Classical tradition: Necromancy

Legacy Systems & Zombie Projects

Classical tradition: Necromancy

Field notes on Necromancy as practiced here: things that should have died and didn’t. Legacy code no one understands, initiatives cancelled but never actually stopped, former employees whose knowledge is invoked like a séance. These findings raise, sustain, or occasionally mercy-kill the undead. No one in the Working Group has volunteered for this discipline twice.

Field tone: grim, weary, faintly gothic. The caster is never proud of this work, only necessary to it.

Vocabulary recorded in the field: tech debt, deprecated but still in prod, zombie project, tribal knowledge, bus factor, sunset (never actually happens), maintenance mode, “the person who built this left,” undocumented, EOL, grandfathered, institutional memory, “who owns this spreadsheet,” #REF!, “did you try turning it off and on again,” legacy formula.