modernization
planning

The Problem

Typically legacy systems have evolved over long periods of time, under the guidance of disparate individuals or suppliers, many of whose expertise is no longer accessible. Many scenarios coded into systems may have never, or only rarely, been encountered, or are obsolete and potentially forgotten. Experience shows that it is more than likely that Business Rules are enforced within those systems whose details have been forgotten. There is also a risk that omission of rarely used enforcement policies and “out of the ordinary” business events may lead to inaccurate or incomplete rules capture.

The Business Rules that are actually enforced are those which are coded into the operational systems. The risks inherent in incomplete harvesting of the operational Business Rules are significant, and may well provide a major inhibitor to successful modernization. It is also the case that knowing where and how Business Rules are enforced within operational systems will significantly reduce the development risk, and potentially costs. It will certainly improve planning and certainty of success.

Our Solution

We have developed technology to provide organisations with the capability to conduct this crucial analysis of applications to expose vital information to be used during the planning process. Our solution provides the tools necessary to:

  • Provide managers, analysts, architects and engineers with a comprehensive understanding of the legacy application
  • Support and ease the planning, estimation and tracking of the application modernization
  • Save valuable time and resources by automatic extraction of information from the source code as well as from the existing documentation
  • Quickly discover which areas of your modernization require the most resources and carry the most risk
  • Discover which legacy components need modernizing to implement a specific functionality of the system
  • Understand suitability of an incremental migration path and identify which legacy application sections can be modernized independently from others
  • Allow iterative and model-driven approach to modernisation
  • Understand the relationship between legacy system functionality and implementation
graph
If you feel like you have any of the following problems, please get in touch:
  • Measure the Numbers

    Do you need to answer these difficult questions:

    • How much will it cost?
    • How long will it take?
    • How many people should I use on this project?
    • How should I do it and how much can I automate?

    It is easy to be trapped in underestimation based on what you believe to be true. Our automated approach to gaining insight into the legacy application answers these questions and provides the correct level of granularity to make informed decisions about the road ahead.

  • Current Status - Lack of Objective Knowledge

    At any time during the modernization project you need to know where you are, how long is left and what are the current risks. Asking people may fail to be an objective solution, they may have different points of view, and they are likely inconsistent in their view. LegacyExplorer generates a model with project planning & tracking in mind; project management reports can be produced to provide an accurate picture of progress and produce work flow reports.

  • Hard to Understand Applications

    Modernizing an application is completely different to green field projects. Struggling to discover what an existing legacy application does is commonplace and often consumes a huge amount of time and project resources. Legacy Explorer produces clear, detailed reports providing insight into a system from multiple perspectives. Estimation teams, architects and managers can start to plan potential modernization strategies as well as costs, risks and time scales.

  • Impact of New Requirements

    As an application is modernized and evolves, it is likely that new requirements will be introduced. It is vital that you plan and determine exactly when and how each new requirement should be injected into the modernization process. Legacy Explorer enables you to understand where existing requirements are implemented and to understand the impact of introducing new requirements.

  • Lack Of Agility

    Do not expect to be right first time. When transitioning from design to reality, making the wrong decisions is just matter of statistics and a fact of life. During the typical modernization process, there are many decisions to make along the way and seeing a number of alternative solutions for the same problem is the rule, not the exception. What happens if you discover you selected the wrong one and you need to change to the other?

    Changing decisions already made is a recurrent issue in software engineering; it is nothing unusual or impossible, if dealt with in an agile way with automated tool support the impact can be minimal. If an automated solution to modernization is adopted, such as our LegacyBridge technology, the impact of changing implementation decisions could result in little impact to the manual effort.

    It is important that the tools you employ for the modernization and the level of automation you require and a serious consideration during the planning stage.

    Objektum provides tools to significantly increase the amount of automation when modernizing your application resulting in a lower risk at a fraction of the cost with respect to traditional techniques

objektum modernization