Somewhere in your organization, there is a person who has been maintaining the PowerBuilder application for twenty years.
They don’t just know how the system works. They know why it works that way.
They know why that DataWindow updates three different fields when you change the dropdown. They know why the pricing calculation has a special condition for that one client signed in 2003. They know why field B’s validation depends on field A ā but only in certain cases.
None of that knowledge is written down. It lives in their head. Built over two decades.
When that person retires, the knowledge doesn’t just go with them. So does the organization’s ability to interpret the system when something goes wrong.
Key-person dependency in PowerBuilder applications is the most undermanaged operational risk in enterprise IT.
Has your organization started the formalization process?
You can find relevant information in the specific section: https://enable-dev.com/outstaffing
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