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Notes:


The results won't be a surprise:

When they came to the next project they had difficulties reusing designs (the codebase had evolved and was out of step with the design documentation), or reusing code (there was no separation of standard from bespoke code).

Several projects followed, but each applied "cut+paste reuse" to different elements of the standard system and started changing them to address the needs of their customer solution. It soon became clear that each delivery was an independent piece of work.

An independent consultant was called in to review the project and took issue with the design (particularly with decisions that led to high coupling) and with the implementation.

I think it speaks well of the organisation and the people in it that despite these issues the systems were generally viewed as successful by the customers in spite of these problems. However, the costs of developing this way were high and couldn't be sustained.