Computer says no
economist.com
economist.com
Every time I hear about great rewrites of mainframe application (Air control fiasco of a few years ago) I just am amazed at what the original programmers managed to build which is still in use.
Rewriting that stuff means rewriting all the business logic embedded in those applications. I expect that most of the time, new apps must follow the exact flow the old apps had or else the employees using it won't like it. I've seen this first hand, were talking about buttons being placed exactly the same way.
Even if these banks modernized, the business processes would stay the same.
Rather, they are a testament to the difficulties of replacing running software and the problems of managing any software project.
The original software was written in an older age for older hardware, it thus must have much simpler functionality. Because the ability to build larger systems may not have existed back then, and the ability of the hardware to cope with anything beyond the basic functionality was perhaps minimal at best. Given those requirements the devs banged out a simple system which then sat in constant use for ages (the best form of testing) and was patched up over time.
Now along comes a big, well funded project to replace the aging old system. Of course mountains of new requirements get piled onto it (because computers are so much faster and our programming tools are so much more capable). And then the project goes over budget and over schedule, the death march eventually produces a barely functional replacement and of course it's full of bugs because they cut corners rushing to get the thing shipped and nobody seemed to appreciate the enormity of the testing and defect removal needs for a new more complex system to match the robustness of a system that has had literally decades of real-world testing to facilitate defect removal.
But note that this sort of trend applies regardless of the talent of the original developers. Even if it took 5 years for that original system, simple as it is, to become robust it'll still look like a work of genius compared to attempted re-writes that fall victim to all the problems listed above.
How many of us have written software
that will be used 30 years from now?
But what really sets Metro Bank apart is its state-of-the-art IT system.
Then at the end:
With such grand designs, isn’t Vernon Hill, one of the bank’s founders, tempted to build an IT system of his own? “I hate programmers,” replies this dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur. “They only cause trouble.”
Didn't they already build a state of the art IT system?
We're often on opposite sites of various fences but with this one liner you've definitely made my day so thank you very much for that. :)
The one thing that they had in common with the commercial companies I worked for is that instead of jettisoning the least competent so that the rest of us could do our jobs, they promoted those folks and put them in charge.
I can guess which two this guy chose every time.
Spoken like someone who's been there on a few projects.
The answer tends to be that they don't, they get lucky or they get unlucky. They don't have any protections from getting taken to the cleaners. From spending $10 million on a VBA + Access abomination that's far more trouble than it's worth. But they may be so unsophisticated when it comes to software that they don't know they've been taken for a ride until years later.
Compare that to, say, construction of a new bank building. A bank president knows that if they spend $X million they'll get a new building, with high probability. There may be some problems along the way but they for sure won't end up spending $X million on nothing, or on a cardboard box with a "BANK" sign written in crayon on the side. It's understandable that they might be a bit leery of dipping their feet in the IT waters.
One of the best explanations between community banks and the "big" banks.
I worked for a company that is now part of Fiserv.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdjCb4LwQY
Good stuff.
But then again, while working in the industry, there seems to also be a HUGE disconnect between banks' perception of technology and the part it actually plays. Chase seems to be getting into a good position as a result of closing that gap (pictures of checks deposited to your acct via phone).
Additionally, the server is open to prefix attacks.
For a bank, that's a pretty miserable state of affairs.
This sounds, uh, weird. Got a link to more information? I'd like to see the rationale for having the browser subvert misconfigured servers; this would seem to undermine the already precarious SSL state we're in.
This is pretty much standard browser behaviour I'm afraid. One of the many unfortunate realities of the web.
I'd expect VeriSign to be on top of this.
Bill Buxton in Sketching User Experiences, page 209
I hate bankers - they only cause trouble.
e.g. financial catastrophe, global depression"
Disclaimer:I am not an economist nor do I earn anything right now. So if this is an uneducated or miss educated comment please fill free to give references.