The issue that I see with this is that, even if they say otherwise during the first version, when it comes time for the rewrite the powers that be often (usually?) aren't willing to support it.
The "powers that be" are non-tech-aware. They care about results, not nerds pushing the nerd buttons (I paraphrase).
They literally have no clue about what they're asking for, and just have to hope that the people doing the coding can deliver what they want. There's no backup, no "plan B", no way of delivering this without relying on the devs to deliver. So, who cares what they think?
You can literally say to them "we can continue like this, but because of tech debt it'll take 6 months, or we can rewrite in 3 months". And who's to say you're wrong? I've had more than one project do that.
The truth is that no-one knows how long any of this takes. Not the devs, not the project manager, not the CEO. It's always a rough guesstimate, and the estimates only get better with more information. Smart non-tech managers get this, and deal with it. Stupid non-tech managers try to control it and create deterministic outcomes from the non-deterministic process that is software dev. That always fails.
So, yeah, the "powers that be" need to grok the nature of the thing they're trying to do before saying "you can't do a rewrite even if you think that'll be quicker"
They literally have no clue about what they're asking for, and just have to hope that the people doing the coding can deliver what they want. There's no backup, no "plan B", no way of delivering this without relying on the devs to deliver. So, who cares what they think?
You can literally say to them "we can continue like this, but because of tech debt it'll take 6 months, or we can rewrite in 3 months". And who's to say you're wrong? I've had more than one project do that.
The truth is that no-one knows how long any of this takes. Not the devs, not the project manager, not the CEO. It's always a rough guesstimate, and the estimates only get better with more information. Smart non-tech managers get this, and deal with it. Stupid non-tech managers try to control it and create deterministic outcomes from the non-deterministic process that is software dev. That always fails.
So, yeah, the "powers that be" need to grok the nature of the thing they're trying to do before saying "you can't do a rewrite even if you think that'll be quicker"