[docandrew]

I wonder though whether the up-front costs incurred by your team would eventually be outweighed by the long-term costs of the quick team.

[ebiester]

I am not convinced that it would. The quick team will get to learn three times as much and adapt to the actual customer need. The cost of change in a system built with stability as a quality attribute will be higher. (As you can see from a system like the old mainframes!)

[Spooky23]

The advantage that the original cobol people had is that they had functional manual processes to model.

Today, the payroll supervisor has no idea how many processes work.

[giantg2]

Mainframes are expensive because they're niche and basically a duopoly. The companies supplying them know their days are numbered and charge high prices before the market goes dry.

In my experience, the quick teams only learn the surface content. A lack of depth tends to result in more errors down the road and poor architecture. But I guess it doesn't matter since half your team will jump to the next project company in 2-3 years anyways and take that knowledge with them.