Legacy Systems

5 years, 9 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 454

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I’m back for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 454, begins with Tom talking about iteration planning. Jeremy Berriault comes next with a segment on QA team leads and I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Trash or Treasure – […]

5 years, 11 months ago

Architecture Corner: No Money – Lights Out! – Seven Deadly Sins of IT

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Episode 5 of this season of Architecture Corner is out (I made a guest appearance in episode 1, “Good at Innovation”). In this installment, Chris the CEO falls victim to yet another temptation. The CEO has decided that no more time and money will be “wasted” on old systems. Can Joakim Lindbom convince him that […]

5 years, 11 months ago

Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?

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The topic of legacy systems is something of a contentious one. In most cases, a legacy is understood to be a good thing. What makes a system “legacy”? Is it a technical or business decision? A little over a year ago, Greger Wikstrand took a stab at clarifying the term with his post “Legacy systems, […]

6 years, 1 month ago

Stopping Accidental Technical Debt

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In one of my earlier posts about technical debt, I differentiated between intentional debt (that taken on deliberately and purposefully) and accidental debt (that which just accrues over time without rhyme or reason or record). Dealing with (in the sense of evaluating, tracking, and resolving it) technical debt is obviously a consideration for someone in […]

6 years, 1 month ago

Pride, Prejudice, and Professionalism in the Business of IT

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Twenty-plus years in IT have led me to believe that there are very few absolutes when it comes to software systems. Two that do seem to hold true are these: Creating systems is esteemed far more highly than maintaining systems. Systems that are not maintained, will decay. There are a variety of reasons for this […]

6 years, 11 months ago

Building a Legacy

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  Over the last few weeks, I’ve run across a flurry of articles dealing with the issue of legacy systems used by the U.S. government. An Associated Press story on the findings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued in May reported that roughly three-fourths of the $80 billion IT budget was used to maintain […]

7 years, 24 days ago

What’s Innovation Worth?

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What does an old World War II tank have to do with innovation? I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating – one of benefits of having a blog is the ability to interact with and learn from people all over the world. For example, Greger Wikstrand and I have been trading blog posts on […]

7 years, 5 months ago

The Seductive Myth of Greenfield Development

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Greger Wikstrand‘s tweet from earlier this week packed a wealth of inspiration into one image: The second statement particularly resonated with me: “The present is built on the past.” How often do we, or those around us, long for a chance to do things “from scratch”. The idea being, without the constraints of “legacy” code, […]