The C3 project was initiated in 1993 by Tom Hadfield, the Director of Payroll Systems, under the direction of CIO Susan Unger.
Smalltalk development began in 1994, with the aim of creating a new system to support all payroll processing for 87,000 employees by 1999.
[1] In 1996 software engineer Kent Beck was brought on to oversee development, as the system had not yet printed a single paycheck.
[2] Although there was a slight delay due to unclear business requirements, the system was launched just a couple of months later than the one-year delivery target.
[6] A few months after the initial launch, the project's customer representative, a key role in the Extreme Programming methodology, resigned due to burnout and stress, and could not be replaced.