Re:IBM's infamous "Black Team" (2002)
by Kadin on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @07:00PM
(#986941)
Depends on the job. I've seen some very unfortunate PC deployments (most in the 90s) that axed perfectly good 3270-based systems in favor of clunky, crash-prone, button-and-wizard GUIs that were so bad, employees had to go back to paper-based workflows to get their jobs done.
Terminal-based systems often have a very steep learning curve, but I've seen many cases where they were better designed and met business needs better than COTS replacements.
Granted, those terminal-based systems were probably phenomenally expensive when they were put in (mostly in the 70s or early 80s, that I saw), and I suppose it's possible that after 15-20 years we have a biased sample that only represents the best of the breed, but they got the job done.
Terminal-based systems often have a very steep learning curve, but I've seen many cases where they were better designed and met business needs better than COTS replacements.
Granted, those terminal-based systems were probably phenomenally expensive when they were put in (mostly in the 70s or early 80s, that I saw), and I suppose it's possible that after 15-20 years we have a biased sample that only represents the best of the breed, but they got the job done.