Customers Urged to Sharpen Focus on Testing IBM Testing Offerings

Testing Primer

IBM is encouraging customers to sharpen their focus on Year 2000 testing and to accelerate their plans.

Major information technology consultants agree. Year 2000 testing will take 40 to 60 percent of the total Year 2000 transition effort. Yet customers are leaving far less time and resource to adequately test the readiness of their systems. And many small businesses are unaware of the need to test at all.

Customers must test not only remediated applications and new packaged applications, but also the interaction between applications and the supply chain. If they do not, they run the risk of IT system failure when the century turns.

Year 2000 testing is NOT accomplished merely by trying several dates after Jan. 1, 2000 in major applications. Testing is NOT accomplished by obtaining the assurance of hardware, system software and application software providers that their offers are "Year 2000 ready."

While they are critical steps, these items are components of a comprehensive Year 2000 test plan which should also include infrastructure tests, testing non-IT assets and supply chain testing outside the enterprise.

There is help. IBM has been helping customers with testing for a long time. This deep rich base includes information, education, services, tools, additional on-site and off-site capacity and financing.

This web site and the testing offerings package of information will help customers be successful.

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Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 08, 1999

Answers

Here is the link to the IBM site where the article is located:

IBM Article

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 08, 1999.

Yes, that one word is still relevant: TEOTWAWKI.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 08, 1999.

BigDog, it should be interesting to see if we get any response from the folks in the other camp especially after using THAT word!!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 08, 1999.

My point is simply that plus ca change .....

It is April 8, 1999 and the testing that everyone said would require a year (because everyone agreed it would take about 50% of the scope) isn't happening and CAN'T happen even if it was decreed, because (drum roll) it is April 8, 1999.

So, we are reduced to wishing and hoping that the testing won't prove necessary, though 30 years of IT history illustrate that it is ALWAYS necessary (deja vu).

What a pathetic bunch of lying ^&*^%%^$#$ adorn our so-called profession (my profession) which, I will repeat yet again, is scarcely more advanced than prostitution or drug-running. Yes, the politicians deserve blame but what did they ever know about technology, apart from Al who invented the Internet?

If Y2K proves TEOTWAWKI, the blame is not on the shoulders of this forum (what a laugh riot that is) but it is on the shoulders of IT, from management through grunt. We can excuse our own lack of ethics, integrity and courage if you want, but don't then turn around and blast Slick or even Ko-skin-em for their lack.

The reason we're not testing is because WE didn't have the you-know-what to insist on the necessity of fixing Y2K and the imperative of testing appropriately.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 08, 1999.

And, BTW, since I'm ranting, without apology, I applaud Maria, Deano, Hoffmeister and/or anyone on this forum that has, in fact, worked hard to fix Y2K and test the stuff. I take their posts at face value because, unlike some, they have persisted in spelling out, over time,w what they have done and why. Yes, I believe they are woefully out of touch with the overall reality, but that is an entirely separate matter.

What this IBM comment really underlines is the criminal condition of our profession, not of "pollys" or "doomers".

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 08, 1999.

BigDog, I agree 100% that everyone working on y2k in any capacity needs every ounce of encouragement and support. As Cory Hamasaki pointed out in his Deathmarch essay these folks are working 7 days with no holidays and many overtime hours.

It is obvious that time has run out and KLUGE type remedies are now being esposed.

The IT profession may be partially to blame but I believe with the proper leadership at the highest levels of our land (maybe even the inventor of the internet) this could have been avoided or at least moderated .

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 08, 1999.

Howdy Ray. I posted this about a month ago, but it is a good reminder. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 08, 1999.

"The reason we're not testing is because WE didn't have the you-know- what to insist on the necessity of fixing Y2K and the imperative of testing appropriately. "

...and get canned, most every place I've worked. Sounds like Big Dog is calling for a union (might not be a bad idea).

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 08, 1999.

Sysman, didn't realize you had posted this earlier but as you say it is a good reminder.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), April 08, 1999.

Flint --- no doubt, there is some truth to this. But I also think it is largely a canard, unless you/I want to argue that corruption in our culture is so endemic that the "old virtues" are only to be practiced by impractical fools. Competent people don't get fired that easily. That IT is not the only sector of society today in which simple courage is lacking is, of course, true. But the facts are also true as I stated them above.

As for unions, it'll never happen. But regulation of IT (if only indirect in the form of penalties and liability, "IT malpractice insurance"). Sure. And, given what I stated above, why shouldn't there be?

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 08, 1999.

Big Dog -- I think you're headed in the right direction. I agree that firing isn't that common, although as you point out, few IT people have put this to the test. I know *I* was told to shut up about y2k or find a new employer. And there was nothing my boss or *his* boss could have done to protect me. But this might be rare.

Anyway, I think mostly what stood in the way was cost. Fixing 2yk bugs was kind of a matter of "good idea. You go first." *You* spend X hundred million treading water while *we* become more competitive and efficient developing new stuff. *You* slog through things manually while *we* wait for remediation tools to be developed. *You* figure out how to test all this equipment, and *we* will save time and money using whatever *you* figured out the hard way.

Not to mention, while geeks indeed knew this problem would eventually have to come to a head, most of them had a 'gut feeling' that it would be pretty trivial (until they really looked into it).

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), April 08, 1999.

Flint --- There are lots of reasons, sure, good reasons, practical reasons. But I've seen 20 years of corners being cut in every direction by my peers and myself (wink, wink, wink) because the industry has been a money printing operation and we, very quickly (thanks, IBM) made the world UTTERLY dependent on us (see: "History of Y2K, the Early Years," pub. 2023). A dependence exacerbated by the "black boxness" of it all. Also see the history of Microsoft.

No, I'm not trying to say IT is evil. Life is never that simple. But if we don't stand up EVER for the obvious (for instance, "we need all of 1999 for enterprise-wide Y2K testing. If we're too late for that, we need to be honest with IT and executive management regardless of consequences"), then let's not complain, as an industry, about being regulated to force our honesty/performance. In fact, if we have a social conscience, we should seek it.

And you're hearing that from a guy who LOATHES the dynamics of regulation.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 08, 1999.

22 years ago next month, as I was fighting my way into a 1 year MBA program in Information Systems, a guy took me asside and said, "Whatever you do, make DAMN sure that the people you deal with who use your stuff UNDERSTAND it. I have seen WAY too much of the Pointy Hat and Cape, BLACK BOX type of people." This guy was a senior VP at a company that (at that time) was the number one alpha test site for a little company called Dig-it-all.

(Parenthetically, Bert was also one of the few folks with a tiger tatoo on his shoulder and a couple of citations signed [in their presence] by Sun Yat Sen.)

It would appear that in 20 + years, not a lot got changed.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (reinzoo@en.com), April 09, 1999.