Apparently, I'm a lousy lurker. In any event, Cornell University looked like a model of success. Signed PeopleSoft in 1996. Had them on campus by 1997. I thought everything was fine until about two weeks ago. Friends at the Theory Center (Cornell computing facility that used to be a National facility) suggested we were going to get toasted. There has been rumors of abondoning part or all of PeopleSoft's solution; this can't be good news. An hour ago I'm told that the person in charge of overseeing the internal billing system (which can get pretty complicated even at a University) stood up at a meeting and said, "There is no way that the internal billing system will function in January of 2000. Period." (Some paraphrasing). This has to be happening all over the world. Will this appear in a newspaper? No way. Only an hour earlier, a friend of mine who is a private money manager in Boston expressed to me that he is not only not afraid of the y2k problem, he is not afraid of perception. PhD theses will be written about this event (hopefully).

Gotta go. The mother ship is calling.

Dave

-- Dave Cornell (dbc100@cornell.edu), May 12, 1999

Answers

Dave,

Good to hear from an EX-lurker:-). Keep it coming... it's bits of information like this that fill in some of the details in a very out-of-focus picture.

-- Nabi Davidson (nabi7@yahoo.com), May 12, 1999.

Dave,

"This has to be happening all over the world". That is how I felt when I started researching my local area. Water district is scrambling just to figure out what sized generator they need, planning to just "reserve" one. Local OES man (seems sincere, just very worried about panicking folks) gave me the spiel that they had upgraded all the neccessary systems, including county dispatching centers for emergency services. I mentioned that the ambulance company I worked for until April 15th (as a dispatcher after injuring my back as an EMT) was still shopping for compliant dispatching software. He got really quiet, then we chatted for awhile longer and he admitted that sometimes he thinks that the Cassandra Project goes too far (with recommendations to prep for months), chuckled softly and then said sometimes he thinks they don't go far enough.

Nobody knows for sure. I am just not very impressed with what I am finding locally. If more folks went to meetings of the boards of their local service agencies they may get similar results - HOPEFULLY NOT.

Keeping the worrying to a manageable level by taking one step towards preps each day - another 25# of salt, another gallon of vinegar, and so on....

-- Kristi (securx@Succeed.Net), May 12, 1999.

Dave (BTW, you are "Cornell" at "Cornell"?), not only will PhD theses be written but the entire IT industry is going to come under scrutiny like you wouldn't believe, once we're on the other side of the curve (2002?). The politicians certainly aren't going to take the fall. Hey, we deserve it, though. Regulation is just a few heartbeat years away, hackers.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), May 12, 1999.

Dave, your input is valuable.

I've stated on this board in recent posts that our county is implementing the FOF approach on most (est. 80%) of the county resources.

Our IT folks are near asphyxiated from pleading with the "hick powers that be (near 70 years old, all of them)."

Hey, I know I'm no spring chicken, but there IS room for change. There has to be. I know many other counties face the same "lack of education/intelligence" running the local governments.

There are many reasons, just like the ones you brought to light with your post Dave, that will make Y2K a study in human frailty/perserverance for years to come.

Mr. K

-- Mr. Kennedy (Mr.K@home.tonight), May 12, 1999.

Hmmmmm...there was an article posted on North's site a while back concerning the city of Colorado Springs. PeopleSoft involved in that one too. Another outfit, "The Firm" out of Tampa Fla. also involved in the mess. To make a long story short, the city ain't gunna make it.

Don

-- Don Wegner (dwegner@cheyenneweb.com), May 13, 1999.

BigDog: Although it seems obvious that Y2K will result in strict software coding standards, I really wonder if that will be the case. I posted a month or so ago about the exponential rise of complexity in software. This is making the implementation of modern risk management techniques like Capabilities Maturity Modeling (formal design process, peer review by code walkthroughs, collection of metrics, etc.) more important, but more difficult, as it is very time consuming, and customers/companies must pay for its "costs" up-front (The analogy is going to the Ford dealer for a new car. The dealer says "I can sell you this 1999 Taurus for $17K, or I can sell it to you for 20K and promise you that well do a better job next time". Which would you chose?).

The other situation that I foresee is that in the frenzied world of post-2000, programmers will be scrambling to get the software fixed. This invariably results in patches, workarounds, kludge code, and worse. And even though the software team agrees that it will be a temporary fix, it ends up becoming part of the baseline for the duration.

We may even take a step backwards with Configuration Management when all is said and done.

-- a (a@a.a), May 13, 1999.

a --- good points, I wasn't being nuanced enough. We will take several steps backward in the frenzy to get things running, somehow, anyhow. The regulatory pressure will come from the politicos and, yes (or maybe I'm being too optimistic) "users", if they're not too shellshocked. BTW, I have always maintained we IT scum will be even more vital to the culture post-Y2K than we are now ("please, please fix our software, please, please"). But despised, much like lawyers.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), May 13, 1999.

I am thinking that the internal billing is in the financials, so how is the rest of the financials looking? Do you guys run the HR peoplesoft package? If so, how is it looking?

I am concerned about peoplesoft as well, but where I work, they aren't even going to test it. Just now in the "implementation" phase of the P.O., with the rest going in before July.

By the way, have you done any heavy customization of the package, or is the broken parts part of the delivered package? Thanks for the info... just wish I could post which .edu I work for.

-- (cannot-say@this.time), May 13, 1999.

Shhhh... Don't let Hoff hear you saying that your problem is with Peoplesoft. He'll try to sell you an SAP implementation and will assure you that it's a piece o' cake. 8-}]

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), May 13, 1999.