I tried starting the product one more time, and the system crashed again. Eventually I got a patch from the vendor that allowed the app to run. But it was a relatively unimpressive example of the species, so my write-up ("Toy Product" was the title) recommended that we take a pass.

"But it's got hundreds of customers!" responded the Executive Suite. "It must be good!"

All of my instincts said, "Run very fast." But management was fixated on what they expected to be a rich maintenance revenue stream, so they bought the backup app in spite of my protests. Then "Wes," one of our most talented programmers, spent eight months trying to reconcile the executables with the source code we'd been given, and hack around all the bugs and black holes. I managed not to say, "I told you so" more than a couple of times.

Just as Wes was finishing that task, another product presented itself for acquisition. This one, an image-storage-and-retrieval system, was brand new, but its creators promised us that it was completely finished and market-ready.

I had nothing to do with the evaluation this time. The guys who'd built the product came on-site and installed it. It worked beautifully for a few hours, then fell over and couldn't get up despite everything the developers could think of. For some reason I will never understand, the staffer who'd been tasked with evaluating this turkey still gave it a positive rating, and Acme Codeworks made the deal.