I remember what I read around 15 years ago on TheDailyWTF.com by Alex Papadimoulis - a project should be considered successful if the customer is using it 10 years later. It's a failure if it's thrown away and replaced by a new one earlier. So all these "rusty" projects are actually very successful, no matter how crappy the code looks - if it still works it's good for the customer.
That was probably more true 15 years ago. In my humble opinion, industry demands have skyrocketed over the past 2 decades in volume and complexity, and we now have cloud services galore, where integration is the new name of the game. Many clients running older systems are also faced with issues that are hard to resolve without replacing the software (e.g. data warehouses that rely on file-based import/export functionality rather than REST/SOAP web services). These days, I'd qualify anything as successful if it makes it past 3-4 years. Who knows whether that will change in the future or not. Just my opinion.
From the perspective of a software developer - it's successful once you get your paycheck :) It's a problem of your customers if they will keep using it and how long.
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I remember what I read around 15 years ago on TheDailyWTF.com by Alex Papadimoulis - a project should be considered successful if the customer is using it 10 years later. It's a failure if it's thrown away and replaced by a new one earlier. So all these "rusty" projects are actually very successful, no matter how crappy the code looks - if it still works it's good for the customer.
That was probably more true 15 years ago. In my humble opinion, industry demands have skyrocketed over the past 2 decades in volume and complexity, and we now have cloud services galore, where integration is the new name of the game. Many clients running older systems are also faced with issues that are hard to resolve without replacing the software (e.g. data warehouses that rely on file-based import/export functionality rather than REST/SOAP web services). These days, I'd qualify anything as successful if it makes it past 3-4 years. Who knows whether that will change in the future or not. Just my opinion.
From the perspective of a software developer - it's successful once you get your paycheck :) It's a problem of your customers if they will keep using it and how long.