How to Migrate from a Legacy System

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  1. Acknowledge how hard this is.
  2. Work Life Balance Be Damned – you are already late.
  3. Create a clear “done” condition, or you will open the door to a deathmarch.
  4. Win over your detractors or they will eventually grind you down.
  5. Create a bubble of hardcore like-minded developers.
  6. Make a milestone flowchart listing dependencies and who is in charge of what sub-system.
  7. Pick a stack that all the developers are familiar with and/or passionately want to learn.
  8. Have an executive facing ride-or-die business-side-of-the-house partner
  9. Pick an low-code architecture that leads directly to less bugs and faster feature time to market.
  10. Publish weekly milestone videos, using the “One more thing” jobs method.
  11. Give the impression of working nights and weekends even if you’re not.
  12. When you make a mistake, admit it quickly at the same time as you propose the way you’re going to fix it.
  13. Any ass can get a project to 80% complete. 95% is extremely difficult. 100% is a thing of legend.
  14. Work hard, have fun – worst case scenario you’ll be fired for trying to do the right thing.

2 thoughts on “How to Migrate from a Legacy System

  1. That analogy at the end made me laugh out loud but then a few seconds later I realised it’s spot on.

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