RE: WDSC v5 (was: SEU vs. ?) -- RPG400-L

Buck, 25 programmers, eh?  Lets see...  a 4% improvement in productivity
means we only need 24 programmers.   If we save one programmer's expenses,
that'd be 12 times the cost of the upgrade?  12-for-1 isn't a bad return in
my book.  That'd be 100% payback, 12 times a year.  Not bad.
 
 
 
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Booth Martin   http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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-------Original Message-------
 
From: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Date: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 10:47:18 AM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: WDSC v5 (was: SEU vs. ?)
 
>>so that's a $3000 expense. 
 
>If you have a shop of 25 programmers I would have 
>to say that $3000 won't do too much to your budget 
>given the payback in PC performance you are going to
>get and programmer productivity. 
 
I'm guessing you never had to argue a budget item before.
1) Our department is not the only department that wants
to spend money. We are in competition with everyone
else for those very finite dollars.
2) The 'payback in PC performance' is very difficult to
measure; either in terms of time or money. Same for
programmer productivity.
3) The counter-argument runs something like 'You are an 
RPG programmer; why not use SEU (for free) like everybody 
else?'
 
>If you have a bad machine count up the time it takes 
>you to wait for things to get done or reboot when 
>it crashes.
 
My Win2K box rarely crashes. I reboot it weekly. The Win95 box next to it
rarely crashes (I keep my manuals on it.) As far as time spent doing PC
tasks, my PII 450 runs Code, Word and Excel quite well. My boss can see
this, and has asked whether the $100 expense will save more than seconds a
day. Of course without having the extra memory it isn't possible to tell,
but that's the point of making an excuse to NOT spend money.
 
>That is how I justify new PC's to management. It isn't so 
>hard to buy me a new PC when I spend up to 30 minutes a day 
>waiting for my PC to do stuff 
 
A new PC is completely out of the question unless I buy it myself. 25
developers x 1000 per. Yeah, THAT's going to happen. And getting special
treatment is a no-no in this era of discrimination lawsuits and such. No,
everybody has to have the same stuff 'in order to be fair.' Now ask the
question this way and see what the answer is: 'If I have to spend the money
out of my own pocket to buy a PC to run WDSCi for RPG green screen editing,
is it worth it, given the payback in PC performance and my increased
productivity?' In round numbers, we're looking at a thousand dollars US for
a modern PC/monitor. The numbers just aren't there for me, and remember: I
paid for Flex/Edit out of my own pocket because I believed it would make me
a better programmer (it did!)
 
And by the bye, how do you respond when your boss asks how long before you
'stop playing with that new stuff and get back to work?' The theme being
that the 'learning curve' is an expense too...
 
>>If you could send someone to COMMON or RPG World 
>>would you do that or add the extra memory to the PC's?
>IMO, without a doubt, add more memory to PC's. Pretty 
>much anything that is at those conferences can be 
>found online (these forums are a good example).
 
Interesting take on things. At some workplaces, the employer simply doesn't
spend the money at all, and uses the savings to announce that layoffs have
been averted due to management diligence in cutting expenses. Sounds
Dilbert-esque, but that's how it seems to go.
 
The economics for moving to RPG IV seem to be argued along the same lines.
That the learning curve outweighs any perceived benefit. It's just another
excuse, of course, but there it is, nonetheless. The overarching point is
that expenses are EASY for managers to see and measure, but benefits are
not.
--buck
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