Living with Clearing software

The UK university clearing process brings together all the features you don't want in a software project.The software isn't used for 9 months of the year, then, on two specific days, thousands of people need it. And it has to work. Any bugs, performance problems, or downtime, and you may as well not bother. You can't try again next week.Clearing is a way to match up university applicants to courses. Universities make offers based on predicted grades. A-Level students get their actual results at the same time, and that's when the scramble starts. From 8am on an August morning the university phone lines and websites open. Students who missed their offer grades apply, and universities compete for the best students. I'm simplifying.The software for clearing has to collect applications, support the admissions workflow and help them make fast and accurate decisions, integrate with telephony, ingest from UCAS, predict bums-on-seats, and a ton of other things.Given the stakes, it might be…