Knowing why your business needs to modernise enables you to identify the changes that will be required. These changes fall into two categories, technology, such as moving to the cloud or organisational, such as culture.

To address these changes, there are two main ways forward. The first is starting from scratch with a blank slate, aka the Big Bang. The second is the incremental (phased) approach whereby change is introduced piece by piece. In this post, we will look at the choice through the lens of a Big Bang approach. The incremental approach will be compared in the next post.

Most of us have either been in this situation or toyed with the idea of rewriting an existing system, and probably came up with one of the following compelling reasons for going with the Big Bang approach.

• Lower cost and faster lead-through compared to an incremental evolution
• Developers are more motivated when working on greenfield projects
• Freedom to organise teams/work as needed
• No constraints from the design choices of the past
• Don’t need to burden yourself with understanding that legacy system or waste effort on changing the legacy system just to simply access required functionalities

If you have been part of a Big Bang approach, I’m sure you can relate to the following narrative.

Everything starts in earnest, with motivation and expectations sky high. The teams organise themselves quickly and start coding immediately. Code is written at an unbelievable rate and proof of concepts are produced left, right and center.

The months fly by and everything seems to be going well until, one day, someone asks how far along are we and when will we be ready. You talk about all the great stuff that has been developed so far, but cannot demo it in a live system. You start to realise that the light at the end of the tunnel is not getting any closer. In fact, it seems to be disappearing further into the distance.

It seems that the complexity was significantly underestimated, especially when it comes to downstream parts of the system, like the data lake, reporting, compliance, etc.

You could say that the first cracks have started to appear in the Big Bang approach: There is nothing to show in production for all that effort.

Production is the only thing that matters

Nothing erodes stakeholder confidence or developer motivation faster than having nothing to demonstrate in production. What’s worse, without production volumes you can’t know how the system will actually behave.

Of course you could just replicate production volumes. I have yet to see this work in practice, though, as the actual usage patterns in production with network delays from browsers etc. never match the patterns replicated by in-house performance test servers. 

But there is a more critical underlying issue here. What production volumes could you even replicate? This is a new, rewritten system that isn’t in production. No volumes or usage patterns are available. You would have to base performance tests on assumptions, leaving validation until you can get real production usage data, i.e. go live.

At this point, Martin Fowler’s definition of Big Bang predicts what will happen:
“The only thing a Big Bang rewrite guarantees is a Big Bang!”

Apart from the technical risks, there are other significant downsides that cannot be overlooked:

• Business is basically feature-frozen as it waits for the new implementation.
• Data migration from legacy systems to a new system is a commonly overlooked, but critical part of the process. Scheduling both the go live as well as the data migration at the same time requires significant planning and effort.
• Not sustainable in the long term. Big bang is a project with an end. This is like making a new year’s resolution to get fit and, once you reach the goal, stopping and focusing on the rest of life’s challenges. What happens? You slip back into the same behavior as before – slacker territory or, in the case of the big bang, software that is slowly degrading into tomorrow’s legacy waiting for the next big bang.

Is an incremental approach better?

In our next blog post about modernising legacy we will delve into whether the incremental or phased approach is a better option.

If you don’t feel like waiting for the next piece to get published, contact me and we can talk about this sooner!

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Of course, I’m sure you have also heard legacy defined as:

• Hard to maintain
• Documentation is out-of-date
• Written by developers who have left the company
• No automated tests

The obvious thing to do then, is to simply change the technology. Let me put it another way: by changing the technology, we will have up to date documentation with automated tests in easy-to-maintain code, right? While all of the definitions above may be true, don’t they stem from the development culture rather than any specific technology?

Changing the technology won’t help fix the cultural part

Changing technology doesn’t address the issues stemming from development culture. In fact, it generally has the opposite effect. New technology brings with it a lot of unknowns that have already been found in your legacy systems. These unknowns will cause unforeseen extra work causing shortcuts to be taken to meet deadlines, resulting in creating tomorrow’s legacy.

Whether you love it or hate it, your legacy system is the one that is operating the business AND often paying your salary! It requires more than just a desire for new technology to start modernising it.

