My team and I just finished working on a project converting 150 maps from GENTRAN visual to AI. This was first presented to our team months ago as a project that was not time sensitive. We worked on it when we had time, but it often got pushed back as more urgent issues and projects came up.
As someone who had very little prior experience with AI, I opted to sweep the project under the rug on many occasions in favor of other tasks. I was hesitant to start the job because at that point I was inexperienced having only done one simple purchase order map. I even resorted to doing some documentation instead! The time finally came when I could no longer put it off and we had to start working on converting the maps and tracking our progress.
Now that the project is finished, I can say that it wasn’t as bad as I thought and my reluctance was unnecessary. In hindsight, I believe I was hesitant to start these AI maps was because I had grown so comfortable with the old visual mapper and didn’t feel the need to change. It had met all our needs for many years in the past, so why should we start fixing something that wasn’t broken? I now realize that IBM will not be providing support for the visual mapper forever and my client will eventually need a software upgrade. Remedi has been diligent in keeping my client aware of any end-of-support dates for their IBM software. Updating the mapper turned out to be a good thing for everyone involved, including myself.
I've enjoyed learning more about the AI mapper and have completed some of our more challenging maps at this point. Without the aforementioned mapping experience, I would not be able to work with my team and accomplish tasks with confidence. The new mapping system doesn’t seem such a daunting task anymore and I now look forward to more challenges that come my way.
