___________ 12 reasons not to worry about Y2K _______________ huh ?
by Michael Osborne, chairman of the Software Quality Group (Central) based in Wellington. year2000.co.nz
I FIND myself tripping more frequently over alarmist statements about the Y2K problem. For what is patently a trivial annoyance there seem to be zealous doomsayers over-hyping the whole thing. Clearly some perspective is required, and I present 12 compelling reasons why you need not worry about Y2K.
1.Maurice says so: On August 16 a newspaper report: year2000.co.nz read that, "the Minister for Information Technology, Maurice Williamson, believes market forces mean the Year 2000 bug will cause a series of minor hiccups rather than a catastrophic collapse of the economic system." I know how much comfort I get from that assurance.
2.Fortune 500 not worried: A recent CAP Gemini study showed only one in six Fortune 500 companies "have begun implementing a fully-fledged strategy to achieve Year 2000 compliance".
These are big organisations run by smart people - if they aren't concerned why should we be?
3.They'll make a law against it: Peter Dunne is trying this one and his bill > year2000.co.nz < is awaiting a reading - basically,make it illegal to be non-compliant and levy fines on bankrupt organisations that aren't. This one will come up again as the Government wants to be seen to be doing something. In terms of effectiveness it'll probably rank alongside making drunk-driving, marijuana usage and tax evasion illegal - not a problem.
4.Roundtable not worried: The Business Roundtable has commissioned reports on education, jails, health, utilities, and public ownership but is mum on Y2K. So, if the leading business thinkers believe Y2K will have less impact on business than existing government policies on public spending we're on the pig's back.
5.IT press column centimetres: The metric I use to gauge the importance and relevance of issues in the IT press is the RAR - Recruitment Agency Ratio. Over any given period of time, the number of column centimetres devoted to a topic is divided by the number of column centimetres consumed by IT recruitment agency advertisements. Any subject getting a RAR > 0.1 is big news indeed. Y2K is currently
running around 0.0008. Trust the journos - this is small beer.
6.Plenty of time: Even if you listen to the arch-pessimists and chop off weekends and statutory holidays and annual leave there's still 500 plus days to go. A million lines of code? That's only 2000 lines a day, every day from now till December '99. Testing? No worries - why change the habits of a millennium when you've got a whole new millennium to play with?
7.Bill will fix it: Microsoft's strategy will be to offer Y2K crossgrades to NT, IE5 and wholesale deployment of ActiveX. Put an ActiveX wrapper around each non-compliant system. Voila - you're compliant, Web-enabled, future-proofed and object-oriented after a few clicks through a wizard. Ole, Bill!
8.Killer tool yet to come: If you're anti-Microsoft (read Luddite) and you don't want Bill's solution then you'll have realised that the current sweep of Y2K tools are dumb. Next year the really really smart tools will arrive - they are only being held back now by Marketing to move to the optimum price point and maximise leverage. Sure they might cost a bit more but if you wait it will all be so much easier - relax.
9.The alarmists are a bunch of flakes: IT analysts - the days of CIOs paying big bucks for statements like "look for increased use of the World Wide Web in Q2/98 (probability 0.638)" are over: Earnest Y2K alarms have cachet. Capers Jones - world authority on software metrics - ha, anybody who purports to understand let alone promote Function Points can't be taken seriously. Ed Yourdon - this was the guy who couldn't cope with "goto" so saddled us with "structured programming". Enough said.
10.Just another project: There is no point in acting early - with the use of dynamic development methodologies and a near exemplary industry track-record in project management we'll be able to whistle
through a fix on-time, under budget, and preserving our usual level of quality. After all, it's only maintenance.
11.National encapsulation: It's only a matter of time before someone on high twigs that this is "the answer". Why dither over choices between date expansion, data encapsulation or program encapsulation when the answer is obvious. New Zealand is quaintly regarded overseas as being 20 years behind the times; this is the opportunity to take advantage of that and legislate to nationally roll the calendar back 28 years preserving alignment of days of the week and leap years. Compliance achieved in one fell swoop, software licences that don't expire for years, and an over abundance of cheap import computers and software.
All that is required is to; reboot all cpus and reset internal dates, and run some SQL to subtract 28 from all the years in the databases. This is probably best done when we put the clocks back from daylight saving in 1999 at Easter weekend to allow enough operational time. Kiwi innovation at its best!
12.Psychological analysis doesn't wash: Some "psycho" analysts contend that the behaviour of IT and business to the "Year 2000 Problem" fits the cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance which humans proceed through when faced with a large problem. Cute theory. One small difficulty: The theory doesn't apply here because there's no problem to deny. Right? |
