PPPPPP- FUBAR

[burntfrijoles]

Prior Planning Prevents P!$$ Poor Performance
My credit union has been converting to a new "On Line Banking Experience" since Friday. The system is still not back up. I can only guess that they have a crappy vendor, crappy IT department, a crappy host system among other failings.
The institution has been teasing this new "experience" for almost a year and, if I recall correctly, it was supposed to occur much earlier.
I don't know how much they tested the system, including their cutover plans but they have failed completely thus far.
I am not an IT guy but I have been involved with conversions and cutovers for entire hospital systems. Some went more smoothly than other and one was severely impacted by the inadequacy of the host system, compounded by the failure of the tech support folks who were an outsourced contract service. (The system functioned, it was just incredibly slow.)
The current situation can only be described as a complete cluster F.
I am just venting.

 

[telleutelleme]

Usually when they put "Coming Soon A new On Line Experience", you can experience something short of "A good experience". Used to be you had a testing environment setup to do just that. Perhaps that knowledge didn't get passed on to the next generation.

 

[Killing Floor]

Is your credit union PECU? I write 1 check per month. I have for years. My credit union has a website and a client portal. I can check my account and order checks. But I can’t pay my mortgage. So stupid.

 

[burntfrijoles]

Is your credit union PECU? I write 1 check per month. I have for years. My credit union has a website and a client portal. I can check my account and order checks. But I can’t pay my mortgage. So stupid.

No, it's a different CU. I write one check a month to the guy who does my lawn care. I am trying to get him to use Venmo so I can eliminate writing checks. I have always been happy with my CU and the online software has been fine although I can't set up the CU's Visa for e-bills or e-bill payments. (Silly). Otherwise it's been fine. I doubt the new app and online system will be vastly superior to what they have had but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Regardless, they have failed at this conversion and it certainly diminishes my confidence in their systems. It's too much of a pain to change financial institutions so I'll let it ride.

 

[burntfrijoles]

Used to be you had a testing environment setup to do just that.

I would assume most sophisticated IT departments have development, testing and live environments for maintenance and ongoing enhancement R&D but who knows. Financial folks should have crackerjack IT folks.

 

[PhoenixBill]

Years ago I worked in corporate for a large multI-national company. They announced with great fanfare that they were going to implement a complete ERP system; when a customer purchased a product, raw materials to replace it would be automatically ordered and the whole system (production, warehousing, maintenance etc) would be tuned accordingly. Dozens of contractors were employed in an off-site office to work on the complexities of the many factories involved but senior management kept sending out weekly updates that all was going well and a rollout date was announced with a daily countdown sent out to all employees. Then…the evening before the scheduled rollout…a new email was sent out.
The entire project was cancelled. All contractors on the project were immediately dismissed. (This boondoggle was easily a $15 million waste of money; I interviewed one of the participants for a grad school paper.) Yet the senior managers still collected their annual bonuses even though the rest of us didn’t get a raise that year.

 

[nojazzhere]

Prior Planning Prevents P!$$ Poor Performance
My credit union has been converting to a new "On Line Banking Experience" since Friday. The system is still not back up. I can only guess that they have a crappy vendor, crappy IT department, a crappy host system among other failings.
The institution has been teasing this new "experience" for almost a year and, if I recall correctly, it was supposed to occur much earlier.
I don't know how much they tested the system, including their cutover plans but they have failed completely thus far.
I am not an IT guy but I have been involved with conversions and cutovers for entire hospital systems. Some went more smoothly than other and one was severely impacted by the inadequacy of the host system, compounded by the failure of the tech support folks who were an outsourced contract service. (The system functioned, it was just incredibly slow.)
The current situation can only be described as a complete cluster F.
I am just venting.

My long time bank was recently taken over by PNC.....and it was THE MOST F'd-UP transition imaginable. There was a period of several days where I had no access to my funds or even online account info. Supposedly, they're still honoring direct deposits and transfers sent to my old account numbers, although I've notified everyone I can think of about the new numbers. I'm working to get all my ducks oriented, and then I'm going to change banks. (not going to do it in anger, they'll get offended and mess it up somehow.)
Please don't ask me to recommend them.

 

[Toto'sDad]

My long time bank was recently taken over by PNC.....and it was THE MOST F'd-UP transition imaginable. There was a period of several days where I had no access to my funds or even online account info. Supposedly, they're still honoring direct deposits and transfers sent to my old account numbers, although I've notified everyone I can think of about the new numbers. I'm working to get all my ducks oriented, and then I'm going to change banks. (not going to do it in anger, they'll get offended and mess it up somehow.)
Please don't ask me to recommend them.

See, now that's exactly how I got to be an old man who stands in the yard and shakes his fist at clouds, (if there were any clouds in Bakersfield). I don't like CHANGE of ANY KIND! I want to live where NOTHING EVER CHANGES! They always say the change is for the better but it never is. I paid six dollars and ten cents a gallon for gas a couple of days ago. I DIDN'T get ANY CHANGE! I didn't like that either!

 

[burntfrijoles]

Yet the senior managers still collected their annual bonuses even though the rest of us didn’t get a raise that year.

Ain't it the truth.... ain't it the truth... reward for the guilty and punishment, neglect for the innocent.

