If you have been doing software development work for any period of time you have probably experienced a project that eventually dies, for whatever reason. This week, it happened to me. A project that has been 2 years in the process has been dumped by the customer. They’re “going in a different direction”.

It’s amazing to me how a company can allow a project to get into this kind of state. Thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars dumped into a project. The software had even been delivered and is functioning in a pilot. But alas, I guess it was not meant to be.

In a way, it becomes a relief because the project had been floundering for a few months. But mostly it is just a disappointment. A lot of good work was done by many people. And while it was certainly a good project and a lot of lessons learned, it still hurts to see it die.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Software Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.