Top Ten Reasons Application Modernization Projects Fail
Guest Blogger: Paul Conte, President PCES, is a leading Application Development Strategist.
Are we done yet? With “modernizing” our applications, that is?
It seems so long ago that someone came up with the clever concept of application “modernization” as a response to how outdated AS/400 applications looked by comparison with graphical Windows applications.
But now, even after years of screen-scraping, “refacing” and crash courses in Java, there still exists an unfathomable mountain of monolithic RPG applications that – dolled up or not – simply don’t serve modern business needs.
Why have so many attempts at “modernization” failed to deliver? Herewith are my own “top ten” reasons, listed somewhat in the order I’ve seen them occur in many IBM i organizations:
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Why Using an Application Framework like the VLF should be a No Brainer
Frameworks are everywhere. They are available for almost every part of software development and frameworks are not exclusive to the IT industry. Medicine, banking and insurance all have risk assessment frameworks. Education uses learning frameworks, companies are measured by quality frameworks and the USA Department of Defense has a framework for enterprise architecture.
Why are frameworks popular? Where do they apply in software development? How can frameworks help to reduce cost and boost productivity? Before addressing these questions, we need to understand what we mean by framework.
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Risk, Innovation and Cost Considerations
In the current economic climate we’re all being asked to go back to our parents generation and ‘make do and mend’. Even with the supposed green shoots of recovery being discussed by our political leaders, it’s hard to see how the large capital expenditure projects from 5 years ago will get funded today. So even though the competitive landscape will relentlessly move on, the idea of replacing all your business applications as part of a strategic plan will probably fall on deaf ears. I still remember an ex-manager of mine saying that every time I said “strategic project funding”, to him it just meant that it was going to cost the company money.
For most companies their applications and systems do an OK job of running the business. They probably have done so for the past 10-15 years as they’ve been customised to suit your bespoke business processes. The problem today is delivering that next 10% - 15% of functionality required to get the business back to being market leading again.
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iPulse 2010 Survey Results
The iPulse 2010 Survey, organized by LANSA, ran during September 2010 and was promoted to the global IBM i community via email, social media and publicized by all the leading industry media outlets like Intelligencer Magazine, IT Jungle, CIO Magazine and System iNetwork.
Over 1,700 participants worldwide completed the survey, representing the views from a broad range of industries across 50 different countries. The survey was taken by a cross-section of people whose job roles were as follows:
- Business Management - 36%
- Developer / Analyst - 36%
- Project Management - 12%
- Operations - 10%
- Other (vendor, journalist, consultant, etc) - 6%
Project Health Check Review
If you've been working on a project with my Services team this year, you may have already experienced a new milestone that we introduced into our project delivery methodology - the "Health Check" review. 
I'd like to share some of our thoughts behind introducing this into our methodology from my personal blog. As with many changes in behaviour, this one came from identifying what 'wasn't working' in our approach in some situations.
Risk Management is important with any project but unless formal checkpoints are planned at the outset, reviews can sometimes fall off the radar while everyone is focused on development of the solution. Continue reading “Project Health Check Review” »