Legacy rewrite risks
Why legacy rewrites are so hard (and expensive)
Legacy software rewrites have a bad reputation for good reason. The most expensive thing you can do in software is rewrite an entire system.
Rewrites are also scary scope creepers with complexity overload, dependency and testing nightmares, and every one wanting to add just one more new feature.
Most consultancies will push you toward a costly rewrite on the high-end or band-aid fixes on the low-end. You don't have to live with that. Test Double helps tech leaders get to the most cost-effective way to get off a legacy platform while ensuring minimal downtime, defects, and risks:
- Balance cost and risk to choose a path: Remediate, rewrite, or something in between
- Between monoliths and microservices: Right-sized subsystem design with seam-based modernization
- Don’t waste time: accelerate legacy modernization with AI tooling and automated testing
- YAGNI: Every line of code is a liability, and so are unused features—right-size functionality to meet future demand
- Value archaeology: Suss out what truly drives business outcomes to shrink rewrite scope, reduce costs, and eliminate risk
- Test driven modernization: Characterization tests as insurance we’re rebuilding the same functionality
- Good migrations: Safe and sustainable data migration is critical
Legacy System Remediation
Renovate legacy systems for maintainable software
Unwind legacy systems and unlock potential. Legacy system modernization is our speciality because our experienced software consultants have seen just about every kind of legacy rescue and refactoring challenge.
We pattern match across similar legacy systems, business domains, and situational context to bring valuable fresh perspectives to your unique legacy challenge. Technology and architecture choices are far reaching. We help you choose wisely based on future direction and strategy
We’ll remove blockers, safely factor your codebase and migrate data, and share knowledge. We focus on the humans behind the keyboards so we’re setting you up for success and your team can run with this work long after we’re gone.
Tech & Techniques
We speak a bunch of languages, frameworks, tooling, and legacy modernization techniques. And we’ll meet your team where they are, using your tools and processes.
Modernize Legacy Systems Faster
Speed up legacy modernization with AI and automated testing
We have a lot of experience with (and thoughts about) automated testing and AI tools, but we’re not dogmatic about it. Your situation is as unique as your team and your codebase.
Legacy codebases are often fragile and poorly documented, making it hard to understand functionality and interdependencies. Automated testing helps you make iterative improvements fast by catching unintended changes and ensuring existing functionality stays intact. When you combine that with AI tools to speed up codebase analysis and test automation, you can move freaky fast.
We’ll help your team focus on solid practices for automated test suites and AI tooling to speed up refactoring. And we’ll share knowledge about how to apply those best practices to your specific team, codebase, and business context.
Working with industry-leading clients:
Legacy Rewrite Options
When a legacy software rewrite make sense
We get it. Sometimes there are unavoidable reasons to choose a rewrite.
- Is the underlying technology your system’s built on hitting end of life?
- Are you open to reducing the scope of what comes over, like older integrations or rarely used features?
- Do you have the ability for rapid user discovery to enable an iterative approach to the rewrite?
- Was your codebase built in a modular way?
- Is the code quality so degraded, or is there so much waste, that remediation is not worthwhile?
Outdated technologies, languages, and frameworks can make it hard to move forward as fast as the business needs. We’ve worked on rewrites to enable business critical, system-wide innovation. And we’re pros at making scary stuff boring.
If you’re considering a rewrite of your legacy codebase, it’s crucial to carefully weigh the costs, risks, and benefits before investing. We can help you evaluate your decision, and make the rewrite successful. And we’re always going to recommend what's in your best interests, not our own.
Are outdated versions of Rails (or Ruby) holding you back? No rewrite needed, but we safely upgrade Rails, too!
Test Double wasn’t just in a rush to fill open seats. Instead, they worked with us as a business partner to ensure optimal technical and cultural fit.
Kenneth delivered features quickly from week one and enabled us to catch the school sales cycle for our new product. He also did extra credit beyond the sprint: raised the bar on automated testing and proactively helped ramp up new team members. Kenneth reshaped my views on the value an embedded contractor can bring to a team.
No task is too big or small, too glamorous or dirty—they are all handled with care and attention to detail. Test Double has been by far my favorite consulting experience in my career.
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