I encounter too much organizations where they move from one ‘big bang’ rewrite to another.
The situation always evolves in the same way:
A new system is created that will replace an old system. But this time we’ll do it right. We throw out all the old technology and choose the latest and greatest shiny tools. After a few months/years/decades the new system finally sees the light and it looks awfully similar to the old system(although the user interface is a little better). This ‘new’ system over time becomes harder and harder to maintain. Adding new functionality costs more and more until we arrive at the moment where developers throw in the towel and declare it became impossible to add any new feature or change. It’s time for the next rewrite…
Does this sounds familiar?
A smart man once said:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
The mistake that is made is that the team focusses too much on the technology and they’ll handle it as a technical migration. As a consequence you’ll end up with the same system written in a more modern(better?) technology without really improving the system.
The solution? Don’t do a rewrite, instead focus on evolutionary architecture and apply the strangler pattern to evolve from the old to the new system.
The universe was created with one big bang, since then it is continuously evolving We wouldn’t like it to have the universe evolve with a next big bang, as we’ll not survive the event.
So why we think it’s a valid approach for our systems?