Farnsworth — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:53:13 +0000

Pointing out the obvious; why was such a major change done as a big bang event?

Yes, there’s always resistance to any change. However, the lack of keyboard navigation suggest that the end users weren’t given the chance to try prototypes and give feedback, and the browser issue suggests that no-one checked that the changes being made would function in the end-user system.

Also, it’s rare to require an immediate move of *everyone* from one platform to another; it should be possible to migrate data, let the customer verify that the new system works, then migrate data again (to pick up the remaining work done while the customer verified the new system), and finally migrate the customer from old system to new. Again, why wasn’t this done?

By: wiggroe jones

wiggroe jones — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:26:47 +0000

Seems like another case of sales people *cough* Microsoft *cough* influencing the process in cahoots with the mgmt.

We recently went through a similar nightmare. Needless to say, as a Mac / Unix shop, the CTO didn’t last long after rolling out a disaster in the form of Windows Server / ASP.

*Shudders*

By: Me

Me — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:54:57 +0000

I wouldn’t blame the consultants, they were just doing their job. I would blame the company, or more specifically the employee at the company who hired the consultants, for replacing the backend that worked just fine. There are a ton of legacy systems out there still being used in Windows env with terminal sessions, and asking if things really needed to be upgraded should have been the very first question. Sure upgrade the PC’s, but keep the back end as is unless there was some compelling reason to change it.

By: ted

ted — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 07:02:22 +0000

There are smart developers and there are so-so developers. There’s no evidence that showed Windows developers are stupid and *NIX developers are smarter.

You know that most universities teach students *NIX for as long as 4 years right?

At the end of the day, a developer is a developer whether he/she developed in Windows or *NIX.

By: Percy

Percy — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 06:08:16 +0000

Interesting story! I must say that the conclusions drawn seem a bit arbitrary and it’s not really clear that there is evidence that “Traditional applications offer more flexibility than Web-based applications” or “Maintain a reasonable level of heterogeneity”. Maybe more like “hire developers who know how to write *real* web apps” and “Don’t use Microsoft”

By: Old Software= Good! Well Sometimes. « Mr. Goodkat

Old Software= Good! Well Sometimes. « Mr. Goodkat — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 00:58:01 +0000

[…] Old Software= Good! Well Sometimes. Posted July 29, 2007 I’m reading this guy’s article about how sometimes it’s best to leave old software systems alone. […]

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 00:56:49 +0000

ahem.
I worked for a (very) large company that had that exact problem on the “front end”. I’d bet it was the same system.(OTP)
As an aspiring AJAX developer, it was obvious the problems were caused by bad quality checks in the software design, or total incompetence by whom ever decided to buy a broken system.