Denial (Year 2000 problem) LO10840

Irwin Rudolph (irwinr@ibm.net)
Sat, 02 Nov 1996 10:28:42 -0500

Replying to LO10825 --

Bob, I too wonder if the anything will be learned from the billions of
dollars that will be spent correcting the Y2K problem. In response to your
comment:

> It's very amusing, to me at least, that a group of people I thought were
> trained to think systematically (computer programmers and systems
> analysts) got us into this mess.

When systems and programs are designed they are designed in the context of
various requirements, constraints, and assumptions. These derive from many
different (and sometimes hidden) sources, including organizational
elements like reward and measurement criteria. I can tell you that in 1980
I would not have put my job on the line to fight for Y2K compliance.

I would even suggest that the decision to code dates without Y2K support
in 1980 was the right thing to do when everyone in the organization
believed the life span of an application to be 3-4 years. The interesting
thing to me in this case is not so much how the problem came about, but
how organizations are adapting to the crisis.

-- 

Irwin Rudolph <irwinr@ibm.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>