The Year 2000 Software Systems Crisis: Challenge of the Century

PREFACE: This book is about the pending Year 2000 software crisis. It is a surprisingly mundane problem with far-reaching consequences. When the first business programs were written in the 1950s, who would have believed that the decision to store years as two digits, say, 57, rather than four digits, 1957, would have tremendous ramifications forty years later? These programmers would have been astonished to find that many of their programs and the data associated with those programs are still in use. Unfortunately, the Year 2000 issue is not limited to 40-year-old programs. Originally devised to save expensive hardware resources, this shortcut found its way into the standard programming methods employed throughout the computer industry. Even the newest PC software may still reference years in a two-digit format.

In one way or another, Year 2000 issues touch the life of almost every person who directly or indirectly relies on computers. Many computer professionals will spend a large percentage of their time over the next five to six years reprogramming software to correctly process century-related data, or handling the consequences of incorrect date processing. Businesses will face a multitude of expected and unexpected problems. Reports will be sorted incorrectly, date-based calculations will be wrong, and data co mparisons that include date values will produce unwanted results. Some of these consequences will be minor annoyances. Other consequences will cause serious financial losses as inventory systems order unnecessary replacements, financial transactions are incorrectly posted, and customers are dropped from master files. And given our litigious society, many of theseissues will end up in court.

The pervasiveness of computers and computer-generated data and services in modern society means that even individuals who have never used a computer can and will be affected. They will suffer the consequences of Year 2000-related breakdowns within both government and business institutions. Even if the problem is corrected in time, they will in some way pay a portion of the bill. The worldwide cost of the problem has been estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

After a slow start, the Year 2000 crisis is finally gaining public attention. In our travels and work with clients, we have been surprised to find people from all walks of life who have heard about the problem. While a few leading edge companies and government agencies recognized the problem early, much of the Information Technology (IT) industry has been in a state of denial. The first individuals who raised Year 2000 issues publicly were derided as millennium moaners and were viewed simply as consultants seeking a new way to make money. Many IT organizations simply felt that their applications would be replaced before century dates became a problem. In 1995, reality began to hit. In that year, there was one major industry conference on the topic. In 1996, there were over fifty. The topic has become front page news in the business press as well as in the computer media. Suddenly, a major market appeared for consulting vendors and software firms.

IT organizations have progressed from inaction to panic as they begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem. Their panic has been fed by the media and the public relations efforts from the growing multitude of software vendors and consultants in the marketplace. Conflicting stories abound. Rumors of magic bullets and other shortcuts are interspersed with horror stories of impending failures and outrageous costs. Lost in this maelstrom is a coherent method for solving the problem. Providing that method to a wide variety of organizations is the goal of this book.

We began work on the Year 2000 issue at the insistence of our client base. Our consulting efforts focused on helping clients assess their degree of exposure, related costs, understanding their options and constraints, and developing strategies to achieve Year 2000 compliance. Exposure to many IT organizations taught us that there are no magic solutions; there isn't even a single best strategy. There are, however, basic building blocks and guiding principles that apply to all Year 2000 initiatives. We found that by following these principles, an IT organization can assemble the right set of strategies, tools, internal resources, and consulting services to meet the unique needs of their organization. This knowledge is the foundation of this book.

Our intent is to expose our readers to the full range of possible issues and the multitude of solutions for those issues. Armed with this information, readers can separate market hype from reality as they develop the optimum Year 2000 solution for their organization.

Audience for this Book
This book is written for IT managers, business managers, software vendors, consultants, and other individuals that require an in-depth understanding of Year 2000 issues. It is written in four major sections: Year 2000 Overview, Issues and Strategies, Assembling a Solution, and Strategic Implications. These sections are designed to communicate multiple levels of understanding. Sectional chapter overviews are provided for readers requiring high-level knowledge, while more detailed information is provided for the project managers charged with implementing a Year 2000 project. This book is not intended to replace the need for a proper methodology. The breadth of the topic prevents the authors from duplicating the implementation knowledge available within a detailed Year 2000 methodology.
Nontechnical readers or senior executives requiring a high-level understanding of Year 2000 issues may wish to read the first section in its entirety and the overviews for each remaining section. Those charged with implementing a century-date compliant effort will want to read all sections in detail and use this book as an ongoing reference guide on the Year 2000 topic.

