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Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

pkc.io

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Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#91

Post by gaius »

Missing the biggest red flag of all, engineers wanting to just play with new toys and pad their CVs. Ask the engineers why they want to rebuild and listen carefully to the answer and if it’s vague handwaving and buzzwords (microservices! Containers! New JS framework!) and no hard numbers to justify it, just say no.

For example “we spend X/year on AWS but if we spend Y to rewrite in C++ we need fewer VMs and can cut that to Z/year” is simple calculations. If your engineers can’t even do that, their motives are suspect.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#92

Post by micheljansen »

nostrademons wrote: post #21

#5 has a converse - oftentimes, the only way to get a rebuild to succeed is to drop features, and it's a major red flag if management insists on 100% feature parity. The way to distinguish this from the #5 situation in the article is to ask if you're dropping features because they're hard or because nobody uses them . The former is a red flag; the latter is a green flag. Before you embark on a rebuild, you should hav…

A bigger red flag, in my experience, is an unwillingness to even consider dropping any features. Often combined with a desire to add new features during the rebuild. Always goes wrong.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#93

Post by pjc50 »

pbreit wrote: post #22
maxxxxx wrote: post #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.

This strikes me as dangerous. Didn't the experts build the first system? Don't you want to deliver a fresher system? Won't the experts be attached to the old way of doing things?

Ah, "the public have had enough of experts", the attitude responsible for most of our present political disasters.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#94

Post by a_imho »

Buttons840 wrote: post #7
Chyzwar wrote: post #4

The 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.

People write legacy systems from day 0, especially in resume driven development.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#95

Post by shoo »

gaius wrote: post #91

Missing the biggest red flag of all, engineers wanting to just play with new toys and pad their CVs. Ask the engineers why they want to rebuild and listen carefully to the answer and if it’s vague handwaving and buzzwords (microservices! Containers! New JS framework!) and no hard numbers to justify it, just say no. For example “we spend X/year on AWS but if we spend Y to rewrite in C++ we need fewer VMs and can cut t…

http://boringtechnology.club

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#96

Post by de_watcher »

teddyh wrote: post #49
lgleason wrote: post #2

I recently left a project that demonstrated most of these traits. Usually these things are the top of the ice-burg.

Know your burgs and bergs. A “burg” (or burgh) is a fortification, or more usually refers to a city built around (or inside) that fortification. A “berg” is a mountain, or a large hill. Therefore, an iceberg is an “ice mountain”, and a “burgermeister” is a “city master”; i.e. a mayor.

You forgot to mention that you should use "tip" instead of "top" in this idiom.

Here is a video with more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#97

Post by adrianN »

gaius wrote: post #91

Missing the biggest red flag of all, engineers wanting to just play with new toys and pad their CVs. Ask the engineers why they want to rebuild and listen carefully to the answer and if it’s vague handwaving and buzzwords (microservices! Containers! New JS framework!) and no hard numbers to justify it, just say no. For example “we spend X/year on AWS but if we spend Y to rewrite in C++ we need fewer VMs and can cut t…

The problem is that Y and Z are just numbers you make up. Reliably estimating them is impossible without at least building a prototype.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#98

Post by mehrdadn »

miceeatnicerice wrote: post #89
mehrdadn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way I've phrased something similar before is "don't do a full rewrite if you couldn't write up a plan for refactoring in place to fix the problems with the old system." Hmm... there have been a number of times when I've banged my head against the wall trying to figure out how to make my own code do something, until I finally bit the bullet and decided to rewrite the entire chunk from scratch and suddenly it too…

I agree, rewriting with a clear head works wonders - but, to be fair to the op, when you rewrite your own code you'll be very appreciative of all the challenges and possibilities. It's a very different kettle of fish to rewrite from scratch strange code you've not properly explored and given a chance to - which is the usual situation.

Great point, I didn't realize that aspect!

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#99

Post by ebiester »

gaius wrote: post #91

Missing the biggest red flag of all, engineers wanting to just play with new toys and pad their CVs. Ask the engineers why they want to rebuild and listen carefully to the answer and if it’s vague handwaving and buzzwords (microservices! Containers! New JS framework!) and no hard numbers to justify it, just say no. For example “we spend X/year on AWS but if we spend Y to rewrite in C++ we need fewer VMs and can cut t…

On the other hand, “we cannot hire anyone to work in COBOL/Perl 5.8/Tcl/other outdated language” is a very real problem. It turns out that 2018, developers are judged for working too long in old technologies even when we know as in industry that a developer can learn a new language.

Re: Red Flags Signaling That a Rebuild Will Fail

#100

Post by methyl »

CalRobert wrote: post #75
kornish wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking events without user IDs would still allow for aggregate feature usage tracking. Out of interest, what makes you think that an application won't legally be able to record the ways in which a user interacts with that application? Obviously I'm not speaking for Heap; just curious.

We need case law to settle the matter but in general, the GDPR indicates that if you don't need to collect the data in order to perform the requested activity, you need explicit consent for collecting it, and will be held to a high standard in court if this every comes in to question.

> if you don't need to collect the data in order to perform the requested activity

It's about data that can identify a user, not any data. A collection of actions with anonymized user IDs will not allow to identify the user (in most cases), so it's fine to keep it.

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