Businesses think once it's written it will always just work...and that's true if the underlying OS and hardware never change, and the business never changes, and requirements never change. But even if it's a completely niche application whose requirements never change, after a while the hardware breaks, and we can't buy the same, and we can't license the old OS or it has documented problems that won't be fixed, so we have to use a new one, and we can't get the old software dependencies to work on the new one, etc etc.
Being a CADD person, I had a lot of contact with A/E/C, facilities management, space planning, etc.
Seems like everyone suffers legacy, neglects maintenance, prefers do overs.
Cultural? Misaligned incentives? Bad accounting? Complexity catastrophe (when cost of any change outweighs benefits)?
If someone knows, please tell.
Sustained operations are hard unless you have growth, because flat budgets are cuts given inflation, etc. Given the choice between stocking the toilet paper or doing a preventative maintenance on the elevator that may impact your successor a few years from now, what do you choose?
The only times that facilities are run well is when there is a retired senior military nco in charge. Usually someone who was a chief of the boat in the Navy.
I would call it more something like upgrade debt or time debt, as it's a problem that appeared because an external situation changed over time. Similar problem in that regard are operating systems which change and let old software behind, or in case of linux old packages not working anymore, repos disappearing, etc.
What I'm talking about can't be improved or fixed, or higher-ups refuse to improve or fix it. Instead, it has to be completely replaced. It's like a Replicant with a four-year lifespan. You literally know it's going to die in four years, and nobody orders a new one until the old one is practically dead, and everyone has to rush to replace it.