Recently, I had to work on an old C++ builder 4 (1998) application. The IDE couldn’t be installed anymore on Windows 7, there were global variables and singletons everywhere, client-based compilation directives, no separation between UI, business logic and data layer, no class isolation, memory leaks all over the place, compiler failure as soon as the source code got too big, dependencies on obsolete COM objects, etc. A nightmare. It looked like the perfect example of an application that should be rewritten from scratch, and it made me wonder when is it a good time to completely rewrite a product ?

Short answer : Never.
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Project postmortems help improving a development process. But before planning one, ask yourself why you need it, and what will be the consequences of doing it or not. There’s nothing worse than collecting people’s feedback, and then ignoring it. If you are not ready to take actions to improve things, just don’t do a postmortem. Else, the following tips may help you get the most from your project postmortem : Continue reading →

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no  obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”

–Tony Hoare