We Are 9 and 1 Shirt

We Are 9 and 1 Shirt

The best Christmas memories are from church. There was a We Are 9 and 1 Shirtcandlelight service at our church. When I got older, I was allowed to walk down the aisle and stop at every pew, and the first person seated would light their candle from the big one I carried. When all the candles were lit, the lights would go off, and a hush would always fall over the congregation as we all sat in the dark with our lit candles glowing brightly. We sang all the old Christmas hymns, such as Silent Night, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, We Three Kings, and more. I was always mesmerized as the Pastor told the story of Christ’s birth, and usually there was a live nativity made up of real farm animals and little kids playing the parts. There was always a children’s time, when the Pastor called the little children to come and sit up front, near the alter, while he told them a story having to do with the birth of Jesus, and gave each kid a candy cane. Christmas Eve services were so great back then. Now there are no candles, just little battery operated lights, and the service is held at either 3 pm or 6 pm, because families are too busy to stay up so late on Christmas Eve.

()

We Are 9 and 1 Shirt hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

Usually a couple years into the We Are 9 and 1 Shirt, when the budgets have run into the millions, the team starts to disband. The original group moves on to new projects. Team replacements need to re-learn what the lost members knew. They make some progress in the replacement system. New unrelated projects begin to pull data from the replacement instead of the legacy. Then, suddenly, the plug is pulled. The team is asked for an estimate of what it will take to complete the project. The answer has so many digits that management says, “No way. We simply can’t afford that.” That means that the original legacy is still in place. New systems have been written around and on top of it, burying its fossilized remains ever deeper, making the complexity ever more substantial. Because new systems were built to depend upon the replacement, we can’t abandon this partially completed system. Now we have to maintain the original legacy system and the new “legacy” that we’ve abandoned part way in. To go back to the original analogy, we now have a car with one and a half, or two frames. One of the wheels may now be mounted on the new frame, but the rest of the wheels and the doors, and the damn tail pipe remain stubbornly welded to the old frame. Future attempts will require that this entire unwieldy mess be replaced.

()

()