How important the backward compatibility support for enterprise applications

Friends,

This time I am going to share my experience regarding the "Backward Compatability" and how important in the API design. 

There is a custom application that we have developed for our business which is using the third party webservice.  The custom application is developed, deployed and working fine in the production.  All of sudden due to some reasons we were in a position to take the upgraded version of third-party webservice.  The surprise part is that we need to change the basic implementation of our custom application to integrate with the upgraded 3rd party service which is not required for us.  It means those are already working fine for us.

If it is altogether the new feature (plugged) then no issues but it is not the case.  So we have again integrated for the already proven operations in the custom applications and again have gone with complete test to prove the system's stability.  But it took long time for us to make it perfect than the expected time due to this ignorance of "Backward compatability" from third-party service teams' side.

We have strongly expressed our dissatisfaction with the new service to the third-party service team and told that we are expecting the backward compatible service going forward.  The enterprise applications like ours should not end up in trouble because of this lack of design at the third-party side and it is the biggest mistake.

I would appreciate if you share your experiences....comments......

Yours
Ganesan S

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1228/technology-virtualization-vmware-wyse.html

Dream coming to reality now.....Nice to see the time where no desktops in the cubicle and just network, monitor and keyboard....Good article

My view on Technical Mgmt Vs Project Mgmt

Dear Friends,

As you know that I have recently got promoted as Project Lead (at last......) @ Tesco.  I have argued with my friends especially with Lenin that I do not find big difference between project management and tehnical management especially in terms of project delivery.  Many people may argue that project management is purely about non-tehnical deliverables and technical stream is only about delivering technical design.  But my argument is that in a ideal case the project manager should posses both technical as well management skill.  In other words project manager should lead the design team and contribute something in the design.

I am trying to be stick in that line and I should go in that path.  It means "Tehnical Project Lead/Management".  In my argument I am putting these points,

• A builder should be a Civil Engineer who can deal with design as well as effectively manage to get the work done. 
• If a person who has just money and just start the "Property development" he may not be succedeed with business as he neither do not have any clue about design nor doing effective people management. 
• If we consider just a person who has management skill can not monitor or suggest the effective design.

This argument may fit for any industry and not just fit for IT/ITES.

With the common sense I am broadly splitting the managements into the following categories namely,

• Project Management (responsible for complete project life cycle)
• Business Management (responsible for finding new business opportunities and demanding the project management to deliver the solution)

Here I am talking about IDEAL case not just individual streams (Tehnical/Project Mgmt).

I have learnt from both of my well-wishers Sankar and Steve that at any point in time we should not ignore or forget the technical line which is core required skill in the IT industry.  We should always keep in touch with the coding!!!
Please argue with me!!!
Yours,
Ganesan S