Re: What do programmers do in new system? -- RPG400-L

In my experience ...

I have seen a number of SAP and DERBY implementations where the programming staff were made redundant after the new system was commissioned.

After the hand-over period, there is less need for the skill levels previously required and those with the technical skills either had insufficient business knowledge / skills to warrant them being kept on or there was already a full quota of the relevant business knowledge / skills in place.

Regards,
John McKay mba
www.mckaysoftware.ie
www.rpglanguage.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Pete Helgren" <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries" <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 1:17 PM
Subject: 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

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