“Confidently”? Why’s that word in there? Three-fourths of all legacy modernization projects fail. How can Mechanical Orchard feel confident in the face of a record like that?

‍

Typical legacy modernization projects see the system to be replaced as a monolith.

‍

‍

Sure the old system is composed of pieces, but it’s too much trouble to untangle them. The project moves them all at once. Here’s the planned timeline:

‍

I say “planned” because this isn’t the whole story. We’re working with systems that have accumulated decades of complexity barnacles. No way we’re going to get it right the first time. Whether the project is run transpilation-style or re-hosting-style, the closer we get to the go-live date, the more problems appear. And we can’t have problems–these systems are the beating heart of the business. And so we debug.

‍

‍

But the cycle repeats. Like a desert rider, the cool oasis of confident production recedes just as fast as the horse advances.

‍

‍

Eventually, patience and money run out.

‍

‍

And that’s how 3/4ths of legacy modernization projects fail, not in a colossal crash, but in an evaporating pool of dreams and broken promises.

‍

‍

Confidently?

What’s different about Mechanical Orchard’s approach that lets us confidently tally frequent progress? We treat the individual pieces of the original system separately. Here’s an MO plan:

‍

‍

Is our plan faster? Unclear, because with so many failures, it’s hard to get a consistent baseline. However, our customers pay us for confident results, not for a number on paper.

‍

Of course we pay the debugging tax too. We have to deal with the same barnacles. We just pay it a little at a time, not enough to shake our confidence. Then, when we go to implement the next piece, we use the lessons from the previous piece to accelerate & improve our execution.

‍

A pleasant side effect of an MO legacy modernization project is optionality. Need to get piece E done right away? We can do that. We can make E live next, and do it with confidence.

‍

There’s no free lunch. Understanding the old system is work. Operating the old & new systems in parallel is work. We have built the expertise & tools to minimize this cost:

‍

• Understanding the reference system using large language models.
• Capture & replay data to verify the fidelity of the new system.
• Test harnesses to identify disagreement between the old & new systems.
• Debug differences of each piece? In production.

‍

Confident legacy modernization. It can be done. We can do it with you.