Author: Chad Michel

“Never give up, never surrender!” – Galaxy Quest Ironically, I think developers are quick to move to a “start over” mindset, especially when they’re working on legacy migrations. When it becomes difficult to arrive at a working solution, it is easy to assume that the whole endeavor is too difficult and that the team should…

So far, we have covered five “plays” we can run during a legacy migration. These plays can be used independently, or they can be used together; it all depends upon the situation. Each solution/situation is somewhat unique. Each legacy project requires a different approach. Sometimes the right answer is to leave the existing solution in…

Martin Fowler is held in high regard around our office. Two of his creations are referenced a lot: the idea of design stamina hypothesis and his strangler pattern for legacy migration. When we engage in work on a legacy application, the strangler pattern often comes up. Ironically, we will refer to it as the strangler…

Rarely do legacy systems have any sort of automated testing in place. Usually, all testing has been completed manually on the project. And when this is the case there often isn’t an obvious spot in the solution to add a unit test. Adding tests to an existing project can be extremely painful. There is a…

Working in a legacy system runs the gamut of difficulty: it can be easy, sometimes challenging, and other times almost impossible. It is hard to know which of these experiences you will face until you get in there and do a little work. If you already have a good understanding of the legacy system you’re…

“If you don’t know where you are going you might end up somewhere else.” – Yogi Berra One of the critical challenges with legacy systems is not having a clear goal in mind. Knowing where you want to end up is essential for a few reasons. First, it provides you and your team with a…

As you approach a legacy system, there are many things (plays) you might do to get a handle on it. We covered this list on a general level in my first post in this series. In this post, we are going to cover maybe the most important play: the system review. What Process Is the…

There are a lot of working solutions out there. And there’s a lot of code behind those solutions. Along with those solutions are often many reasons why they need to be upgraded (and not just enhanced with new features). Sometimes the weight of technical debt becomes too large. Sometimes technology changes out from under a…