Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
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Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#2I recently left a project that demonstrated most of these traits. Usually these things are the top of the ice-burg.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#3The truth I think is more often that the legacy system is too old and brittle to improve, and customers are demanding ever more complicated features from it.
So you rebuild as a new system as a gamble, because even though it shows all the traits described, the new system is at least one that anyone is willing to develop, and one where features can be added, and to which people can be recruited.
We know big rebuilds have small chances of sucess. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do big rewrites. You are in a bad place if you even consider. Maybe the big rewrite means the company has an 80% risk of going under. Still could be that safe bet.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#4The rewrite is usually when it is too late for the project. Need for re-write mean that project maintenance was ignored and technical debt reached critical levels.
I would start by firing people that led to this situation.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#5"Red Flag #4: You aren’t working with people who were experts in the old system.”
I think this is most important. A lot of people want to rewrite because they don't understand the current system and don't want to bother learning. Before you rewrite you really should understand the current state deeply.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#6I think people also deeply underestimate the time it will take. We've undergone an incremental rewrite for ~4 years at Asana.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#7The rewrite is usually when it is too late for the project. Need for re-write mean that project maintenance was ignored and technical debt reached critical levels. I would start by firing people that led to this situation.
They're already gone, almost certainly.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#8With this good article I think I have a good question.
The reference to Martin Fowler’s strangler pattern (https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html) was mentioned in the article to grow the new system in the same codebase until the old system is strangled. In my case (Ionic 1 to 2) however, both the entire framework and the language are different. How should the strangler pattern work in this case?
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#9"Red Flag #4: You aren’t working with people who were experts in the old system.” I think this is most important. A lot of people want to rewrite because they don't understand the current system and don't want to bother learning. Before you rewrite you really should understand the current state deeply.
Even having the entirety of the original dev team there, time takes its toll on recollection of reasoning behind some of the strange decisions made in something that would warrant a rewrite. Much preferable to not having them, of course.
Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail
#10With this good article I think I have a good question. The reference to Martin Fowler’s strangler pattern ( https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerApplication.html ) was mentioned in the article to grow the new system in the same codebase until the old system is strangled. In my case (Ionic 1 to 2) however, both the entire framework and the language are different. How should the strangler pattern work in this ca…
There's no super easy way here. One way to get this done is find independent areas of the app that can be replaced without coupling. Then start building up as you go with the new system. At some point you'll be about 70% through of which you can decide if you want to make the jump and focus your efforts to completely uproot the old one.
Sorry for the abstract reference here, but it applies to almost any replatforming out there. In most cases it is a very expensive operation for a business and needs some major reasons in order to justify such a move.