Making changes to existing software requires care and a certain amount of detective work. An upgrade to a report or an entire system can have disastrous consequences to other programs or systems that may not be obvious at first.
For instance, enlarging a field in one program that passes that field to another as part of a flat file or a pass record can cause the secondary program to either fail or to interpret all data to the right of the new field incorrectly. Actually, the failure is the better of the two consequences. Incorrect interpretation of data can go undetected for weeks or months and cause economic consequences far beyond those of a simple systems crash.
Documentation is usually created when a program or system is initially constructed, then is set aside and forgotten. Therefore it may be woefully out of date. So, the roll of software sleuth is vital when modifying existing systems.
Viking Waters' professionals have the skills necessary to ferret out the links within a system to help prevent such disasters. In addition, we do rigorous testing of all changes to make sure everything works as well or better than it did prior to the change.