Anyone in the product chain can pull the Andon Cord to stop production when he notices that the product’s quality is poor.

Stopping a system when a defect is suspected originates back to Toyota. The idea is that by blocking the system, you get an immediate opportunity for improvement or find a root cause instead of letting the defect move further down the line and be unresolved.

A crucial aspect of Toyota’s “Andon Cord” process was that when the team leader arrived at the workstation, they thanked the team member who pulled the Cord.

The incident would not be a paper report or a long-tail bureaucratic process. The problem would be immediately addressed, and the team member who pulled the cord would fix it.

For software systems, this practice is beneficial as well. However, the opposite process is likely the practice we see in our drive for quick results.

We don’t stop the process in case of issues. We apply a quick fix, and ‘we will resolve it later’.

The person noticing an issue is regarded as a whistle-blower. Issues may get covered in this culture, leading to even more severe problems.

When serious issues occur, we start a bureaucratic process that quickly becomes political, resulting in watered-down solutions and covering up the fundamental problems.

In software systems, backward compatibility is a blessing and a curse. While backward compatibility discharges users from mandatory software updates, it is also an excuse to ignore maintenance. For software vendors, omitting backward compatibility is a means to get users to buy new stuff; “enjoy our latest innovations!”.

1980s software on 64-bit hardware

You can not run Windows 95 software on Windows 11.

You can not Run MacOS X software on a PowerBook G4 from 2006.

You can not use Java version 5 software on a Java 11 runtime.

You can, however, run mainframe software compiled in 1980 for 16-bit hardware on the latest z/OS 64-bit operating system and the latest IBM Z hardware. This compatibility is one of the reasons for the success of the IBM mainframe.

Backward compatibility in software has significant benefits. The most significant benefit is that you do not need to change applications with technology upgrades. This saves large amounts of effort and, thus, money for changes that bring no business benefit.

The dangers of backward compatibility

Backward compatibility also has very significant drawbacks:

• Because you do not need to fix software for technology upgrades, backward compatibility leads to laziness in maintenance. Just because it keeps running, the whole existence of the software is lost out of sight. Development teams lose the knowledge of the functionality and sometimes even the supporting business processes. Minor changes may be made haphazardly, leading to slowly increasing code complexity. Horrific additions are made to applications, using tools like screen scraping, leading to further complexity of the IT landscape. Then, significant changes are suddenly necessary, and you are in big trouble.
• Backward compatibility hinders innovation. Not only can you not take advantage of modern hardware capabilities, but you also get stuck with programming and interfacing paradigms of the past. You can not exploit functionality trapped inside old programs, and it is tough to integrate through modern technologies like REST APIs.

The problem may be even more significant. Because you do not touch your code, other issues may appear.

Over the years, you will change from source code management tools. During these transitions, code can get lost, or insight into the correct versions of programs gets lost.

Also, compilers are upgraded all the time. And the specifications of the programming languages may change. Consequently, the code you have, which belongs to the programs running in your production environment, can not be compiled any longer. When changes are necessary, your code suddenly needs to catch up with all these changes. And that will make the change a lot riskier.

How to avoid backward compatibility complacency?

Establish a policy to recompile, test, and deploy programs every 2 or 3 years, even if the code needs no functional change. Prevent a pile of technical debt.

Is that a lot of work? It does not need to be. You could automate most, if not all, of the compilation and testing process. If nothing functionally changes, modern test tools can help support this process. With these tools, you can automate running tests, compare results with the expected output, and pinpoint issues.

This process also has a benefit: your recompiled code will run faster because it can use the latest hardware features. You can save money if your software bill is based on CPU consumption.

Don’t let backward compatibility make you backward.

My proverbial neighbor asked me some time ago if he could have a zero data loss ransomware recovery solution for his IT shop. He is not a very technical guy, yet responsible for the IT in his department, and he is wise enough to go seek advice on such matters. My man next door could very well be your boss, being provoked by a salesperson from your software vendor.

What is a zero data loss ransomware recovery solution?

A ransomware recovery solution is a tool that provides you the ability to recovery your IT systems from the incident in which a ransomware criminal has encrypted a crucial part of your IT systems. A zero data loss solution promises to provide such a recovery without the loss of any data. The promise of zero data loss must be approached with the necessary skepticism. A zero data loss solution requires you to be able to decrypt the data that your ransomware criminal has encrypted with the keys that he offers to give you for a nice sum of money. To get these keys you have two options:

1. Pay the criminal and hope he will send you the keys.
2. Create the keys yourself. This would require some highly advanced algorithm, possibly using a tool based on Quantum computing technology. This is a fantasy of course. This first person to know about the practical application of such technology would be your ransomware criminal himself, and he will have applied this in his encryption tooling.

So getting the keys is not an option, unless you are in the position to save up a lot of money, or find an insurer that will carry your ransomware risk. Although I expect that will come at an excruciating premium.

The next best option is to recover your data from a point in time just before the event of the ransomware attack. This requires a significant investment in advanced backup technology, and complex recovery procedures, while giving you little guarantee as to what state your systems can be recovered. And, setting the expectations, will come with the loss of all data that your ransomware criminal managed to encrypt. We cannot make it more beautiful.