Silver Bullet Syndrome

I've noticed a trend in my current organization which I'm sure is common to many companies. I'm having a hard time defining it, but let's call it "Silver Bullet Syndrome"... where when faced with some business problem, companies immediately look for an off the self (OTS) technology solution - many times without understanding the full scope of the problem. The OTS solution is viewed as a "Silver Bullet" and will immediately solve all of the organization's woes.

Now I'm not saying all off the shelf software is bad, but often times these business problems are not generic enough to be addressed by a general solution. The lack of flexibility of many OTS solutions compounds the problem, forcing companies to modify business processes or requirements to meet the capabilities of the tool instead of the other way around.

Once the tool is in place however, another problem manifests itself. This often starts with a management mandate like, "OK now that we have our shiny new Silver Bullet 2.0 and have paid $$$ for it, let's get the biggest bang for our buck by using it everywhere!". What I've seen is that the limitations and compromises encountered when solving the original problem are now limitations and compromises of multiple business processes - making the entire organization less effective.

In my current situation JCAPS is playing the Silver Bullet role. JCAPS was initially purchased for it's single customer view capabilities. Even though they've had continuous problems with that implementation, the organization moved forward with a JCAPS-based business automation project. Looking at the suite, someone noticed the JCAPS Business Activity Monitoring (eBAM) functionality and now wants to use this for system level reporting on the system.

Some examples to drive home the point on how the company has modified it's business to meet the capabilities of the tool:
  • This organization is traditionally .NET and has a large staff of .NET developers and infrastucture. It has little expertise or experience supporting Java enterprise applications.
  • While some of the EDI messages this organization supports are included in the JCAPS OTDs, some are not. JCAPS does not provide the capability to customize these modules, forcing the company to develop "home grown" solutions anyway (reducing the benefit of the tool).
  • The system reporting that the company wants is a mixture of tables and charts reporting on the performance of the system. The eBAM module only supports specific chart types (bar, pie, light) and no tables. Furthermore, eBam only works with Oracle or an internal proprietary database. Not a good fit for a company which mainly uses Sybase tables.

Currently the project is behind schedule (and I'm guessing over budget). I believe this company would have a better chance for long term success if the organization focused on using it's tech knowledge to create some custom solutions that meet their exact business needs (and they could support), instead of looking for a "Silver Bullet".

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