Projects are challenging because the product is challenged. Software that is 10 years old should not be this hard to use. The product rarely does half of what it is sold as doing and the half it does do is not pleasing to use.
It seems anyone who is not hands on, using the product really has no idea how it is used. Especially sales, management, and executives. The engineers can tell you how any single features works but not how any group of them would all work together to solve a single customer use case.
I imagine that every 6-9 months the executive and business development teams will have a brainstorming session with sales and choose a new direction for what Aravo is. Then they push this on the product and engineering teams who have to divert attention from making the core product work. Before a year is up "opps" the new plan doesn't work and the cycle repeats.
This dysfunctional, wild, change in direction annually has lead to a customer base of 8, yes 8, customers who all have no idea of how or why they use the software and each one does something totally different with it. The engineering teams are tied up making sure they don't break these 8 custom configurations and left little time to actually create innovative software.
This is not a software company. This is a sales organization that happens to have a few engineers.
