Bad software design: PowerSchool

Recently, my sister’s high school amended a software platform called PowerSchool, which is single system to track attendance, grades, assignments, and e-mail. For those of you who went to a big college or university, you probably used Banner to schedule classes, pay tuition, etc. This is the high school version of that.Originally, because lunch was half of a period, the high school had periods (this is one example of 3 possible schedules):
1
2
3
4/5
6 (lunch)
7/8
9
10

However, my sister said that because PowerSchool couldn’t handle only some classes having half periods, EVERYTHING now has to be half periods! So now a schedule would look like this:

So now, instead of using the 10 period system they’ve used for the past 20-some years, they had to switch over to a 15 period system!

What’s the lesson here? Poorly designed software that didn’t go through a proper usability analysis (at the company making the software OR the school buying the software) caused a gigantic, confusing, painful, unnecessary and expensive restructuring just to make it work.

Editorial remarks: If you made it to the end of this post, you should also go read the comments. A reader makes some very good points about the merits of PowerSchool that I mostly agree with. Also, I back off on saying that PowerSchool being poorly designed in general (it’s not) and that the software has caused a gigantic and expensive restructuring. I still stand by confusing, painful, and unnecessary, however. I also add silly to the list.