I hear these terms all the time and I often hear them being misused. I\u2019m going to provide a few simple guidelines today in an attempt to provide what I think are the industry standard definitions.<\/p>\n
Customization:<\/strong> <\/strong> A change to the core application. This can be a change to the source code, or simply changes to the database design. This is often adding tables and fields to the database.<\/p>\n Configuration:<\/strong> <\/strong> A change to the application that does not impact the design of the underlying application architecture. Basically configuration is any activity you do that can be performed through the application user interface. Examples are inputting values to a core table.<\/p>\n Vanilla:<\/strong> <\/strong> This is pretty much a non-customized application. Generally an organization will say that they want to implement an HR system \u201cvanilla\u201d so that they don\u2019t need to maintain customization as they perform future upgrades and such.<\/p>\n In past systems, customization often included the modification of workflow processes or adding approval levels to these workflows. As technology gets better, the definition of these processes is getting incorporated into system tables. Therefore, the definition of a process is no longer a modification to the database, but is now simply an entry of data into a table. Rules engines have been going through the same changes. Where you used to write a \u201cscript\u201d that was applied to the database, now rules are being housed in tables and fields. Customization may never totally disappear, but it\u2019s gradually diminishing. You have point solutions that are so flexible that they rarely need to be customized. Almost everything you want to do can be set up in a table. ERP\u2019s are heading that direction as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hear these terms all the time and I often hear them being misused. I\u2019m going to provide a few simple guidelines today in an attempt to provide what I think are the industry standard definitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hr-technology","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2542,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions\/2542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}