So if legacy is not defined solely by technical issues, then how is it defined? Gartner defines it as “an information system that may be based on outdated technologies, but is critical to day-to-day operations.” This is a good summary, but there is one part missing: the need to keep up with growing business demands. Thus, I would define legacy as:

Outdated systems that cannot keep up
with growing business demands
BUT run your business

This definition will help you focus on what you want to achieve, without getting distracted by the current shortcomings of your legacy system or the lure of the latest silver bullet. Clearly understanding what it is that you want to achieve helps identify whether it is the organisational structures, the culture, or the technology itself that needs changing.

A key to remember is that the issue is rarely technology alone. It will include processes, such as bureaucratic approval “gates”, which don’t require technology changes, but rather rethinking your processes.

Companies typically find that their legacy systems and processes are limiting them in one or more of the areas listed in the figure below. While all areas may be seen as applicable to your business, there will be a couple that are most relevant.

I mentioned in a previous blog the importance of making conscious changes to a system and the use of SCRs (System Continuity Records). It is for exactly this situation that SCRs are invaluable. They provide the insights to see which areas are the most relevant.

Once you have identified the areas that you want to address, it is essential to state and communicate these clearly. This will form the basis for your modernisation approach and help fellow colleagues follow you on this journey.

Interested in hearing more? Please join our Futures of retail webinar on Wednesday 10.6.2020 at 2PM. We will go into more detail why legacy shouldn’t stop you in your endeavours.

While you’re at it, why not read our articles on why legacy modernisation is a top priority for companies just now and how to start modernising your legacy without creating the legacy systems of tomorrow.

Our next piece on modernising legacy will focus on the tempting but dangerous Big Bang approach. Stay tuned!

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But, is the current disruption the underlying reason, or is it the exclamation mark on an issue that has been growing for a long time already?

Businesses, for years, have been facing an ever increasing need to adapt to changing market demands. Before we were impacted by COVID-19, technology forecasts and trends showed that the top challenges for companies in 2020 were:

Forbes: Accelerate your organization’s pace of innovation
Gartner: Automation strategy rethink (consequence of drive to cloud environments)
Alert Software: Embedding digital transformation in the company business strategy
CIO Advise: Digital Transformation and Business Strategy

From this it is clear that the need to modernise legacy systems is not new. So what is the reason behind legacy modernisation becoming such a high priority?

The wheel of change spins faster and faster

To build some perspective, I started in the software engineering industry in the early 2000s when there were no smartphones, Netflix, AWS or even Facebook. Back then, the rate of change was manageable. Languages were releasing a new version every other year, architectures were quite happy in monolith or 3-tier setups and agile methodologies were but a speck on the horizon.

Consequently, companies were relatively slow in their adoption of new features, as stability of these monoliths was paramount. Customers were tolerant and accepting of the slow rate of change.

Fast-forward nearly 20 years to the present day, and Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google are continually driving innovation to new levels. Startups are creating disruptive innovations at a record rate. Speed and nimbleness are now paramount for companies.

Customer expectations are higher and the competition is tougher

Customers take it for granted that service providers will constantly improve. Any new product has to be compatible to even be considered.

This has led to the “We want it now” customer evolution where customers “expect a personalised experience, demand it in a shorter timeframe and are knowledgeable enough to recognise poor customer service”. Salesforce’s recent survey confirms this with 73% of customers now expecting personalised services.

Screenshot from Salesforce State Of the Connected Customer survey.

The same is apparent in technology. Every week seems to bring a new JavaScript framework, cloud product offering or development methodology that is the next silver bullet. On the upside, this is great for developers as there is a record high demand for us due to talent shortages.

The sheer abundance of choice available coupled with the ability to easily switch brands or companies makes it critical for companies to stay relevant and modern if they want to hold onto their customers and developers.

Therein lies the issue and the big question: How to stay relevant in order to keep both your customers and developers?

This is where traditional legacy systems are being superseded with modern architectures.

So, how can you start in the legacy modernisation journey?

In the beginning, there are two important steps to make in order for you to succeed.

