Services For Every Stage Of Your Century
Change Project
Command Systems' approach to Century Change Management
provides our clients with the expertise to cost effectively
assess business requirements and develop quality solutions. We
recognize the need for the timely delivery of year 2000 solutions
and are prepared to help you design a solution to meet your
particular needs. Command Systems has developed a multi-phased
methodology for addressing your Century Change Management
challenges. Our experienced consulting teams can manage your
entire Century Change Project or assist in any of its important
phases, including:
Command Systems' state-of-the-art software development
facility in Bangalore, India, is an important component of our
Year 2000 Service offering. This fully staffed facility offers
our clients an attractive venue for application portfolio
assessment and conversions. Linked via a dedicated, high-speed
satellite channel to our Corporate Headquarters in Farmington,
CT, our Bangalore staff, working closely with our US based
consultants, is positioned to help your century change project
team implement a quality, on-time Century Change solution.
Traditionally, date processing and calculations based on dates
have been handled in a way that presents today’s business
with a far reaching problem that for many will be very costly to
solve. It is essential that corporate executives, particularly
those charged with fiduciary responsibility for the integrity of
the computer systems that support their businesses, have a firm
grasp of the nature and scope of the Year 2000 Problem. Command
Systems’ approach to solving the problem insures that those
responsible fully understand it.
The
Year 2000 Problem
Historically, computer programmers have not used century
indicators in date fields. Dates are frequently formatted YYMMDD
rather than CCYYMMDD. The result: between now and the end of the
century, 2 digit year indicators (YY) within computer
applications will begin to turn to "00" and
calculations based on those indicators will render erroneous
results - MANY OF WHICH WILL GO UNDETECTED FOR HOURS, DAYS OR
WEEKS. For example, if age is calculated by subtracting
year-of-birth (e.g. 65) from current year (e.g. 96), age will be
calculated to be 31. When the current year becomes 00, age will
be calculated to be -65.
The
Time To Act Is Now !
Delay can only exacerbate the problem for two important reasons:
qualified personnel and other resources are becoming scarce, and
their scarcity is driving up the cost of fixing the problem. You
will need to find the solution to your century change challenge
now! Failure to do so will place the survival of your company in
jeopardy.
The
Right Approach
It will be virtually impossible to "eyeball" every line
of code in your application portfolio and "manually"
change date formats to incorporate century indicators. You will
need sophisticated software tools to analyze applications and
gauge which of them are already compliant, which need to be
modified and which can be replaced or retired.
Command
Systems' Solution
Command Systems will work with your IS management to insure your
senior management is fully apprised of the Year 2000 Problem. Our
Command 2000 Executive Seminar will help your organization reach
consensus on how to solve the Year 2000 Problem promptly. It will
help you decide whether to attack the problem from a
line-of-business or corporate-wide perspective, what personnel
resources will be needed, what software tools will promote the
success of your solution, and how the cost of the solution will
be allocated.
Your company’s evaluation of its vulnerability to the Year
2000 Problem should begin with the development of a comprehensive
inventory of its computer applications. Developing an application
inventory will be the first step in assessing which applications
need to be analyzed with respect to their ability to process 21st
century dates correctly. Inventory development is a three step
process:
The
Survey
The preparation and completion of an application survey is an
indispensable first step in the application assessment process.
Without it there is little likelihood that your company will
grasp the extent of its vulnerability. The survey elicits
important information about each application that will reveal how
compliant it is. When collectively analyzed, the responses to the
survey will provide important insights into the scope of your
Year 2000 Problem. When the scope is known, you will better
understand your options and be more likely to choose an
appropriate course of action.
Data
Collection
Typically, the application surveys are directed to IS application
managers or key application analysts. They are asked to gather
application data from sources such as systems documentation,
resource allocation services (chargeback coordinators), source
code library managers, etc. The data gathering task should be
managed by a Survey Coordinator, who will expedite the data
gathering process by coordinating activities across department
lines (e.g. application development, computer operations,
technical support, client department), collate and total
individual survey results and prepare the comprehensive survey
report. Survey results will be used in subsequent steps in the
Year 2000 Problem-solving process, and so the accuracy of the
information is important. It should come from your most
knowledgeable sources.
Survey
Results
The survey results will be used to identify applications ready to
process 21st century dates and to estimate the level of effort
required to make compliant those that are not. The results of
individual application surveys will be compiled into a
comprehensive report detailing: the languages used, the number of
programs per language, the number of home-grown applications, the
number of purchased applications, the application platforms
employed, the data management and database software used, the
number of applications already 21st century compliant, the number
of applications requiring prompt attention and the number of
applications designated for replacement or retirement.
Command
Systems' Solution
Command Systems is experienced in developing comprehensive
surveys that will elicit the critical information you will need
to gauge the scope of your Year 2000 Problem. We will work
closely with your application and business managers to insure
that all of the data necessary for a complete assessment of your
application portfolio is gathered and documented.
