Lots of good advice in here. I lean toward the "run screaming" side myself.
The fact that they've burned through several contracting companies and still think it's possible to get large numbers of bug fixes in the first month suggests that they're pretty clueless. It's going to take you two or three months (if not longer) just to get your head into the code enough that you can fix anything nontrivial.
If I were advising them, I would say they need two teams: one team of just two or three people (or maybe just one) solely trying to fix bugs in the existing code, and the other team of three or four people doing a complete rewrite from scratch. As others have commented, complete rewrites are normally a bad idea, but this code base is so far gone I don't think it can be incrementally refactored into sanity. Oh, and they should expect the rewrite to take two years.
But despite their experience to this point, it sounds like they're still not ready to hear that. Which leaves you little choice but to run screaming.
EDITED to add: what these people need to understand is that their demand for results in a hurry is what got them into this mess in the first place. Until they get that I don't think there's any hope.
Comments
Lots of good advice in here. I lean toward the "run screaming" side myself.
The fact that they've burned through several contracting companies and still think it's possible to get large numbers of bug fixes in the first month suggests that they're pretty clueless. It's going to take you two or three months (if not longer) just to get your head into the code enough that you can fix anything nontrivial.
If I were advising them, I would say they need two teams: one team of just two or three people (or maybe just one) solely trying to fix bugs in the existing code, and the other team of three or four people doing a complete rewrite from scratch. As others have commented, complete rewrites are normally a bad idea, but this code base is so far gone I don't think it can be incrementally refactored into sanity. Oh, and they should expect the rewrite to take two years.
But despite their experience to this point, it sounds like they're still not ready to hear that. Which leaves you little choice but to run screaming.
EDITED to add: what these people need to understand is that their demand for results in a hurry is what got them into this mess in the first place. Until they get that I don't think there's any hope.