I consulted on a project suffering from similar problems. I came in after they'd been working on it for about 10 months, maybe a bit more. It took me less than

I consulted on a project suffering from similar problems. I came in after they'd been working on it for about 10 months, maybe a bit more. It took me less than 2 months to figure the team knew fuckall about the technology stack they chose. I had been told coming in that the team lacked experience. No one on the team had used the chosen technology stack at all before it was chosen for this project, and it showed. It took me a bit of digging and asking questions to find out the full truth. On the down side, the technologies the team did know were all outside of my expertise. I could sort of muddle through understanding but I was by no means experienced enough to be making any recommendations about it. The system did need a total reset. If they wanted to stick with the technology they had chosen, they needed a different team, or at very least a different team structure with a couple of genuine experts setting direction and the inexperienced people given tasks appropriate to their abilities. If they wanted to keep the team, they'd need to start over with different technologies. In the end I wrote up a document of recommendations for the leaders, with a list of problem areas and suggested direction. I never said explicitly to throw it out and start over, but left it to management to figure out the implications.