Re: What do programmers do in new system?

Well, I think it will be hard to predict. My gut tell me that you will continue to be just as needed as before, primarily because you are coming off a home grown package. People expect things to be "their way" in an environment like that.

My experience is primarily with implementing an "off-the-shelf" package for school administration. The challenge in just about every implementation was either purging the "doing it the old way" mentality, which was always difficult, OR we would customize the package so they could "do it the old way". Even in school districts where we did displace a home grown package, the programmers had plenty of work because they still modified the package to things the way the end users wanted.

In my experience I have never seen any package successfully replace home grown programs with a generic report writing capability. I've been at this since 1985.

FWIW.

Pete


Adam West wrote:

Hi We are looking at some new software, RPG based systems, such as Infor, VAI, IBS, Lawson, and other Windows based.
For the RPG based packages, from what I can see, there is a very serious functionality that to my eye will cost us one or more programmers.
We are 5 older programmers supporting an entire home grown package. I can't see what it is I will be doing once this thing is installed. Most reports can be done by the users, and more importantly, the nature of the database is such that mistakes are less prone to happen. Not to say we have many fires to put out but they do occur. For example, most of what we do, will not be needed as it will be handled more efficiently.
I know that this sounds almost as a joke, but it's a serious pro-active concern I have. After an install period and maybe another 6 months I would be worried.
Perhaps those who have gone to such a package would care to comment.
TIA,
Adam
http://www.amsterdamcentral.net