Did Y2K teach us nothing?

I know it was a little while ago now but those who worked through the Y2K period would remember it well. It wasn't just all about testing of old software code which no one thought would still be in production 30 years on. Contrary to popular modern belief, Y2K wasn't an expensive storm in a teacup. There was a very real scare that everything might stop due to 2 digit date fields thinking it was 1900 - and finding them was difficult.



I know of a major financial institution's mortgage calculator that was found to be wrong and a manufacturer who accidentally destroyed a whole day's product due to an electronic system deeming the new produce to be past it's use-by date. There were several other glitches picked up before the fatal date also.



The major message of what we should remember from this period is the massive effort applied to defining and documenting manual workarounds for all major business processes. For the first time in their history some businesses were thinking about continuity plans.



So what should we have learnt? What happens when the technology fails? And it will fail. IT systems now have a complexity that no one person can understand end-to-end. We live in a world where businesses and people are atrophied by technology failure.

The photo I've attached is from the front door of my local Priceline store. Apologies for the quality of the photo - it was after dark and a cheap camera.



Priceline's computers were down and therefore "naturally" they closed the store until further notice!



I can understand not being willing to wear the risk of dispensing some medications without electronic verification but I don't understand why they couldn't trade other items. Can I not buy shampoo? Does their cash register not function at all? That would be extremely poor design.

And, I know it's painful, but those paperbased credit card swipe devices still work (taxi drivers still seem to love them). Obviously without the eft you wouldn't be able to provide a cashout facility but people would be ok with that if explained - plus there were 3 ATMs within half a block. The rewards scheme also wouldn't work - but who was the turkey who implemented that without some form of manual process as backup.

So, bottom line, priceline has no manual processes and appears willing to risk cessation of business when their technology fails.

I don't know how long this store was closed because of the cop out of "our computers are down" but I must say I find that pretty poor business practice.

Get real priceline - get some continuity processes. And I repeat, did we (priceline, because I know I did) learn nothing from Y2K?