[SIGCIS-Members] software modernization failures

Fri May 5 06:29:42 PDT 2023

Jonathan and Brian,

ERP modernizations are a special kind of beast.  I sympathize with the Edinburgh example Brian mentioned, having successfully managed a university ERP modernization as the CIO.  There are many problems that can occur as well as the outsourcing/lack of skin in the game that Brian mentions.  The root issues for ERPs that make them difficult include:

  *   Complexity and integration with many external systems – Almost all of the systems to run the back office or a company/university interface with it and have to be carefully migrated.  So, often many of those other systems also have to be either upgraded, changed, or replaced.
  *   Data migration issues – data may not be clean enough to easily migrate to the new systems or be in a different logical data model, forcing some hard choices to be made (delete data, take the time/expense to clean it, archive it, etc.).
  *   Unique processes and modifications to support them – ideally, you try to fit your processes to the new system with as few modifications as possible.  If the company/university wants/needs to keep unique processes that implies changing the system to work with them.  I was also involved in a corporate migration where we spent years and 100s of millions of dollars modifying SAP (that was somewhat less successful). This is the hardest aspect to manage—changing the processes to fit the new system and avoiding modifications and needs serious support from the entire organization.
  *   Timing and switching to the new applications(s) – Careful project management is required so that the organization can have the old data moved to the application, not have significant process interruptions (the Edinburgh example notes that the financial system was unavailable for month—something that’s hard to imagine), training everyone to be ready for the new system, and perhaps running both systems side-by-side for a while to make sure everything is working properly.  Generally, these many integrated systems need to be running for the business processes to keep working as intended, so there’s a continuous operation problem.

These are all in addition to the technical issues you have with any complex system that also can be hard to predict such as performance issues, reliability issues, and misrepresentation by the vendor of the systems capabilities that must be fixed when they are discovered.

I don’t know of a great book or even article that describes this, probably because those of us that have been through it (even successfully) are just glad to have finished it.

--Kim

Kim W. Tracy
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From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Brian E Carpenter via Members <members at lists.sigcis.org>
Date: Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 10:23 PM
To: Jonathan Coopersmith <j-coopersmith at tamu.edu>, SIGCIS <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] software modernization failures
[External Sender]

Jonathan,

Well, this goes back a long way - the phrase "second system syndrome" was coined by Brooks in "The Mythical Man Month" in 1975. Of course, it's got worse and worse as systems became bigger and more complex.

I'm sure there must be many analyses in the software engineering literature. There are new examples almost weekly; I recently noticed this one: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.com%2F2023%2F05%2F03%2Fedinburgh_uni_senate_report%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctracy%40rose-hulman.edu%7C37b2531de56149c19dd408db4d0fb33c%7C6c373827e5b745a7ae27b17e388fcad4%7C1%7C0%7C638188502078089186%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7iNbLqvBNGCRDtrQigCWFynnSoRo8QZBKkja7Ss%2Bcwc%3D&reserved=0<https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/03/edinburgh_uni_senate_report/>

It seems pretty clear that the modern fad for outsourcing feeds the problem, because it leads to very ambitious replacement projects implemented by mercenaries who have no long-term interest at stake, so they make the sort of mistakes described in that article. In-house developers who want to keep their jobs are much more likely to do incremental changes, with proper testing, and to cover undocumented corner cases. External consultants will just stick to the specifications, which for large projects are always deficient.

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 05-May-23 11:56, Jonathan Coopersmith via Members wrote:
> Any suggestions for a book or article on software modernization failures, especially for large projects?  Why do they seem common -- and apparently remain so?
> Thank you.
>
> Stay sane,
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Coopersmith
> Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
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