Enemies of Upgrade
April 26, 2010 Leave a comment
Upgrade – An upgrade is nothing but a shift towards a higher version of software application. However,in the world of PeopleSoft, that counts as the scariest word so far. As an ERP, PeopleSoft has thousands of installations worldwide. Yet, there would hardly be a handful of customers, who would welcome an opportunity to Upgrade. Such a customer, is either too very well disciplined in the way they use PeopleSoft that they belong to a pantheon of revered PeopleSoft users or they use too little of PeopleSoft, to be scratching the surface of a “calorie-bomb”ish box of doughnuts.
Oh wait. I take my word back. PeopleSoft is not a calorie-bomb. PeopleSoft is a box of goodies, that packs great functionality, a robust technical framework and the power to customize. Don’t like a label? No problem. Need to capture specific information on a PO? No problem. Does your performance appraisals have the most complex approval process known in the entire Milky way? No problem. Custom reports? No problem. Custom modules? No problem. Launch a rocket? mmmmm…not just yet. You get the idea 🙂 You’ve got the power in your hands to weave exactly what your organization needs. Remember, with great power, comes great responsibilities.
Forking Off
Right after implementation, customers get carried away by the new found power to customize PeopleSoft to suit their genuine needs and well…their whims and fancies (sometimes?). Thats a sublime starting point towards what would turn out to be a potentially expensive journey called “Forking-off”. When you fork-off, you start creating differences between your PeopleSoft system (as-is) and the Vanilla PeopleSoft (supposed-to-be) delivered by Oracle. In an ERP like PeopleSoft, every object/software artifact has two owners – Oracle and You. When you fork off, you step on Oracle’s foot, jostle your way in and start co-owning the object. Does that sound right? Can you own 20% of a PeopleSoft record or 40% of a Page Peoplecode? Ain’t no big deal? Read on.
Staying Current
Just as you’ve got your own sweet little plan for customizing “your” PeopleSoft, Big Brother Oracle has bigger plans to evolve the product. The Brother keeps supplying you with patches that fix product issues and tax updates that you need to keep the tax-man happy. Over time, the Brother starts throwing bigger baggages at you in the form of bundles, maintenance packs and service packs. Whats more? The Brother expects you to get going with all those baggages and be in a state-of-mind which is popularly called “Being current”. Mind you, Big Brother likes you, when you “stay current”. And why wouldn’t you want to be current? After all, you are paying for all those patches, tax updates, bundles, MPs and SPs as license fees. You might as well apply them and enjoy the benefits.
However, staying current, like most good deeds, is easier said than done, due to one major and two minor reasons:
Major reason – Time
Time, though, is a multi-dimensional problem. PeopleSoft Administrators need the time to download and apply the patches in a demo environment. Like all code changes, patches & bundles also travel through your organization’s change control route. Hence, developers need time to apply those patches & bundles in a development environment. Most often, a piece of code delivered in a patch will conflict with a piece of code that you modified to suit your organization’s needs. So, developers need the time to retrofit code, also known as “finding middle ground”. Users need time to test the changes. The Application Manager has to find the time to manage the time required for this endeavor.
Minor Reasons – Budget and Expertise
Executive sponsors need to allocate an annual budget for staying current. Above all, your Subject Matter Experts must have the know-how to analyze the patches/bundles and suit them to your organizations business processes.
As it is, staying current has been a tough proposition. The longer you stay out-of-touch, the greater the effort required to re-route and become current. Some customers stay so out-of-touch that they reach a point of no return. I’ve personally known a PeopleSoft customer who had let their instance live through two leap-years without even applying a single patch. Such a waste of license money!
Again, the farther you fork-off, the harder it gets to stay current.
To sum up, forking off and not staying current are the biggest enemies to a smooth upgrade. Ask me how? Sometimes, proving the converse is easier. Had you not forked off, had you only so obediently stayed current….wouldn’t you have stayed inline with the product’s roadmap? Wouldn’t it be easier to catch up with changes in the product’s landscape? You would just be gently “reaching out”, rather than “giant-leaping”, to a higher product plane. So, by staying current you make future upgrades a breeze.
But then, is forking off such a sin? Should you avoid that at any cost? What if the cost amounts to not serving your business needs? Should you not customize at all? The next post will have my two-cents on it.