The focus of this article is on the big political project that fails (the SVC), but the part that resonates most with me is the small forgotten project that liv

The focus of this article is on the big political project that fails (the SVC), but the part that resonates most with me is the small forgotten project that lives (the SaaS). Over the years, I've built a number of contraptions under a similar set of circumstances: a technical problem usually created by an organizational issue suddenly appears that is both severe enough to threaten a project yet falls outside the core business, so it needs to be fixed both yesterday and on the cheap. Inevitably, I get saddled with it and produce a kludge that is equally effective and cursed before going back to business as usual. More than once I've learned to my horror that years later the thing is not only unmaintained yet still in place, but its usage expanded to the point where it became load-bearing, because the underlying organizational issue was never solved. In a manner of speaking, it is the opposite situation as described in the article: a complete lack of software design that somehow manages to survive in spite of a lack of knowledge building.