RPG Development Services: Solving the Maintainer Knowledge Gap

Compensation matters, but it is not the only factor. Being the sole person responsible for a critical application can become a burden. 

Documentation and cross-training can help. Giving another person exposure to the system reduces the pressure on the existing developer while making the role more sustainable. It also protects the organization from relying on a single person for essential knowledge. 

What If Our Documentation Effort Has Already Failed Twice? 

The problem may be the scope rather than the need for documentation. Trying to document everything, without a clear deadline or a defined audience, makes the work difficult to finish. 

Focus instead on the programs that are actually being used. Connect documentation to real development work, give each document a clear reader, and assign someone to review it. Documentation is much easier to complete when people know who will use it and why. 

RPG may outlast the people who built your applications. That is the real challenge. It does not automatically call for a multi-year rewrite. A focused effort to identify and capture critical application knowledge can reduce the risk while giving the organization more choices about what comes next. 

Expert RPG development services focus on extracting that knowledge while experienced developers are still available to validate it. The immediate goal is not to preserve RPG for its own sake. It is to preserve the business knowledge that makes the application work.