<p>This is not a question with a precise answer (strictly speaking the answer would be best captured by a poll, but that functionality is not available), but I am genuinely interested in the answer, so I will ask it anyway.</p>

<p>Over the course of your career, how much time have you spent on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project" rel="nofollow noreferrer">greenfield</a> development compared with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_(software_development)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">brownfield</a>?  </p>

<p>Over the last 10 years I would estimate that I have spent 20% on greenfield and 80% on brownfield.  Is this typical?</p>

[{'answer_id': 40750, 'author': 'Chris Gillum', 'author_id': 2069, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2069', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I think it\'s typical for professionals who deal with customers to spend more time in brownfield development.  The reason is that customers typically aren\'t willing to throw out their existing software to adopt the "latest and greatest" (green) software.</p>\n\n<p>Developers in research or academics, however, may be more likely to do greenfield development.  Start-ups as well.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 1551657, 'author': 'Jim Bird', 'author_id': 100651, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/100651', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I think that your ratio 20:80 is representative of many/most developers. As to new development: if you are building software incrementally (Scrum, XP, etc) then one could argue that you spend almost all of your time in brownfield development. Except for the initial iteration/exploratory work, prototyping, even when you are building something new, you are already working on an established code base, refactoring and extending. So how much greenfield development is actually green?</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 1998240, 'author': 'Stu Thompson', 'author_id': 2961, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2961', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>Over the past decade or so, I've always worked on software that was used as the center of my company's business.  (Both SaaS and a software product.)  And while I've always come into the with an existing system (so brownfield), we've usually put out a ground-up redesign/rewrite (so greenfield.)  So, to break to down:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>about 60/40 brown/green for the big projects, in number</li>\n<li>about 20/80 brown/green for the big projects, in time spent on them</li>\n<li>and nearly 0/100 brown green for little side projects</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, that is seems to be the opposite of you.  It is the nature of the companies I've sought out, and hence the projects.  My software is our company's main product, and that means I work on the same code base for years, usually after having created it from scratch myself/ourselves.  </p>\n\n<p>And I like it that way.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 12366540, 'author': 'Volksman', 'author_id': 257364, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/257364', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Often the problem doesn\'t just boil down to brownfield vs greenfield. In some cases there is a valid opportunity for a hybrid greenfield/brownfield approach.</p>\n\n<p>I have written an article called "Classic software mistakes: To Greenfield or Refactor Legacy Code" which discusses this exact subject and outlines a range of possible combinations then evaluates the consequences of each.</p>\n\n<p><a href="http://stepaheadsoftware.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/greenfield-or-refactor-legacy-code-base.html" rel="nofollow">http://stepaheadsoftware.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/greenfield-or-refactor-legacy-code-base.html</a></p>\n\n<p>What may surprise some people is that a non technical attribute, company size, will be a big determinant in the choice of strategy and the likelihood of success of that strategy.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40735', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3305/']