I work in the IT consulting line. My job is to penetrate into whatever client/customer environment I have been assigned to and bring about technological improvements (or sometimes, black magic tricks) to boost their business/domain.
As I am sure many out there are just like me, you would know first hand the situation I describe. The environment we step into is not plain barren land waiting for brand new systems to be built upon. we inherit a world of legacy, and the world ain't perfect. It is less than complete, comprehensive, and systematic.
There is a black box system developed in some ancient arcane platform. The vendor has closed shop 15 years ago. No source code or documentation exists. The corporate network is managed by a 3rd-party global infrastructure team and configuring all the firewalls your application will touch involves contacting over 30 different personnel. Your customer liaison doesn't know who they are either. Nobody dares to modify the framework layer code base ever since the original architects quit three years ago; they don't even know if the code in the version-control repository is the latest. The DBA or application team are always unavailable, and you cannot connect to the database or authenticate with their web service to pull the data for integrated or stress test. Nobody claims responsibility for that monitoring server in the corner with the crackling hard disks. The CIO knows squat about the enterprise architecture and what systems are in place, and commands no technological direction for the coming five years. What are the passwords to the servers in the DR site?
Essentially, it is an environment where processes, information, documentation, and knowledge have been loss to time as generations gone by and relationships vaporized. Chaos is guaranteed when disaster happens, because the correct group of trained personnel to handle the situation are non-existent. A humongous amount of time and effort is spent peeling the layers of murk and dusting and combing for clues. Details absolutely necessary to get the our own jobs done.
I have not come across any book that touches such job factors and conditions. Yes, a great deal is all about social engineering and dealing with the human factor to chart and plot the political boundaries (official or otherwise, public or hidden) and knowing the exact people to get things done. And that is part and parcel of our daily routine. I would love to read about the experience of others in their quest to overcome these hurdles of "lost technology" or "civilization". If there can really ever be a systematic guideline or approach in the unearthing and self inference of these artifacts?
Am I crazy to wish for such a book?
EDIT: just to clarify the above descriptive is not regarding the current environment I am in. It is a collection of random illustrations based on the experiences with past environments.
Yes I am looking for books and materials that cover processes that help one try to discover more about systems they are taking over. It is more than just pure programming source code, but the entire scope of people and infrastucture that the systems operate in.