Gary
Author Comments aka Comic News
Decisions
Ignore who I gave which side to, this is an age old business question. Do you risk losing existing clients in order to fix a major design flaw/process flaw/etc in your business, or do you cling on to the existing clients and stay less profitable/live with the problem at the cost of future clients. I don't own a business, so my take on it is probably somewhat uninformed, and I do understand that it's an opinion, not a right an wrong kind of situation. One could argue with for either side, quite convincingly. I tend to side on the "fix the global issue, even if there's some collateral loss," but it's not my money. Unfortunately, this is a choice that most companies need to make. Do they live in the now, or do the work on the future? Also, most companies don't have the manpower to do both, and even if you do both, there will be a point when one has to have priority over the other (the integration). Do you scrap all the work the support has done when a new system is there, or do you try to mash their work into a new system. Neither is good. The dropping their work means you've lost however much money you put into that work, and if there are clients that love it, you risk losing them too. If, on the other hand you cram it into your existing system, you risk having to rewrite it completely and you risk bringing in the old practices you're trying to eliminate into the new system. So, as an example (a truly fake example that involves people dieing), You have a dam that's falling apart, it has cracks and holes, water is leaking out. You have a team that's trying to patch it up as much as possible. You now have a choice, keep patching, or build a new dam. If you build a new one, you have to use your resources to build it, so the patching stops, and some people flood out. If you keep patching, you'll end up getting more and more holes, and it's a question of if your team will be able to keep up with it, and you're getting nothing new/extra out of this work. If you magically have the manpower to do both, then when the new dam is done, you run into the question of "how do you eliminate the original dam without destroying the new one, or do you just keep it in place and let it fail over time?" Also, while they were patching, they decided to add in a small power generator. That generator is build out of the same materials they they've been patching with, so now you lose that power generator when you switch over to the new dam. So, do you try and salvage it and put it in the new dam, or leave it? If you try to salvage it, you have to recognize that it's built with the patching material, so it's more likely to fall apart later than the new dam which has been build with state of the art materials. Like I said earlier, neither way is right, and neither way is wrong. There are boons to both sides. I would lean towards, "scrap the old generator and create a new one for the new dam, out of the same material as the new dam." But, I do have to realize that this is only an opinion. One I could argue for, if need be, but that doesn't make it an absolute. Now, on that note, I'll end my little side rant. See? This is what happens when I actually have time to work on a comic, I get gabby.
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