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    you don't need to know how it does what it does but you do need to know what it does +1 for this comment, because otherwise you are just repeating the mistakes of the past. Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 16:10
  • Unfortunately, this doesn't work in the real world, for exactly the reasons already mentioned by Manuel: "The manager can tell me from his perspective what it's doing but there is just no technical knowledge about it. And as with all software that grew over years there are these 'special edge cases'." Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 22:30
  • @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft - why does the manager have to have technical knowledge? He's just defining the requirements including edge cases. Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 22:31
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    Over the years, people will submit requests saying "When X happens, the software should Y". The users aren't going to know/remember all the little things the system does. Nor will they know about all the things the system does silently for them in the background. They're not going to know what other systems this system interacts with, or how it interacts with them. Or how it stores its data (which I assume they'll want to keep). Rewriting a system is not the same as building a new system from scratch, unless you expect to retrain all the users and forget about all previous data. Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 22:42
  • If the project owner does not know most (if not all) of these details, he has no business in asking someone to re-write the whole system. Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 21:55