Jiri’s Notepad

Niel Robertson: Plato’s Software Children

The problem with this open model is that, as a customer, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Every customization you’ve made must be evaluated against the vendor’s new baseline. For each customization you have to decide on one of three paths. Has the customization been superseded by the vendor’s fix or new functionality? Does the customization completely replace the vendor functionalitys because of a core difference between how you do business and the vendor thinks most people do business? Or are you somewhere in the middle and the customization needs to be re-merged with the latest vendors changes because you want 90% of their new functionality but still want to keep the 10% that is very specific to your business. […]Now compound this issue over 5-7 years (depending on how long you have owned your packaged application). Customizations, upgrades, patches, changing development teams, out-sourced development, in-sourced development, limited code reviews, poor or non-existent version control systems for packaged applications, and changing underlying business processes. Quickly you will realize you have a major issue on your hands.