Re: Thoughts on Enterprise Stories

The people who know the facts might now be seeking another job, in which they 
want to put a spin on what they say that will help them get that other job, 
rather than publicize their inability to stop this from happening, or a bad 
attitude towards the people who do it.  The people who write the official 
press release spin probably are disconnected from how much of the core 
business will remain on what platform.

When a user is doing a task that takes a certain length of time & is given a 
new & improved computer version that takes considerably longer time to get 
the job done, in my experience, the victim usually SAYS something about his 
negative improvement loud & clear to numerous co-workers, and if this is not 
rapidly resolved we get serious turn-over.  The only way top management is 
not going to know that the new system forces the people to take a lot longer 
time to get the job done is if the people doing the transactions under the 
new system are not the same people who were doing it under the old system, or 
middle management at remote sites is seriously disconnected from computer 
realities.

I have scores of similar stories ... at one time I did a seminar at computer 
conferences on how beginning computer users could learn from the disasters of 
more experienced businesses, and various friends would supply me with stories 
so long as the identities were sufficiently altered to disguise who told me 
the story.

Some stories are spectacular ... like a computer center with a malfunctioning 
air conditioner with water running into crawl spaces where computer cables 
went & the IS staff could not get management to get the air conditioner 
fixed, and were constantly down there mopping up the water ... inevitably one 
day there was a short circuit ... the UPS kicks in ... no good, the short is 
at CPU & disk drives ... various other emergency power backups kick in ... no 
good ... this was at time of walk through computer with removable hard drives 
all over creation, most of which had to be replaced.  The computer center 
drove an interstate chain of drug stores ... in some states they not allowed 
to be issuing prescriptions unless the computer records are functioning, so 
stores in many cities had to be pharmacy closed until this resolved ... the 
cost of fixing the computer center was many thousands of times as expensive 
as it would have been to fix the leak in the air conditioner.  The chain of 
stores is no longer in business ... they survived this disaster, but not 
competition with more competent computer managed operations.

I know MANY other stories like that one.  In recent years, there was a flood 
of Y2K related stories & other stories about running out of numbers do seem 
to make the general news.  But for every avoidable computer disaster story 
that makes the news, I know of perhaps 10 that do not.

>  From:    pike4@ix.netcom.com (Phil  Kestenbaum)
>  
>  I am curious as to one thing. A horror story such as this one, is never
>  publicized. I have a similar one, I'm sure there are many. Why is this not
>  generally known?
>  Phil

Midrange_L are people engaged in problem solving ... other places are more 
popular for people interested in swapping latest stories, like some dead tree 
zines.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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