Essay
I Am Jack’s Wasted Appendix
A project that is never required to finish can never be allowed to fail, which is how a top priority becomes permanent background radiation.
- software
- organizations
- modernization
- the ongoing administrative project of never quite arriving
I am Jack’s wasted appendix.
I contain the analysis nobody requested for the project nobody can finish.
The organization says v2 is a top priority.
Meanwhile, v1 still receives major infrastructure work.
Features for v1 still consume months.
V2 competes with unrelated work entering the sprint.
The migration model remains conditional, partly improvised, and distributed across partner teams.
Leadership and implementation do not appear to share one operational picture.
The old system’s end date is distant and qualified.
Architectural basics are still being discovered during implementation.
This is not a temporary contradiction.
It is the operating model.
Top priority
Organizations enjoy calling several things the top priority.
This preserves the emotional benefits of prioritization without requiring the unpleasant sacrifice of choosing.
V2 is the future.
V1 still carries the present.
Infrastructure changes continue.
Features continue.
Exceptions continue.
Partner teams continue choosing among migration paths whose boundaries are not entirely known.
The replacement proceeds beside the product it was meant to replace, while the old product becomes both obsolete and indispensable.
A priority is not the thing management describes most urgently.
A priority is the thing the organization consistently protects from interruption, funds, clarifies, and completes.
By that definition, v2 may be less a priority than an ongoing corporate assertion.
The project that cannot fail
A postmortem requires a death.
This project has been designed to avoid one.
The project was never allowed to fail because it was never required to finish.
It was never required to finish because the old system remained available.
The old system remained available because the replacement could not carry all the work.
The replacement could not carry all the work because the work was not fully understood.
The misunderstanding could not be examined because examining it would threaten the story that delivery remained the priority.
So the project continues.
Every contradiction becomes another story.
Every missing capability becomes another migration path.
Every architectural question becomes evidence that the team is still making progress.
Every delay extends the period in which failure cannot be declared.
The roadmap absorbs the autopsy.
No postmortem
There will be no postmortem because there is no recognized ending.
V1 will continue operating.
V2 will continue expanding.
Partner teams will continue migrating, rewriting, redirecting, or waiting.
Management will continue calling the work urgent.
The team will continue working diligently on whatever entered the sprint.
The project can remain permanently alive by never becoming whole enough to die.
This is not resilience.
It is administrative immortality.
The system does not conclude.
It accumulates.
Wasted appendix
I am the document that would explain all this.
I am the capability map nobody asked for.
I am the migration analysis with no decision waiting at the end.
I am the architectural warning delivered after the architecture became organizational fact.
I am the postmortem for a project still described as the future.
I am useful enough to write.
Too late to authorize.
Too inconvenient to discuss.
Too accurate to become a priority.
So I will be filed beside the other analyses.
The project will continue.
The old system will continue.
The new system will continue.
The word priority will continue.
I am Jack’s wasted appendix.
I was written to explain why the patient never recovered.
The hospital declined to declare an illness.