D : Not for me anymore

[Walter Bright]

Karen Lanrap wrote:
> Now one of your 490 coders comes to you saying: "I am unable to 
> implement this because of erroneous design."
> 
> Are you willing to "sell" this detection to your management, your 
> sponsor or your loan officer?

Yes, because you have two alternatives:

1) Fix the design, and take the $6,000,000 lump.

2) Ignore the problem, hope it goes away, and in the end have to write 
off the whole $147,000,000.

As Exhibit A of approach (2), may I suggest the Denver airport baggage 
handling system. I've also read now an then in the paper about other 
government software projects, like one for the FBI, that cost in the 
hundreds of millions of dollars, and needed to be scrapped completely 
because of flawed design.