
Lessons Learned – Custom ERP in Smalltalk - mpweiher
http://smalltalk-bob.blogspot.com/2016/01/lessons-learned.html
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plinkplonk
Last I looked Visual Works smalltalk had weird license schemes that involved
perpetual royalties [1]. When I used to work in business/enterprise software
(no longer, thank FSM) this was an instant deal killer, especially for small
businesses.

Any information on how this was dealt with on this project would be greatly
appreciated.

[1]
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/pricing/](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/products/pricing/)

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igouy
afaict this custom ERP would fall into "Companies that plan to use Cincom
Smalltalk for developing applications for use within their own corporation"
\-- so your question does not apply to this case.

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David
Working on an ERP startup^, this was a very interesting read for me. Our
situation is a little different, because our goal is a customizable platform
rather than a single instance built for a single company.

Some points that resonated with me:

 _Pay your technical debt early_ : Cleaning up after yourself as soon as it
becomes apparent you've made a mess is huge. The most painful parts of our
application to use and to modify were built the wrong way (in hindsight) and
haven't been overhauled yet. The amount of additional work that has gone into
building and maintaining those parts over what would have been necessary is
massive. Of course, you can't always know how to build it right until you
build it wrong. Take the (tech debt) loan, but make sure you've budgeted for
paying it back quickly so you don't keep paying the interest forever.

 _Show progress_ and _Have clear metrics_ : These have been very important for
us. We started (some time ago) using milestones in our implementations to keep
client expectations in line with reality, and to keep ourselves on track and
smooth out the effort/time curve. This is probably project management 101, but
it seriously helps keep clients happy and reduces stressful last-minute work.

On the other hand, I have to question the necessity of a custom ERP and the
cost and effort put into it. "Total effort was about 16 to 18 person years
(our team size varied from 3 to 5 over 3.5 years)." It seems to me that a lot
of wheels may have been reinvented. In our experience, many companies think
they have totally unique processes and data to track, when they're really
doing just about the same stuff as their competitors. There can definitely be
advantages to having a custom, integrated system, but on the other hand, a
more flexible and customizable system can be deployed much faster and cheaper.
Not SAP, but there are other options.

Bob: I'm not sure what you can share, but what are the key benefits the
company expects to get out of a custom ERP? How big is the company? What is
the breadth of the software, here--does it include e.g. accounting, or mostly
industry-specific data collection?

On a more technical note, can you expound a little on how Smalltalk factored
into the design of the software? Why do you think Smalltalk was good
productivity-wise?

^Bizowie (bizowie.com)

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bluedino
>> On the other hand, I have to question the necessity of a custom ERP and the
cost and effort put into it.

I can't imagine why anyone would, either. I've seen companies spend 2X the
cost of a new ERP system that would solve all of their problems on
customizations and additions to an existing, outdated ERP system.

What do they end up with? Solutions that are incomplete, unreliable, and late
to the game.

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aryehof
Every business is unique, and a custom solution can support that uniqueness,
rather than the compromises that can need to be made with a (customizable)
packaged solution.

I've seen one company write off a 100 million dollar investment in a
Peoplesoft based replacement for a custom system, because it was realized that
the compromises that solution required were becoming too great. Sure it was
fabulous for 80% of requirements, but the other 20% became a giant sinkhole of
money and pain.

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David
Absolutely, if you have the budget to build, maintain, and support a custom
ERP, it may be the way to go. But I think it's a tiny fraction of businesses
where the benefits of that outweigh the extra costs involved. You have to be
very large, and your issues with existing systems have to be pretty expensive,
before that's the case.

Out of curiosity, do you know / can you share what kinds of problems caused
the Peoplesoft investment to fall apart? What issues did they run into?

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jwatte
Interestingly, the first "extreme programming" project was a Smalltalk project
(internal at Chrysler)

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i_feel_great
All these development practises originated in Smalltalk I believe. "Agile"
software development itself was dreamt up by a bunch of (mostly) Smalltalkers.
I heard once told that these practices were attempts at formalising/packaging
and selling normal Smalltalk development practices.

