I was listening to some music and the REO song, Roll With The Changes came on. At that time, I was looking at the BE Communities site at the V8i community and was thinking, what changes are worth "rolling" with? As an Engineering Application Specialist, I oversee about 450 trained MicroStation users. As new versions are released, we constantly have to answer the question, "When are we going to upgrade?"
When I started, the standard answer was that we would wait fully 2 years before upgrading. We had just moved to version 95 and we were looking at SE mostly to take advantage of concurrent licensing. We moved about half our users to SE but with the hype of J and the promise of Java integration, we waited out installing to the rest of the workforce and moved to J in November of 2000. Then we waited. After 8.0 came out and followed quickly by 8.1, we were fairly scared. MicroStation J, "Got us through our darkest hour, We heard the thunder clappin, Felt the desert burnin..." Users wanted to go to 8.1 but we were waiting to be, "poured on... Like a sweet sunshower?" 8.5 or 2004 Edition was that sweet sunshower. Stable and ease of use. We trained our users and in July of 2004, we started the transition to 8.5.
Once we were using 8.5, the push came to move to XM. What are the advantages, the disadvantages, will the cost to train for the upgrade again, in such a short time, be worth it? Due to the legal language of our new SELECT contract, we moved. A move we regret to this day. Compared to 8.5, it was a bug monster. Reference files didn't act even close to 8.5. Productivity dropped about 28% and life was not good. After some excellent help from Bentley, with a little pushing, the bugs were fixed and we are on a stable platform once again.
Already the question has come up, how soon are we going to move to V8i. I know the testing has been extensive, and most of the bugs from XM were "fixed in Athens" but is it enough. Are we willing to spend another $85k for training, will it be worth it? I guess we are waiting to see and hear from folks that have moved. So far we aren't, "Tired of the same old story." Feel free to share stories of implementation, good or bad. We need to be informed. I like these forums and blogs because information is what they are about. Let us know if we need to, "Roll with the changes" or just, "Keep on running."
Well said, It is funny in this "Technical world" that the word upgrade still strikes fear into the heart of the toughest of users. I have never been through an easy one in my 25 years or so of doing CADD from the VAX to Vista. At our agency we have pretty much skipped XM and plan on implementing V8i in mid to late 2009. Assuming we figure out most of the "got ya's" before we are ready to roll.