Sunday, October 14, 2007
Disaster Awaits!
Pity the poor Systems Manager with the never-ending challenge of keeping every workstation current not only with Microsoft’s Windows™ updates, but updates, fixes, and new releases of the financial system.
Many financial systems require that the entire software package be “pushed” to each and every workstation when updates are applied. Additionally, most of today’s financial systems are huge! This data transfer takes valuable time.
Major release upgrades are a disaster waiting to happen. If something goes wrong you may not be able process payroll, write accounts payable checks to pay the bills, or a plethora of other problems that could bring your company to its knees.
Consider what must take place before you go “live” with a new release:
• User training of the entire hands on staff, from managers and supervisors down to line clerks.
• File conversions: Unload the database, apply changes, and reload the database. Did you check to see if you are on the supported release of the database? Oops! Oh, no!
• “Push” the new release via remote access or, heaven forbid, visit every workstation and install the new software release.
• Of course, you have already spent weeks testing the software prior to installing. As usual, you test the posting and processing procedures. Then, you review all reports to make sure they still reflect information the way you expect.
• Do you have the staff and time to run parallel?
So what’s the problem here? Software developers could help us save time, improve accuracy and reduce our stress in a number of ways:
• Provide accurate and complete release notes early on.
• Provide better training aids for users. How about documentation? (What a concept!)
• Finally, incorporate true 3-tier systems architecture. This would eliminate, or at least minimize, the installation of software at individual workstations.
Why don’t developers do this? Money, pure and simple. They wouldn’t make their fat consulting fees if they made it too easy.