On Thu, September 13, 2012 7:05 pm, Chris Graham wrote: > On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Manfred Moser <[email protected]> > wrote: >> I think that the cost is only so high because companies keep waiting >> until >> it is too painful. If you constantly keep upgrading a bit here and there >> and stay up to date with your operating systems, runtime environments, >> browsers and client site frameworks and so on you would actually be able >> to save a LOT of money in the long run. But you would have to constantly >> invest rather than waiting with no investment until things fall apart >> and >> then being forced to large costly upgrades. >> >> > When a release has to move through 15 environments before it gets to prod > (think large government project), and various change control boards etc, > nothing is easy or cheap. > > And that is just for a release of code that we write. Updating the > underlying technology stack is not a simple or cheap exercise. > > It's a matter of scale. > > Smaller, more self contained projects may indeed be able to take the > faster > route that you suggest. > > But it is always a matter of *business* risk, not *developer* led changes.
I understand all that but hear my out for a sec. Why do you think there are 15 environments and change control board and all that overhead the first place. Because in the past releases/changes were done every couple of months or years .. therefore the risk to these changes was VERY high and that needed to be controlled. However imho (and many others) it would be less risky to constantly introduce lots of small changes all the time and roll back these little changes when necessary. But the software (and product delivered and therefore the business value to the customer) has to constantly improve and change and adapt to the needs. This is only possible if you constantly maintain the software .. and part of that maintenance is updating architectures, build systems and everything else. Then each step is small and so is the risk involved. Now I understand that this is a LARGE change to get there for most organizations but imho this is where things are happening and how you deliver the best business value for the LOWEST cost and with the smallest risks. Just look at how any big place like Amazon or ebay or twitter or Google or Facebook is doing there infrastructure. It is maintained and updated and worked on all the time. And the risk of these changes is smaller than falling behind and accumulating debt and then having to sort it all out in one big change that will be much more costly. >> So it is mostly short sighted management and an absence of real >> technology >> leadership in organizations causing this problem imho. And forcing the >> > > I could not disagree with you more. And, in a strange way, you're made the > very point that I'm trying to get across. > > What you've said there is a very developer centric view. > Which is putting the technology ahead of the business. > It is the business needs that should be dictating the technology; not the > other way around. Not at all. Just read above. I am just putting the long term perspective of constantly innovating and improving before any short term savings from a business perspective.. Just my 2c of course ;-) manfred > -Chris > > >> pain to stay on old stuff higher (like Oracle is doing with deprecating >> Java 6 earlier) is actually a good thing. >> >> imho Maven 2 should have long been deprecated and removed from the >> downloads pages.. >> >> just my 2c though ;-) >> >> manfred >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >> >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
