Development tools (part 2)

[Jon Kvisli]

.. and here is the rest of the story:

Peter Bateman illuminated one of the truths that several companies have
taken in over the last year:  "In other words it maybe more cost
effective to buy a package and conform than to build your own customized
application whether that be in Oracle Forms or whatever."
 
This is true for applications that are supporting business but not
central part of core-business, e.g. accounting, human resources. It may
even apply to systems that is vital to operations of business, if
management decides that competitive advantage and differentiation from
competitors is done by the way systems are used or put together not by
the systems themselves. 
 
However if the applications themselves are crucial to core business and
considered to give competitive advantage, then it will not be a good
strategy to conform to standard "shrink-wrapped" applications that your
competitors also are using. Developing and running such systems in a
clever way, will be an important core-business skill to be mastered for
the company to succeed. Another area is business or operations that is
highly specialised, where there may not be a marked for standard-systems
that is attracting software companies. 
 
While my last mail pointed out that these areas are shrinking, there are
definitely still many systems around that fits this description. Even in
the future these systems will probably be developed by the end-user
organisations using in-house employees and consultants. The developing
process will still mature, involving better methodology, project
management and teamwork. It is moving away from the "one-big-guru"
process, and will become more like other engineering-processes.
 
I am lucky to be working with systems that are considered crucial and
competitive important, and my employer have made a strategic decision to
keep developers within their own organization. As mentioned in my
previous mail, we have migrated our PH-systems to new hardware and RDBMS
and are in the process of replacing PH code with new tools. I definitely
see it as a goal to replace all PH code, but this will take time.
Parallel with this we are developing our methodology for system
development and are organizing development in larger and more
specialized teams. 

Have a good week-end!

Jon Kvisli
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Principal Consultant
Lindorff Applications as
Hellandtunet research- og businesscentre
P.O.Box 4, 3833 Bo in Telemark
phone: +47 35 06 15 71
fax: +47 35 06 15 01
mail: jon.kvisli@lindorffapplications.com
www.lindorffapplications.com
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