Techie Traveled 4 Hours To Fix Software That Worked Perfectly Until A New Hire Used It
The Register, Friday, June 20th, 2025
Sometimes the 'R' in RTFM stands for 'Remember'
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Ray" who told us about his experience developing a sales validation tool for electronic point of sale equipment.
"We used rapid application development to make sure it met the needs of the order processing team," Ray proudly told On Call. That process resulted in a tool he described as a "quick and cheap integration" that offered "a front-end to make keying in the order quick and easy." The alternative involved mainframes, so Ray and his team were happy to have built something rather simpler.
After completing documentation and handing over the app, Ray received zero feedback. That was concerning, but it turned out his team had nailed the job and the order processing team used the program all the time.
Months later, the phone rang. The program had stopped working.