I’m not saying you can fire everyone, but the maintenance team doesn’t need to be the size of the development team if the goal is to only maintain features.
It works for a while. Keep a few seniors and everything will be fine. Then you want new features and that’s when shit hits the fan. Want me to add a few buttons? 1 month because I have to study all the random shit that was generated last week.
It’s funny you use southwest as an example in this. I flew with them for the first time this year and it was easily the worst technical experience from an IT perspective that I have ever had. Sure I got from point A to point B, but everything involved with buying the ticket, getting through security, tracking my flight, boarding time, etc was worse than every other flight I’ve been on. The app was awful and basic features like delay notifications or pulling up the digital ticket made an already expensive as hell experience way more stressful. Windows 95 isn’t keeping up
Twitter, Tumblr, Craigslist: those web sites are feature complete and require low maintenance.
Southwest Airlines: good for them, but if the servers have issues, they will lose billions while trying frantically to find the retired guy who maintained that monster.
While true, that is a weak analogy. Software rots and needs constant attention of competent people or shit stacks.
I’m not saying you can fire everyone, but the maintenance team doesn’t need to be the size of the development team if the goal is to only maintain features.
It works for a while. Keep a few seniors and everything will be fine. Then you want new features and that’s when shit hits the fan. Want me to add a few buttons? 1 month because I have to study all the random shit that was generated last week.
Twitter and Tumblr are operating on skeleton crews but are able to make changes.
Craigslist is still around even though it hasn’t changed much since the '90’s.
There is an entire industry of companies that buy old MMO’S and maintain them at a low cost for a few remaining players.
Southwest Airlines still runs ticketing on a Windows 95 server.
I think you’ll see more companies accept managed decline as a business strategy.
It’s funny you use southwest as an example in this. I flew with them for the first time this year and it was easily the worst technical experience from an IT perspective that I have ever had. Sure I got from point A to point B, but everything involved with buying the ticket, getting through security, tracking my flight, boarding time, etc was worse than every other flight I’ve been on. The app was awful and basic features like delay notifications or pulling up the digital ticket made an already expensive as hell experience way more stressful. Windows 95 isn’t keeping up
But no one is flying Southwest for a best in class experience. It doesn’t have to be a great system to use, just a system that does the bare minimum.
Twitter, Tumblr, Craigslist: those web sites are feature complete and require low maintenance.
Southwest Airlines: good for them, but if the servers have issues, they will lose billions while trying frantically to find the retired guy who maintained that monster.