1. Understand what defines legacy and the key role that your company’s culture plays.

2. Get to know different approaches to legacy modernisation and how to choose the one that best suits you.

The next blog posts will focus on these steps – stay tuned. You can already take a look at the next one, What is legacy? A misused term that’s vital to your business resilience. If you’re interested in digital business success in the retail field, check out our webinar, Futures of Retail, on Wed 10.6. at 14.00.

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The areas most affected by this shift are:

Scaling and performance – Digital services are not able to scale up to meet increasing user demand

Digital engagement and retention – Customers are more reliant on digital services. If the experience isn’t great they will swap to a competitor’s service

Operational excellence – Cost control is important for business survival. Repurposing dev teams to enable better digital services or scaling down can help cut costs

Digital commerce – With many new customers switching to online shopping, the first purchase/experience must be smooth or they will go somewhere else. Businesses without a digital presence must build one up quickly

Can’t see the forest for the trees?

Businesses are frantically trying to identify, diagnose, fix and repair issues caused by the COVID-19 induced digital shift. Keeping the business alive is priority number one. All focus is directed into hotfixes and hacks being rushed into production to ensure that digital services can scale and customers aren’t being lost.

Normal design processes, post mortems, architecture reviews, and governance are being skipped in favour of speed. While all of this is undeniably essential for right now, what about in the months to come? This explosion of technical debt will have a considerable impact on businesses down the line.

So how do you balance immediate business survival and long-term business viability?

The most important thing is to make all changes consciously. This doesn’t mean reinstating the full processes, but having a “just enough process” approach to remember what was done and why.

A simple way of doing this is to use records. Let’s call them SYSTEM CONTINUITY RECORDS (SCR). These records document the immediate issue, the actions that were taken, why they were taken, and the impact it has on the system.

Such actions could be business decisions, architectural decisions, operational decisions, technical hotfixes or hacks. A simple text file with the following format would provide the minimum level of detail required:

Title – (brief) Services are regularly running out of resources

Status – (Proposed/Implemented)

Context – (Facts about the issue) Resources are being consumed 3 times as fast as normal. Services are crashing when running out of resources

Actions – (description of the actions taken) We will deploy 3 times the normal amount of services

Impact – (positive/negative/side effects) Should handle current load. Extra resources consumed on a permanent basis.

These records could be stored in the same repository as the code or in a centralised location. It doesn’t really matter where, as long as the information is stored in the first place.

Every cloud has a silver lining

The current situation will eventually subside, and when it does, the priorities will change. The urgent need to adapt will be slowly replaced with a more business-as-usual approach. However, this is the time when businesses can capitalise on the SCRs that have been collected.

Prior to COVID-19, businesses were seeing legacy modernisation as a top challenge. Some were already ahead of the pack and had completed their journey to modern architectures, others had started their journeys while the rest were still waiting to start. No matter what stage your business is in, SCRs provide detailed insight into your systems.

SCRs can also play a major role in helping businesses modernise their legacy systems. Legacy systems are defined as outdated systems that cannot keep up with growing business demands BUT run your business. But, what are those business demands and why can’t our systems keep up? These are the most common questions faced by businesses.

A disruption, such as COVID-19, provides a unique opportunity to answer these questions. Being able to objectively identify why legacy modernisation is required and what is important to you is crucial for success.

There is another benefit to having these SCRs – knowing what was done. This has traditionally relied on human memory. Let’s just say that the results have been vague, at best. SCRs, on the other hand, don’t forget. They capture the accumulated technical debt, letting businesses bring it back under control. This, in turn, contributes to the long-term viability of the business.

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” – Albert Einstein

While COVID-19 is causing unprecedented disruption, it also provides a unique opportunity to learn about our businesses. Decisions and actions made in the interest of business survival must be conscious and informed.

SCRs (System Continuity Records) can enable this conscious mindset. When the current disruption subsides, SCRs will be invaluable. They will help to objectively identify where the business demands come from and how well the systems are able to meet them.

Read the next part of this blog post series, Fast movers in legacy modernisation will dominate the digital business of the future, and this is why, to see why modernising your systems is important for more reasons than just COVID-19. While you’re at it, why not also check out the newest post, What is legacy? A misused term that’s vital to your business resilience. 

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