The portfolio assessment locates and analyzes dates within each
application. Source code is analyzed using information gathered
through interviews and "sniffer" software. The
assessment locates date fields and date processing routines. It
also identifies how various applications interact. This
information will be needed to determine which applications
require change and to build your strategy for making the required
changes.
Vulnerability
The application inventory is key to understanding how vulnerable
your company is to the Year 2000 Problem. The inventory will
identify home-grown, purchased, compliant and non-compliant
applications. Non-compliant, home-grown applications will need to
be assessed. Compliant and purchased applications will not need
to be assessed; however, all applications must demonstrate
compliance. In the case of purchased applications, compliance
commitments from vendors will need to be obtained, tracked and
tested.
Business
Need
The inventory will also reveal information about each application
regarding how well it serves a business need. Frequently,
applications will be found that no longer satisfy the business
need they were intended to serve. These applications should be
retired or replaced rather than modified to accommodate
turn-of-the-century requirements. The resources spent on making
these marginal applications compliant will be better spent on
applications that support real business requirements.
Assessment
All applications, other than those that are compliant, purchased
or earmarked for retirement or replacement, should be thoroughly
assessed. The assessment should be automated, because it will be
difficult and prohibitively expensive to assess large portfolios
"manually." The output of the assessment should be a
comprehensive report detailing where suspect dates lie within all
of the components of each application.
Command
Systems' Solution
Command Systems will help your IS and business managers determine
which applications can be retired or replaced. We will also help
you secure the necessary commitments from the vendors of
purchased applications to insure their applications are
compliant. We will track vendor performance with respect to their
timely delivery of compliant software and recommend appropriate
alternatives when performance falls short of expectations. Most
importantly, Command Systems will provide an experienced team to
assess your application portfolio using state-of-the-art software
and hardware on your premises - where IS application expertise
and line-of-business management is readily available for
consultation. When the assessment is complete, Command Systems
will present a comprehensive Impact Analysis Report which will
identify the applications requiring change and provide an
estimate of the cost of converting each such application.
Change Strategy Development focuses on the relationships among
each application’s components, as well as the relationships
among the applications themselves. During this phase, decisions
will be made regarding code modification, testing and change
management.
Preparing
A Strategy
The Assessment Report detailing where suspect dates lie within
all of the components of each application will be an important
resource in preparing a conversion strategy. This report will be
used to build an overall conversion plan specifying whether
program changes alone, or changes to programs and data will be
required. The plan also will detail how applications will be
segmented for change, what bridges will be required and how
testing will be accomplished.
Segmentation
& Bridging
In all probability it will be impossible for your company to
marshal sufficient resources to convert all of its applications
simultaneously. Consequently, one of the most important steps in
Change Strategy Development will be to identify application
components that need to be converted concurrently. These will
need to be packaged as "segments." Segmentation, in
turn, will cause a need for bridging - a method for insuring that
converted application components can successfully interface with
"unconverted" components during the time they must
coexist in production.
Other
Important Factors
Along with segmentation and bridging, you will need to consider
other important factors in preparing a conversion plan. For
instance, what techniques will be used to insure segments are
21st century compliant? In what timeframe must particular
segments be changed? What additional hardware, software and
personnel will be needed? How will they be secured? How will
unit, system and integration testing be accomplished? When and by
whom will regression and compliance testing be done? Only when
these questions have been answered can a comprehensive conversion
plan be completed.
Command
Systems' Solution
The Change Strategy Development process requires knowledge that
can only be supplied by experienced IS and business managers.
With Command Systems’ approach, those managers will have at
their disposal the results of the application assessments that
will graphically illustrate the relationships among individual
application components, as well as the relationships among
applications. Command Systems consultants will participate in the
interpretation of assessment output to help you segment
applications appropriately. Furthermore, we will use our standard
project planning and management methodologies and our extensive
experience in managing complex projects, to help you identify the
tasks that need to be done, how they will be accomplished and the
resources you will need to accomplish them in a timely way.
Two major considerations in the preparation of your overall Year
2000 project plan are: who will do the conversions and where will
the work be done? Command Systems’ research into the Year
2000 Problem indicates that even a mid-sized conversion effort
will require resources that the average company will be
hard-pressed to provide on a timely basis and at an acceptable
cost. To meet these challenges Command Systems has opened a
facility in Bangalore, India, that is ideally equipped to
undertake your century change conversions. Our state-of-the-art
facility employs highly qualified programmers and analysts to
expedite your application changes. We are confident that moving
some aspects of your 21st century compliance process to our
Indian facility will result in significant cost savings and less
disruption to your business. We are equally confident that the
quality of the work done at our facility will meet or exceed your
expectations.
Email
- Glenn King
Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Visit Command Systems' Web Site At www.commandsys.com
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