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It was time to start developing version 2 of Initech's flagship software product. This meant planning meetings. So many planning meetings.
The most important one, for the actual development team, was the user story meeting. The core of these meetings was a few folks from the programming team, including Steve, the director of architecture, Brian, and a variety of product owners, responsible for different segments of the overall product.
Today's anonymously submitted story is a case where the WTF isn't the code itself, per se. This arguably could be a CodeSOD, and we'll get to the code, but there's so much more to the story.
Our submitter, let's call them Janice, used to work for a financial institution with a slew of legacy systems. One such system was an HP3000 minicomputer. "Mini", of course, meant "refrigerator sized".
Unfortunately for Elena, the laboratory information management system (LIMS) her team used was being sunsetted by the vendor, Initech. She's a biochemist working in a pathology department, and this software is vital to tracking the tests need, the tests already run, and providing critical notifications about abnormal test results.
Since Initech was sunsetting that product, the hospital system put out an RFQ for a replacements, and after a multi-year bidding process, offered the contract for replacing the software to Initech.
Jan 24