Software Archaeology
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
The work of digging through old code, comments, and behavior to infer how a system really functions. In engineering slang, software archaeology becomes necessary when documentation has decayed and original authors are gone.
In plain English: Investigating old software to figure out how it really works.
Example: "Before touching billing, they spent two days on software archaeology just to map which rules still came from the pre-acquisition system."