With great fanfare just the technical/hardware portion (IT) of Information Services was outsourced. Software support (IS) was kept in house. The outsourcing was going to save "meeellions" of dollars over the course of the contract. Well, the IT contractors sucked. They did a poor job of maintaining the system, technical support (including the help desk), etc. The brilliant minds at national who proposed, selected and negotiated the contract were given big bonuses. The end users suffered. Eventually support was so poor that they had to end the contract prematurely resulting in a huge settlement that benefitted the contractor. It was all brought back in house.
Fast forward 10 years and yep, you guessed it, they've outsourced the whole IT services other than a skeletal crews at each local facility. It's another boondoggle, cluster F, in the making.

 

[unixfish]

My long time bank was recently taken over by PNC.....and it was THE MOST F'd-UP transition imaginable. There was a period of several days where I had no access to my funds or even online account info. Supposedly, they're still honoring direct deposits and transfers sent to my old account numbers, although I've notified everyone I can think of about the new numbers. I'm working to get all my ducks oriented, and then I'm going to change banks. (not going to do it in anger, they'll get offended and mess it up somehow.)
Please don't ask me to recommend them.

When PNC took over the bank we used (12-ish years ago), we still used our old account number for, oh, 5 years or so before we were forced to get new checks with a new account number. (I still remember my old account number.) Our routing number never changed.

 

[PhoenixBill]

Ain't it the truth.... ain't it the truth... reward for the guilty and punishment, neglect for the innocent.

With great fanfare just the technical/hardware portion (IT) of Information Services was outsourced. Software support (IS) was kept in house. The outsourcing was going to save "meeellions" of dollars over the course of the contract. Well, the IT contractors sucked. They did a poor job of maintaining the system, technical support (including the help desk), etc. The brilliant minds at national who proposed, selected and negotiated the contract were given big bonuses. The end users suffered. Eventually support was so poor that they had to end the contract prematurely resulting in a huge settlement that benefitted the contractor. It was all brought back in house.
Fast forward 10 years and yep, you guessed it, they've outsourced the whole IT services other than a skeletal crews at each local facility. It's another boondoggle, cluster F, in the making.

One of the great fallacies of the modern MBA program is the philosophy that “you don’t need to know anything about what your company does, you just need to know how to manage.” Why you could manage a shoe company one year and a hospital the next year! No problem! Managers are cogs that can be picked up and just inserted anywhere else at will. Wanna manage a baseball team, but don’t know the first thing about baseball? No problem! The extension of this philosophy is that employees and their departments are also just replaceable cogs. Save money, get cheaper cogs. I have worked in several companies that outsourced the maintenance on their machines—to the lowest bidder of course. Uh, like an outside company is now going to have an incentive to improve your company’s performance by finding ways to improve these machines? Same way with IT.
Senior management doesn’t realize usually that one of a company’s biggest assets is the collective knowledge that’s preserved inside the company. They don’t realize that employees who actually work for the company have a vested interest in keeping the company running well.

 

[burntfrijoles]

One of the great fallacies of the modern MBA program is the philosophy that “you don’t need to know anything about what your company does, you just need to know how to manage.”

As a result you don't have leaders, you have handlers. There is no pride of authorship, workmanship and there is no connection to the final product. I am so glad that I'm retired. I could not work in modern organization structures, with their top-down, bottom line methods. Don't pursue excellence, settle for "good enough".

 

[Flat6Driver]

When you think about all the IT needs versus how many IT workers there are. And then think only half of them are above average, you don't always get the good ones.

 

[burntfrijoles]

UPDATE: I can finally log in but the system is excruciatingly slow. The e-bill system did not transition so I must re-enroll in the e-bill, auto-pay programs. My automatic transfers to savings are also lost. The "enhanced online experience" is a myth or a promise unfulfilled. (as expected)
I am so underwhelmed.

 

[Old Verle Miller]

I can tell you from long experience that the IT industry is facing a crisis of longevity. Far too many staff employees have very short tenure in their position. They obtain certifications in order to make themselves more qualified for better opportunities and because of the way they are often treated by incompetent managers, they will take advantage of any even-slightly better offer.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[NoTeleBob]

I've done a lot of IT work as well as Internet implementations & conversions.

First, I'll cut them a lot of slack. Things go wrong that you could not have planned for.

HOWEVER, the sign of a good plan is a backup plan that gets you back to the old system when something goes wrong. Then you try again next weekend. I've seen a lot of instances where that is totally ignored.

When the Internet came along the industry suddenly forgot everything they'd learned in the previous 20 years - and that hasn't improved. Still a cluster-poke as the rule.

 

[getbent]

These are complex systems. Friday to monday is shrug worthy. If you have a good credit union, grace them a couple of weeks to find their feet.

 

[teleplayr]

My roommate works online for a major hospital group. I swear that they must be bringing in people that have just graduated from IT school.

Most of them don't have a clue.

Another friend who worked for a medical equipment manufacturer was telling me that the company he worked for would constantly change software at least once a year.

No sooner than the people who work with these programs gets used to the format, the company would switch to another program and the problem starts all over again.

 

[buster poser]

Prior Planning Prevents P!$$ Poor Performance

Prior IT project and program manager here, just want to say it absolutely doesn't.

 

[teletail]

Usually a result of accepting the lowest bid for the job.