For a lot of projects a throw-away prototype would be the right thing to do... but people are very afraid of throwing away software.
This idea of throwing away your project can even be taken further than prototypes! TekPub has proven that, read it here:
It seems that TekPub has been completely rewritten two times since going into production about a year ago (and several times as spikes before and after going into production).
This is the very realization of some interesting concepts:
Compare that to your corporate legacy enterprise project ... sure it can't be compared, but why? Couldn't a rewrite be more effective than the uncontrolled growth we all observe in legacy applications?
It would mean that you also have to keep your enterprise applications slick and lean. Why is that so hard in corporate IT?
The challenges in rewriting legacy enterprise application are probably the missing stakeholders, the missing original goals and the lost knowledge of the current teams. And those rewrites that are attempted often end up in a gigantic technically driven framework monstrosity... probably because that is easier to do than thinking about business value.
This seems to be an omnipresent pattern and leaves the sour question if corporate IT is really the place you want to be ... especially if you compare it to the seemingly challenging and adventurous parallel universe of web startups.
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