I used to love SAP

[Mich the Tester]

And the step after that is a pointless argument about whether or not it's a "bug". It's damaging the bottom line so just ******* fix it!

Of course you can't adopt that sort of approach when everything is outsourced.

..

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to doodab again.

[Sysman]

They phoned the shipping company and told them what port to deliver it. Rocket science!


They're only registering all this crap for the ISO and SOX audits, they do the real work on the phone.

My first proper job was with a chemical company and for years it continued to grow. It really was a place where folks got stuff done, a large proportion of employees held shares and were committed to the company. A takeover would have been fiercely resisted.

Then I heard it was going to SAP. They were offering employees healthy retention bonuses and all that stuff.

Within a couple of years it had been taken over.

[Mich the Tester]

My first proper job was with a chemical company and for years it continued to grow. It really was a place where folks got stuff done, a large proportion of employees held shares and were committed to the company. A takeover would have been fiercely resisted.

Then I heard it was going to SAP. They were offering employees healthy retention bonuses and all that stuff.

Within a couple of years it had been taken over.

I'm seriously looking at leaving IT and joining one of those businesses.

[OwlHoot]

You poor saps!

I just have to email my monthly invoice to the clientco accounts department, and then email them confirming the number of days stated in the invoice.

[Pondlife]

They e-mailed the admin people to send an invoice.

ok, so I'm being pedantic but it's an itegrated system. How would they reconcile the invoice to a dummy incorrect customer. Sort of defeats the point of an expensive ERP system especially if this was the rule rather than exception.

You're looking at this from a traditional IT point of view, going through business case, design, build, test, acceptance etc; that whole process has a fatal flaw; it assumes that the user knows what he wants. The user doesn't know what he wants; he has a vague idea of how he wants his business to work, but really doesn't have a clue of how to get the technology to support that.

I would not expect the user to know how to configure the system to deliver their needs. I would expect them to understand their own business though. If not, you have the wrong people. The example you're using of a chemical trader could represent trades in the hundreds of thousands or even millions per vessel and so not something that should be subject to crappy data and shortcuts. It is most likely their core business.

The quote below implies you think I'm having a pop at the testers. I'm not. I'm having a pop and the implementation partner and the business and stating it's not necessarily an issue with SAP functionality.

A tester who is restricted to only testing and reporting functionality cannot give that user the information he needs, which is what risks are associated with going into production and what possible benefits there will be. The tester has to break out of his IT mindset and place himself in the shoes of the user and the business owner; don't just test the screens and the batches, but test the whole thing; application, business, interaction with the ouside world etc. I actually don't care if an issue is technical, functional, business related, user related, support related, design related etc; it's an issue, and thereby forms a risk for the customer. Working out how to categorise and solve the issue is the next step.

as an addition, I bet they're doing every thing in L or GAL too

...and breathe.

[Pondlife]

Less unforgivable than preventing them from booking the trade or even making it at all?

Allowing bad IT to cripple the business is unforgivable.

Agree entirely.

Process is not fit for purpose as it stands and needs to be sorted,

Edit: By process I mean the way it is currently implemented not the business intention of it.

[Sysman]

I'm seriously looking at leaving IT and joining one of those businesses.

It would have been a great place to stay if the boss above mine hadn't been such a bully. There was the potential to end up at director level.

[Mich the Tester]

Agree entirely.

Process is not fit for purpose as it stands and needs to be sorted,

Edit: By process I mean the way it is currently implemented not the business intention of it.

Do people think in processes? Maybe process thinking is the root of the problem.

[milanbenes]

ha ha

CATS


Milan.

[JamJarST]

My first proper job was with a chemical company and for years it continued to grow. It really was a place where folks got stuff done, a large proportion of employees held shares and were committed to the company. A takeover would have been fiercely resisted.

Then I heard it was going to SAP. They were offering employees healthy retention bonuses and all that stuff.

Within a couple of years it had been taken over.

Are you actually saying that the implementation of SAP led to a take over ???