Summary of Contents
The Year 2000 overview section provides a high-level explanation of the Year 2000 issue and its effect on IT organizations. It provides readers with a realistic idea of what is wrong, the extent of the problem, what it will take to solve it, how to justify a solution effort and the importance of beginning immediately. It describes the specific ramifications of the Year 2000 problem and how these issues can affect a typical organization. These include ramifications outside of IT as well as internal issue s. These ramifications can be positive as well as negative, offering hope for gaining value from the migration effort. Finally, the overview section discusses impacts on specific industries and why some organizations and industries are at more risk than others.
he Issues and Strategies section describes the building blocks of a Year 2000 strategy. It demonstrates that Year 2000 projects encompass a wide range of issues that extend beyond simply changing code. These issues include:     * Asset management issues. Application software no longer exists solely on large, central computers. Nor is it the only software impacted by the Year 2000. Different issues arise, based on system type, age, technology, platform, and support levels.
    * Migration issues. Selecting the optimal migration approach for each application requires an understanding of the most common strategies and application characteristics that lead to optional approach selection. If multiple strategies are available, this section describes the benefits and risks of each choice.
    * Environmental issues and support technologies. The quality of the software and testing environment that supports the operation, maintenance, and migration of production systems is critical to the success of a Year 2000 migration. This section describes the type of environment needed to support a Year 2000 project and approaches for achieving this type of environment.
    * External organizations. Year 2000 compliance projects are not completely under the control of the IT organization. Companies share data and interfaces with many external organizations. Even when a century date conversion is the responsibility of an external entity, the timing and approach may have a profound impact on organizational functions. This section describes strategies for assessing and mitigating the risks associated with external organizational interfaces.
    * Management issues. The size and scope of a Year 2000 project is significantly larger than any single project previously faced by IT organizations. Studies have shown that most IT organizations are notoriously poor at meeting deadlines and budget commitments. Unless corrected, this weakness will be fatal in Year 2000 projects where there is no latitude in project scope or delivery dates. This section explores project management issues that must be overcome to ensure the success of major Year 2000 initiati ves.
Part 3, Assembling a Solution, describes the tasks needed to implement a Year 2000 project. It emphasizes the importance of planning and methods for creating a cost-effective, implementable solution. The chapters in this section are arranged by the phases of a typical Year 2000 project and are followed by guidance for selecting tools and consulting assistance. A chapter is included to cover the special requirements of small IT organizations. This section includes:
    * Strategies. High-level strategies for a formal process to guide Year 2000 planning, project implementation and tool utilization are covered in depth in this section.
    * Year 2000 budgeting. The size of the Year 2000 issue makes accurate, one-shot budgeting impossible. The reader is taken through a strategy of building a rolling budget that provides accurate and obtainable goals through the use of multiple industry budget models.
    * Project mobilization. Project Mobilization is the process of setting up a Year 2000 project. This section offers the reader guidance on the activities to be performed, the work products to be produced, office setup, and guidelines for estimating the effort required to implement the phase.
    * Enterprise assessment. The enterprise assessment phase of a Year 2000 project gathers the detailed information needed to select strategies, formalize a more concrete budget, and scope and conduct the implementation phase.
    * Implementation and deployment. This section describes the execution of the implementation phase of a Year 2000 project. This phase conducts the actual conversion of data and system and the production implementation of the software systems. The tasks and deliverables of this phase are described at a project management level along with analysis guidelines for conversion specialists. Techniques are described broadly but without excessive technical details. This section also includes a discussion on applicat ion package and system software upgrade projects.
    * Validation. Testing and validation will use as much as 50 percent of the typical Year 2000 migration budget. This section discusses the tools, infrastructures, and techniques needed to guarantee that the migrated applications will truly function in the year 2000. Two major approaches are covered.
    * Tool and technology selection. Year 2000 projects are too large and complex to be conducted without tools. This section describes the tool characteristics needed to support a Year 2000 project and the criteria for selecting and acquiring the right tools.
    * Small IT organizations. Small IT organizations may not have the budget or the resources available to establish a comprehensive Year 2000 delivery capability. This section is aimed at those organizations and should allow them to look toward various alternatives that will keep their systems running. This section also addresses the PC user.
    * Services selection. Most IT organizations will rely heavily on outside services to implement their Year 2000 strategies. This section guides IT management through the many variations of conversion assistance available for Year 2000 projects. It describes the pros and cons of each service option, as well as describing how to write a valid RFP to obtain these services.

The fourth section of the book describes the strategic implications of the Year 2000 initiative. Many organizations view Year 2000 projects as pure overhead-no business value is gained. Fortunately, this view is incorrect because IT organizations can take advantage of a Year 2000 project to position themselves for the future. This section describes how to apply the knowledge, tools, and techniques from a Year 2000 project to the long-term advantage of the IT organization. It also explores how the lessons f rom the Year 2000 project can be a catalyst for strategic change. The high cost of obtaining century compliance in legacy applications should inspire IT management to move beyond their traditional caretaker role to initiate strategic change.

Following the last section of the book is an appendix containing sources of assistance. This supplement provides a noninclusive list of tool vendors, consulting firms, and conversion companies. The appendixes also include sample forms and a meta-model for project tracking deliverables. A glossary defines terms used in the book.

Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the help of many dedicated individuals and companies. First, we would like to thank our wives, Anne Hayes and Kathy Ulrich, for their masterful job of editing the first drafts of each chapter and for putting up with many nights and weekends of their husbands working on their PCs.
The ideas within this book were not developed in a vacuum. Rather, they evolved over many years from many collective discussions, experiments, and use on consulting projects. It is impossible to acknowledge everyone by name, but we want to express our gratitude to our clients, Year 2000 conference attendees, software vendors, and consulting firms that have contributed to these ideas. Hopefully, we are able to repay some of this favor through this book.
Many software vendors and consulting firms contributed literature on their products and services as background materials for this book. These vendors are listed in Appendix A. These materials were very helpful for understanding the range of tools and services on the market. We greatly appreciated this assistance. We apologize in advance to any vendors who were inadvertently omitted.
We also wish to thank Paul Becker from Prentice Hall for believing in this project and supporting our writing efforts. We especially appreciated his astonishment at our ability to deliver the book manuscript on time. In addition, we want to thank Joanne Anzalone, our Prentice Hall production editor, for her efforts in turning our mingled prose into proper English.
Finally, we would like to thank the readers of this book. We sincerely hope that it helps you and your organization successfully survive the Year 2000 crisis. We wish you the best of luck on your projects.

Ian S. Hayes
Clarity Consulting
Marblehead, MA


William M. Ulrich
Tactical Strategy Group, Inc.
Soquel, CA

August, 1996