How bad is bad for you?

Former Member · ‎07-07-2014

In a BW system I happened to see a complex predictive analysis application. There was data redundancy due to that app with more than 1 object storing same data. I can see that it is done for the ease of transformation and for the ease of applying complex calculations. It was not a very great design. Might also be that the constant change in requirements would have also led to this state.

But the business were happy with the application and I guess they save a big amount due to this app every year. Though it does not perform in a expert's eyes, the application performs fine with respect to the business , support team and system admins.

People would trash this developer and attribute problems like lack of rain on some part of the world to him. But to me, the developer is good. He enabled the business. True, with time and money the application could have been developed much better. He documented everything neatly and I don't see any impact to the app with regular upgrades. Maintenance is a question. I am happy maintaining it. I take this as a learninig but will not curse the developer. Infact I would invite him for a nice dinner!

Many would staunchly disagree with me for my opinion, but hey, anything for the business.

Lukas_Weigelt · ‎07-08-2014


He documented everything neatly

What more can you ask? ^^ As long as there's a clean documentation of what's been done and why, I'd be the epitome of happiness.

Former Member · ‎07-09-2014

So I infer that you don't bother much about the not so good design. Cheers.

Lukas_Weigelt · ‎07-09-2014

Ah well, don't get me wrong. I do bother about bad designs and I rant about them whenever there's time, but, as long as something is well documented, you are in the position of pulping and redesigning it or at least changing parts of it or, if anything fails, at least understand what's going on without investing days/weeks of time for a process analysis. If something is not or badly documented and it "just works" (or doesn't), then welcome to nerve-wrecking-in-depth-process-analysis-land. For that matter, not living in nerve-wrecking-in-depth-process-analysis-land provides plenty of happiness

Cheers, Lukas

Former Member · ‎07-10-2014

Ok. I think I categorize it in 2 brackets, a bad design and a not so good design. Nerve wrecking in depth analysis gives a high at the successfull end of it.