Bruce A. Black wrote:
IMHO, its not so simple. You are assuming that by installing such a tool,
it would automatically and enthusiastically be used by all or most of those
programmers. Personally I find that inertia is a major factor.
My experience is that 90% of programmers use the upgraded ISPF/PDF interface
almost immediately after the new option is added to their ISPF menu. The
other 10% eventually come around, just as they eventually came around to
using ISPF option 3.4. Human nature is such that if a tool is not only far
more powerful than whatever they were using before, but is also far easier
to use, inertia is quickly overcome.
To cite examples from two ends of the spectrum, there is one shop with 1,000
programmers and all 1,000 programmers use the upgraded ISPF/PDF interface.
There is another shop with 20 programmers and all 20 programmers use the
upgraded interface. Given that usage is strictly voluntary and no-one at
either site went on any training courses whatsoever, this is a pretty
remarkable achievement.
Big shop or small shop, it makes no difference. Within the first 10 minutes
of using the new interface, programmers are far more productive than they
ever were using the regular ISPF/PDF interface. As the tool is much easier
to learn and use than regular ISPF, training costs go down, not up. By
increasing productivity and reducing training costs, companies that use the
upgraded ISPF/PDF interface are saving themselves a small fortune. Not only
is their work-force far more productive than their competitiors, but they're
using far less effort to accomplish it. The value of a happy and content
work-force is difficult to measure in a monetary sense, but should not be
underestimated.
The way I see it, there are 3 types of companies:
1) Those that can afford to pour money down the drain.
2) Those that believe that buying the absolute minimum saves money.
3) Those that understand the ultimate key to success is productivity, and
that spending a little to save a lot is an absolute no-brainer.
Dave Salt
SimpList(tm) - The easiest, most powerful way to surf a mainframe!
http://www.mackinney.com/products/SIM/simplist.htm
By the same stroke, I was at a shop where programmers were forced to use
the regular ISPF/PDF interface. Watching them work was excruciatingly
painful. They had about 120 programmers, which (at a conservative estimate
of $100,000 annual cost per programmer), would have cost the company at
least TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! When you're talking about numbers as
big as this, anything that can be done to improve productivity pays
ENORMOUS dividends.
For five thousand dollars (i.e. about 0.04% of that amount, or 5% of the
cost of hiring a single new programmer), they could have given their
programmers a far more powerful interface. This would have taken less than
an hour to do, and would have made all of their programmers roughly 10%
more productive. Do the math.
Even for a shop with only 1 programmer, upgrading the ISPF/PDF interface
should be a no-brainer. Yet there are many companies out there who still
use the same basic interface their programmers were using in the 1980's.
And this is only one example of how companies can same vast amounts of
money. It's why I contend that NOT buying tools wastes far more money than
is ever wasted by buying them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
