Management packs and upgrades

Question

I am new to my position and to Service Manager. I can see such great potential of what Service Manager can do and how easy it could be to work with it however my company is afraid to make changes. They have said that not to far in the past
they did some customization and when they did the upgrade to 2012 r2 they lost everything - data included. They couldn't give me quite enough details as those that performed the task are no longer here. It went along the lines of a technician built management
packs that customized the screens. When they did the upgrade the management packs could no longer be used which resulted in them not being able to bring forward the data. They say they worked with Microsoft on the issue. From what I have been reading
this just doesn't sound like something that could happen in this extreme. However, they are now adamant that we cannot customize anything because of this. They want to use the system however people are miserable with it as out of the box just doesn't
fit what they need. How can I convince them that customization is not evil and precautions can be taken when upgrading where everything does not have to be redone?

Answer 1

You're dealing with psychology. Your company had a bad experience and now don't even want to risk that bad experience again.
It would definitely help to know what the heck your previous technicians did that could screw up Service Manager _that_ bad..especially if they were only customizing screens (I assume they were extending or creating forms).
But.. for some general advice on how to keep customizations "safe" and maybe calm your manager's fears, these are the guidelines I follow:
If your customizations include creating your own classes or relationships, always keep them in separate sealed management packs. Data warehouse extensions should also be kept in separate sealed MPs.
Console tasks, custom forms/form extensions, should generally be kept in their own management packs (sealed or unsealed).
Workflow rules, templates, and notification templates should be generally kept in their own unsealed management packs (so they can be easily modified from the console).
Since this is an extensible system, you should be doing regular backups of the Service Manager database. That way if someone messes something up really bad, you can always restore from a backup and lose maybe a day's worth of data.
Lastly, and most importantly, Service Manager is meant to be extended. Microsoft builds platforms. They don't build programs that can do everything. They build programs that can be _made_ to do everything. Every company is different..each has their
own flare for process, their own take on how a program should work. Service Manager is flexible enough to allow you to introduce your own flare and your own take on things. Instead of adapting your processes to Service Manager, you can adapt Service Manager
to your processes.
The downside, of course, is that with flexibility comes risk. Folks who extend these programs should be pretty familiar with how the underlying platform works. But if you take necessary precautions (follow the guidelines, do regular backups, etc) you can
reduce the risk significantly.
That's just my 2 cents :)