InformationWeek.com

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

September 27, 1999

InformationWeek500
Lessons Learned from Y2K

Related links

(InternetWeek) Firms Back Up Even The Best Laid Plans

(InformationWeek) Year 2000 On The Desktop

(InformationWeek) Homestretch

(InformationWeek) Year 2000 Resource Center

Time spent fixing Y2K problems is yielding improved and simplified IT practices

By Leon A. Kappelman

t's Feb. 22, 2000. Your biggest competitor is floundering. Seems its Y2K efforts didn't go as well as planned, and the company is barely able to operate, even with three times the normal contingent of clerks. Its customers are lining up at your door and at your new Web portal, and your year-to-date sales are up 60% over last year. How sweet it is!

Too good to be true? Probably not for some. Time, no doubt, will tell. But even if completing year 2000 work on time doesn't provide your company with growth opportunities on a silver platter at the expense of Y2-KO'd competitors, there are still many long-term benefits available to every IT operation that faced the Y2K challenge and became more efficient because of it.

The trick is to spot the precious slivers of Y2K's silver linings, nurture them, and make them business as usual at your organization. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition either. Rather, it's about making continuous, incremental improvements. Whether it's capitalizing on the plight of your competitors or succeeding at a new IT initiative of your own, the extent to which your Y2K experience will help you is primarily a function of the degree to which you can benefit from the lessons learned. How others behave and what opportunities unfold are largely outside your sphere of influence. You only have control over your own preparations for Y2K, what you do with the lessons learned, and the opportunities that result.

Basic Lessons
So what did we learn that we can use to our benefit? In essence, the lessons of Y2K boil down to two words: quality and simplicity. With proper quality practices, in fact, the Y2K problem never would have happened in the first place, at least not to the degree that it did. But given that it did happen, the problem was exacerbated by the complexity of our systems environments and the lack of standards for dates and most other things.

So the century ends with the greatest technological housecleaning of all time. And we have started to see improvements in quality practices and the simplification of our high-tech environments. In fact, most of the process improvements we've seen during the past several years appear to be about Y2K-related quality practices.

Based on an annual study by the Society for Information Management (SIM) Y2K Working Group, we've seen improvements since 1997 in software quality and productivity processes and practices, as well as in testing and estimating costs (see chart, below). We've also seen an increase in aspirations to the goals of the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model for continuously improving software practices.

Although there's plenty of room for further improvement, and there even appears to be some pullback in quality gains this past year, the overall trend is favorable.

Ken Elliott, Y2K program manager at Milliken & Co. Inc., a member of SIM's Y2K Working Group, and one of the co-authors of the group's book, Year 2000 Problem: Strategies and Solutions from the Fortune 100 (www.year2000.unt.edu/book/), says there's been a quantum leap in IT process and tool evolution.

Speaking of the IT industry in general, Elliott says, "without Y2K, there would not have been the market that drove the development of software such as search engines, parsers, and testing tools. Of course, our own failings in the past were the driving forces that demanded these tools. Our failure to document, maintain viable test beds, and exercise proper change control created the need for this development. The result will be better service to our customers for some time to come. That is, if we chose our tools and processes carefully to insure use beyond 2000."

Toward Simplification
It's not news to anyone that we have an IT workforce shortage. But how much have you thought about its causes? Although there's no single cause for the technology labor shortfall, the main contributors appear to be our country's generally poor primary and secondary education system, our own often-deficient human-resource practices, and the poor quality and excessive complexity of our systems environments that result in the poor use of available human resources.

To some extent, Y2K has helped us improve all of these-with the exception, perhaps, of our education system. The ongoing SIM Y2K study provides some insights into the Y2K-induced trend toward increasing simplicity and standardization, as well as improvements in technical skills (see chart below).

Year 2000 projects forced IT shops to inventory their information assets, in many cases for the first time. Having such an inventory can lead to simplification. For example, Y2K provided the opportunity for the Student Loan Marketing Association, better known as Sallie Mae, to clean up its software inventory. The organization saved money on licenses and maintenance, as well as precious labor.

Centralized control means common standards, tools, and certifications. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Y2K program director Irene Dec, Prudential Insurance Co. of America was one of the first companies to see the need for centralized control of its Y2K efforts. And Y2K was the first centrally controlled project in the history of that diversified financial-services company.

continued...page 2