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Throw out and rewrite can work. If you know that the old code base is beyond repair, you know how to rewrite it and are able to estimate it correctly.

What often happens is a rewrite that keeps the same mistakes as the original product (either organizational, specification wise or technical).

I have no idea about management, I just constantly see restructurings of departments going wrong.



The likelihood of doing that successfully goes up the more you know about the problems with the old thing and the more people who were involved with creating the old thing are still around.

Just firing everyone and starting over from scratch is never going to result in an improvement. Even if the problems were because the original team was just incompetent (which it rarely is), you aren't going to get a better team the next time because if you knew how to hire a competent team you wouldn't have hired an incompetent team the first time.




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