Y2K Conversion Projects: what a manager should be aware of

Abstract

Most data processing systems in the world use two digits to represent the year number in a date field. This representation will lead to errneous results as the current century draws to a close. The consequences of this year 2000 (Y2K) crisis are very alarming. Even more alarming is the fact that a significant number of managers are still not aware of the seriousness of the Y2K problem. If not tackled on a war footing, this bug might cause some organizations to go out of business. This paper by Venkata Rao discusses those aspects of the Y2K problem which are of interest to managers as they have a key role to play in the initiation of a Y2K conversion project in their organization and in defining its scope. According to him, many lessons are to be learnt from this crisis by the IT community, and, in future, new design strategies should be used to prevent this crisis from recurring.