I work at a large company that is critically dependent on VAX software written in the 1980s for almost every aspect of functioning. This was recognized as a problem. A replacement coding and testing team was established. It included a full-time team of contractors - a handful US based and I believe dozens located in India - along with a few full-time dedicated employees and maybe a dozen each of people brought part time out of retirement (the people with the 1980s knowledge!) and people with other main jobs who had to start dedicating significant time to support.
It ran for two years, then two more years, then another year. Very much a case of “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know” in that the more functions were programmed and tested, the more edge cases and sub-function requirements were uncovered. This program has been upgraded in pieces by so many people for so many decades that no one realized how hugely complex it had become, and what an enormous undertaking it would be to replace it. But after five years - more than double the original two-year projection - it was coming together, more things being really finalized than new needs being uncovered.
And then the software that the replacement program was being written with lost support. It was too old. Documents were written to try to give some future team a better chance of success, and everything was disbanded and shut down.
Being peripherally involved in that really made me more sympathetic to fiasco large tech projects.
I work at a large company that is critically dependent on VAX software written in the 1980s for almost every aspect of functioning. This was recognized as a problem. A replacement coding and testing team was established. It included a full-time team of contractors - a handful US based and I believe dozens located in India - along with a few full-time dedicated employees and maybe a dozen each of people brought part time out of retirement (the people with the 1980s knowledge!) and people with other main jobs who had to start dedicating significant time to support.
It ran for two years, then two more years, then another year. Very much a case of “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know” in that the more functions were programmed and tested, the more edge cases and sub-function requirements were uncovered. This program has been upgraded in pieces by so many people for so many decades that no one realized how hugely complex it had become, and what an enormous undertaking it would be to replace it. But after five years - more than double the original two-year projection - it was coming together, more things being really finalized than new needs being uncovered.
And then the software that the replacement program was being written with lost support. It was too old. Documents were written to try to give some future team a better chance of success, and everything was disbanded and shut down.
Being peripherally involved in that really made me more sympathetic to fiasco large tech projects.