How to Convince management to upgrade to .Net 4.0 [closed]

Question

We developed an application using .net 2.0. We license our software which means whenever we release a new version, we have to push out the change to all our existing clients.

No one in my group has the slightest motivation to upgrade to a newer version of .net. They simple see it as more work for our support team to deploy and argue that clients will be resistant to any change.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some argument i could present to Non programmers that might sway them.

If noting else, some argument that it is safe, and will not cause our clients any harm who already have the .net 2.0 framework on their machines?

I figure it's hopeless. I'm gonna be stuck using the .net 2.0 framework until for another 4 or 5 years i bet... perhaps longer :( help!

I really want to be able to use WCF, LINQ, WPF (possible), and the option to use the Entity Framework 4.0.!

thanks

jonathan

Answer 1

In my experience a business that doesn't keep its technology stack up-to-date loses their best developers, leaving the business with poor systems and service. Which certainly affects bottom-line.

Non-technical managers often find that difficult to grasp or understand, and are more pressured with short-term concerns.

Therefore, you'll have to emphasise the financial benefits of upgrading.

Look at how Entity-Framework, to take one example, will save time (money) writing data access code. Work out the difference between manually coding your data access layer and auto-generating code with EF. Present the cost-saving to management responsible for budgets.

If that fails and you're surrounded by people who lack any motivation to use new technology, and you really like new technology, you may need to find a more suitable job.

Answer 2

So your real motivation is

"I really want to be able to use WCF, LINQ, WPF (possible), and the option to use the Entity Framework 4.0.!"

This is not a good enough reason for upgrading! If you can't convince yourself that the company is going to get more profits, don't try to convince the management.

Sometimes there is no reason to upgrade, and it may be even a wrong business move. Consider your business case if you want to convince managers.

Answer 3

I tend to agree with @Lior Kogan, in that upgrading for the sake of it is not something that you should be arguing with management about.

In fact, there are good arguments for not upgrading:

• if you've got a stable platform, why introduce potential instability?
• if we upgrade this, will it force us to spend more money upgrading other things?
• will it mean we have to force our customers to upgrade as well?

All these things are big negatives to a business, and make a good case for maintaining the status-quo.

However, upgrades are necessary at some point. There are a lot of very frustrated web developers out there who are cursing businesses worldwide for taking the above aproach to Internet Explorer v6: While those businesses were arguably doing the right thing for some time, they've now passed the point where it is difficult to defend staying still. It may not be the case for you now, but eventually the same will hold true for a .NET upgrade.

The argument here would be that the old version of the technology is obsolete:

• it is no longer supported by the vendor, particularly with security fixes.
• it is no longer sold by the vendor, making it hard to increase your number of users.
• other technologies that we use rely on the newer version.
• our customers are asking us for features that can only be delivered using the new version.

If any one of those points holds true than you may have a good argument for an upgrade that will win over the management. If not, you may have to stick it out.

Answer 4

If you really want to push this change I would simply approach it in another way. If you are currently using Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008 you can target the project for a specfic platform.

In a future planned update suggest the target version of the framework be changed. Modify your requirements to require 3.5 and/or 4.0 and release the upgrade. Everything will work exactly the same, you can also easily include the .NET Framework installer itself, depending on how you release updates.

Once you get the software to a newer version you can start to work on proposed changes. Of course your reasons are still not valid. You won't be able to use WPF for instance based on the fact it sounds like a WinForms application. Unless you have a need for Linq I am not sure the reason you want to use it.

Of course you could also do your proposed changes on the side I suppose, entirely depends on how you are assigned work, might involve doing it after your 8 hours each day or on the weekends.