Simple question from a simple person.....
Why are they doing this massive overhaul? Did I miss something?
The system worked.....why are they fixing something that worked?
Hard to say, but I've seen this kinda thing before.
They had some bugs in the old system. There were cases where there were chargebacks and the fees didn't get all sorted out right. A few funny cases the software didn't handle correctly. This is of course not uncommon.
Now the difficulty begins when you assign someone to fix the problem. If he understands completely how the old software works, and can put himself in the mindset of the guy who designed it, he can then think up how one would modify this software cleanly to make those funny cases work.
Usually, the new guy doesn't understand the mindset of the guy who designed the thing. Instead of getting his mind around all the different situations that occur, and organizing them into clear patterns, he thinks mostly about the cases he's been asked to fix. He looks at the old code and sees that making a spot fix for this problem won't be easy. If I change this thing over here, then this other thing will break, etc.
He then announces that the easiest thing to do will be a complete rewrite of the module, which he can have ready to go in six weeks. Unfortunately, there are about a hundred things that this new guy doesn't understand, and doesn't realize that he doesn't understand. The wisdom of the old guy, the technical knowledge of his test team, etc is gone now.
New guy's new module goes online, and surprisingly it doesn't work as well as the old one.