They learn that lesson periodically. At one point nearly 50% of the money they spent to have systems built by my people was spent on documentation no one ever r

They learn that lesson periodically. At one point nearly 50% of the money they spent to have systems built by my people was spent on documentation no one ever read. ever.[1] If it only cost $70M to develop a process and replace them that is a bargain compared to the wasted documentation on the 9999[2] contemporary items that were never needed again. To be more concrete, the guys building the bigger sister system to ours probably blew through that $70M on write-only documentation every 12 months for years. [1] It piled up under desks until they asked us to "only" submit one paper copy because they didn't have enough desks at the program management office. We did eventually talk them down to a reasonable level of documentation, but it took years and the program level staff had to fight hard to get there. [2] I made this number up.