[Themaintainers] Succession Planning for legacy maintainer?

[David Eddy]

All -

On Aug 10, 2020, at 5:02 PM, Caroline Kyungae Smith <caroline.kyungae at gmail.com> wrote:

> has anyone had to map the workflows of a legacy system maintainer before? What did you do and how did you manage a subject matter expert who knows so much but can't communicate it in a straightforward way? What was the final format of the documentation?
> 
> --
> 
> I am currently on a project where there is an 80-year-old subject matter expert and keeper of knowledge of an old mainframe that we are currently working to modernize, by converting the COBOL to Java and moving it to the cloud. 

I am a specialty software vendor in this niche.

Our world view is IBM z/OS mainframes… which means big, old, poorly documented operational systems. 

In most cases the code is the documentation plus the few remaining SMEs with the tacit knowledge between their ears.

Succession planning  —  actually from my very large down to departmental/small company  —  is a huge challenge.

It’s just human nature to ignore stuff that works & focus on today’s brush fires.  When “the IT guy” who knows how the maze is cobbled together leaves… this is not good.


___________________
David Eddy
deddy at davideddy.com
david.eddy at legacysoftware.co.uk

Legacy Software, Ltd.
www.legacysoftware.co.uk

781-455-0949  (Boston)

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