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I’ve been around large software projects in my former career. When they go bad and it becomes an all hands on deck for months on end. They called them “Death Marches”.

This one has them ALL of those combined. Needs a complete redesign, not a bunch of bandaids. People will start quitting there soon, guaranteed.

I'm a former EDSer. SED Program. Am VERY familiar with death marches, on the last one (several months long) I was one of the early ones to join a team that ballooned up to about 50. When I left the company (having figured out a way to carve out time to interview) there were less than 10 left.

So yeah, the good people are going to quit. They won't be replaced by good people - if replaced at all (working on government contracts, especially ones that may require clearances, takes considerable time from offer/acceptance to EOD/Entry on Duty).

In the meantime, we're now heading into the holidays. Which is usually black-out time for releases of big Federal projects. Sure, ObamaCare will get waivers, but rescinding vacations is going to drive even more attrition of contractor staff. Government staff has shifted to being project managers and contracting/acquisitions officials. Not code-slingers. There's not going to be a way to easily (let alone quickly) backfill the staff losses.

There's no way that this thing is getting fixed within the next 18 months.