Modernization

Legacy system modernization and transformation

Migrate or Cry Trying: How to Move Data Without the Drama
ModernizationData Management

Migrate or Cry Trying: How to Move Data Without the Drama

It started with one of the tasks on our project kanban board: "Data migration". We were building a new application for a telecom provider. The goal was to unify two old systems into a single custom-built platform. Development was already in motion. Sprints were delivering new features. But no one had touched the data. The legacy systems had mismatched schemas, overlapping records, and different definitions for the same business terms. Some orders were in one system, but not the other. Customer records had conflicting states. Worse, every new feature we built had to be fed by clean, compatible data. Any mismatch would break logic or trigger errors in production.

6 min read
The Gentle Art of Strangling Legacy Systems Without Breaking Everything
Design PatternsModernization

The Gentle Art of Strangling Legacy Systems Without Breaking Everything

It started with a phone call late on a Thursday. "We’re bleeding money on support. Customers are churning. And that monolith is held together with duct tape and prayer. Can you help?". As a solution architect, this is the moment the real work begins. The system in question was a 15-year-old CRM built in a now-defunct framework, with business logic buried so deep even the original developers would need breadcrumbs to find their way back. But a full rewrite was off the table. Too risky, too slow. They needed a change that was incremental, controlled, and safe. That’s when we reached for a proven technique: the Strangler Fig Pattern.

5 min read