PO: “Why does it seem like it takes a really long time to develop new features?”
Dev: “I’m glad you asked! We’ve got this piece of code (points at smoldering pile of spaghetti) that literally has to be changed every time we do anything. The person who wrote it has been gone for like four years. No one knows how it works and it’s central to the entire application. I would estimate that this easily doubles the time it takes to work each ticket. I’ve created a set of stories to rewrite this code. We just need your approval to bring it into an upcoming sprint.”
PO: “Can’t… Hear… Breaking… Up… Bad connection…”
Dev: “Uhhh… This isn’t a Teams meeting. You’re sitting in the room with us right now.”
PO: …
Dev: “We know you’re still here even if you’re not moving.”
I recently learned that a web app I wrote in 1999 (for Internet Explorer lol) is still in use by the company I wrote it for. And this app was basically a graphical front end sitting on top of a mainframe application that dated to the 1970s, so my app’s continued existence means that mainframe POS is still running, too. My app was written in Classic ASP and Visual Basic 6 - I truly pity whatever poor bastard has to keep supporting that shit. They probably have one ancient PC in a closet somewhere acting as the server for it.
PO: “Why does it seem like it takes a really long time to develop new features?”
Dev: “I’m glad you asked! We’ve got this piece of code (points at smoldering pile of spaghetti) that literally has to be changed every time we do anything. The person who wrote it has been gone for like four years. No one knows how it works and it’s central to the entire application. I would estimate that this easily doubles the time it takes to work each ticket. I’ve created a set of stories to rewrite this code. We just need your approval to bring it into an upcoming sprint.”
PO: “Can’t… Hear… Breaking… Up… Bad connection…”
Dev: “Uhhh… This isn’t a Teams meeting. You’re sitting in the room with us right now.”
PO: …
Dev: “We know you’re still here even if you’re not moving.”
PO: …
Four years? You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
I recently learned that a web app I wrote in 1999 (for Internet Explorer lol) is still in use by the company I wrote it for. And this app was basically a graphical front end sitting on top of a mainframe application that dated to the 1970s, so my app’s continued existence means that mainframe POS is still running, too. My app was written in Classic ASP and Visual Basic 6 - I truly pity whatever poor bastard has to keep supporting that shit. They probably have one ancient PC in a closet somewhere acting as the server for it.