3) Avoid from coding from scratch. For anyone but a huge place, the chance of failure is high. Yes, some companies manage it successfully, but it is a huge risk. And every business feels like it is a special snow flake whose needs no standard package can meet, but about 99.99% of the time standard packages - either as is or slightly modified- can accommodate their work flow.
To this I will say - DOE regulations and their random changes. They make it almost impossible to use anything off the shelf carte blanche. Which is why the Legacy systems haven't been significantly upgraded or reworked in eons. We've got it working so they haven't fucked with it. But we may be now looking at a decade of Legacy supporting the company so...I win.
So the guy I went to junior prom with died. The story is either aspiration from vomit or heart problems and then time on life support.
I'm so sorry, Kat. Either way is an awful way to go. And your - our - age is too damn young for heart problems (says the woman who's worked for pediatric heart doctors all her life and knows that's bullshit, but still feels like it shouldn't be).
Wishing you Noah and Grace handholding and head-kisses.
Weirdly, this is NOT the first person I have had sex with who is now dead. The other person died when we were in college. Car accident.
I am pretty far away from the time in my life where I kept in consistent contact with this guy. It's not particularly sad for me (more shocking) but definitely awful for his family.
To this I will say - DOE regulations and their random changes. They make it almost impossible to use anything off the shelf carte blanche.
Govt regs are often the excuse for custom work. But you would be surprised how many systems out there try to take stuff like this into consideration. And again, even if nothing works off the shelft, there is a lot of off the shelf software with built in hooks for customization. From scratch is an invitation for failure. If you do want to do custom take the following into consideration:
The single biggest cost of custom software is the spects. And the single biggest cost of specs is not what you pay consultants to do, but the time your people have to give to consultants to explain your people's needs. Bear in mind that input from system experts like you is not enough. You need input from users up and down to chain to explain how they actually use features, so that you understand how what seems like a minor change affects work flow. Because users are often quite frankly lousy at explain this, that is why iterative development is often used.
Anyway you need to think about how your legacy system differs from standard packages. What does it do that they don't? Can a standard package replicate this through allocations and subledgers? Lots of standard packages let you create automatic allocations and custom subledgers? Will a package that stores information in a common database format so that you can use common query tools and report writers give some of the customization you need. Do you need the ability to change field lengths or add new fields to tables? Lots of software with hooks for doing this.Maybe you will need a full custom package. But before you decide to go full custom get professional software search done to see if there is either something that will work out of the box, or if there is something with works that can be customized without your needing to reinvent the wheel.
And Kat, really really sorry. Even if you were no longer close, the shock you describe has to be very real.
You need input from users up and down to chain to explain how they actually use features, so that you understand how what seems like a minor change affects work flow.
My company's last version was such a catastrophe because the programmers were so giddy about the potential of Win8 and such that they moved everything around, changed the system requirements, and essentially made it so nearly everyone would need close to a top of the line computer to run the program decently. They forgot that a lot of users run barebones operations and could not care less about bells and whistles and the capabilities of quad-core processors in tricked out 64-bit environments. Plus they completely rearranged the user interface, which anyone who's been watching the Win8 fiasco knows doesn't make people happy.
Oh Kat, that's upsetting in that not-ready-to-face-mortality kind of way. And like JZ, I just can't let go of that fact that it's too young to die, even if I have ample evidence that some people die young.
Sorry to hear that, Kat. That's always weird news to get, at the very least.
Well, I think I have successfully navigated the company holiday party. Wore a sparkly dress, chit-chatted with co-workers over dinner, applauded various awards, and bailed. Not too bad. And now it's a long weekend, so yay for that.
