A client of mine has an application written in Classic ASP and COM+. The managers are interested in migrating it to ASP.NET MVC but they have to convince the CIO that it is a good move. The old app still works OK, other than the fact that no one at the company can maintain it. How can we sell upper management on converting to ASP.net from Classic ASP? Thanks in advance!
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3 Answers
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The old app still works OK, other than the fact that no one at the company can maintain it.
You have your argument right there. If there's no one able to maintain the application then if there's a problem you are completely stuck. It won't be a case of the application being down for a couple of hours, it will be down forever - or at least until you hire someone who can fix it or do the re-write.
Finding and hiring someone at short notice is likely to cost more than the average.
And a re-write under pressure isn't going to be a good re-write either which will end up costing more in continued maintenance.
Try to convert these into numbers, you know your local contractor rates for example, and present those to management.
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From my experience, blabbering on about how cool new technologies are, and new features they implement, and how much you want it, or how much of a good idea it would be to use it, will NOT convince the upper management.
Remember, they aren't programmers, (and obviously you know this other wise you wouldn't be asking this).
Try and explain how moving to ASP.Net will provide better security making it so hackers cannot get in as easily, how the switch to the new technology will save countless hours of HIGH paid developer time to perform maintenance, how it will save the IT Team from being on the server making sure everything stays online.
Try putting it into an equation on how much money (peoples time) can be saved. 10 hours of developer time a month at $80 an hour, and 5 hours of IT time a month at $80 an hour, thats $1,200 a month they could be saving. And that doesn't even include how it can help your company make money. By providing faster service and better service, anyone in the company who uses that application (and those who rely on those who use that application), see better and faster results.
More work + less time = More Money
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without seeing the classic asp app, it's difficult to 'say this' for certain. however, depending on the competancy of the code, the classic app could be vulnerable to sql injection (i.e. if paramaterised queries aren't being used). also, depending on the business market, the ability to react to change could be hindered if the code isn't maintainable at the moment. this will certainly disadvantage the business if the competition is able to steal a lead 'overnight'. i'd also say that the market for devlopers of mvc might actually turn out to be cheaper per hour than classic asp due to the fact of availability of the classic asp devs.
the long and short of it really is that (as stated in other replies too) management will want to hear a story based on bottom line, competative advantage and maintainability. from where i'm standing, mvc will certainly (in a considered environment) deliver this far more effectively than patching up legacy code that's poorly understood.
