Mastering Ambiguous Software Modernization: A Guide to Breaking Down Monoliths into Iterative MVPs by Jennifer Parker
Embarking on a software modernization journey, especially when dealing with monolithic systems, can be a daunting and seemingly insurmountable task. The complexity and ambiguity of such projects often lead to challenges in planning and execution. However, by adopting a strategic approach that emphasizes breaking down monoliths into manageable and deployable Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), organizations can navigate these challenges effectively and achieve successful outcomes.
Understanding Ambiguity in Modernization Projects
Ambiguity is inherent in modernization projects due to factors such as legacy codebases, complex dependencies, and evolving business requirements. This ambiguity can manifest in various forms, including unclear project scope, undefined technical constraints, and uncertain timelines. Addressing ambiguity requires a combination of strategic planning, iterative development, and continuous feedback loops.
The Importance of Breaking Down Monoliths
Breaking down monolithic systems into smaller, manageable components is a fundamental step in modernization. This approach allows teams to focus on discrete functionalities, reduce dependencies, and deploy changes incrementally. By breaking down monoliths, organizations can mitigate risks, accelerate development cycles, and facilitate iterative improvements.
Steps to Plan Ambiguous Modernization Projects
Define clear objectives. Start by defining clear objectives and success criteria for the modernization project. Identify key stakeholders, establish communication channels, and align on the desired outcomes. If you’ve already started on a project and there has been a significant change in scope, that’s a good time to pause and revisit the objectives. One way to do this is to set up OKRs for each module or area of the monolithic application that is being rewritten, include integration points with the existing legacy systems in the outcomes in order to ensure the operational and deployment plans of each module are well understand and achievable.
Conduct comprehensive analysis. Perform a thorough analysis of the existing monolithic system, including its architecture, dependencies, and pain points. Identify areas for decomposition and prioritize functionalities based on business value and complexity. Again, if you’re already in the throws of development, see if you can refine the large scale epic into smaller epics that are domain or area based then conduct analysis on those epics that are further downstream while work is proceeding on the more immediate and foundational epics.
Create a roadmap. Develop a detailed roadmap that outlines the phased approach to breaking down the monolith. Define milestones, deliverables, and timelines for each phase, keeping in mind the iterative nature of the project. This one can be especially challenging as sometimes we don’t even know what we don’t know and therefore can’t effectively plan out work far into the future. For this, my recommendation is to swag efforts at a very high level and then use a Program Increment (PI) approach to achieve quarterly results. The work that is closest with the most understanding can be confidently defined on the roadmap while work that is still being discovered can be swagged with a low confidence rating.
Identify MVP candidates. Identify Minimum Viable Product candidates within the monolithic system. These MVPs should represent self-contained functionalities that can be developed, deployed, and tested independently. If you are dealing with a project that has several different domain areas and is likely to take more than a few months of development, this step is critical to showing progress.
Develop iteratively. Adopt an iterative development approach to build and deploy MVPs. Use agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban to manage development sprints, prioritize tasks, and gather feedback from stakeholders.
Deploy Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD). Implement CI/CD pipelines to automate the build, test, and deployment processes. This automation streamlines development workflows, reduces manual errors, and enables faster iteration cycles.
Gatheer feedback and iterate. Solicit feedback from users, stakeholders, and internal teams at each iteration. Use this feedback to refine MVPs, address issues, and prioritize future development efforts. The shorter the feedback loop, the better the outcomes. If a development team spends months building and re-building one specific area, the output of the team is high but the outcome they achieved for the business is low. It’s critical to shorten the feedback loops so that engineers and QA don’t end up building and testing the wrong things multiple times over.
Monitor and measure. Implement monitoring and analytics tools to track the performance and usage of deployed MVPs. Use data-driven insights to make informed decisions, optimize functionalities, and iterate based on user behavior. Add in data points for things like burn up (how many stories are added to an epic after the epic has begun work), burn down and cycle times for a way to predict future deliverables based on yesterday’s weather. If the team is always finding that they add 100-125% more stories after they thought they understood the epic, it’s time to reflect that in the roadmap and delivery predictions for future work.
Benefits of Breaking Down Monoliths into MVPs
Reduced risk. Breaking down monoliths reduces the risk of large-scale failures by focusing on incremental changes and isolating potential issues.
Decreased time-to-market. MVPs allow for quicker delivery of functionality, enabling organizations to respond to market demands and competitive pressures more effectively.
Improved, iterative solution/product. By iterating on MVPs based on feedback and data, organizations can continuously improve functionalities, enhance user experience, and adapt to evolving requirements.
Flexibility and Scalability: Modular MVPs provide flexibility to scale components independently, supporting future growth and expansion.
Conclusion/Key Takeaways
Navigating huge and ambiguous software modernization projects requires a structured approach that embraces iterative development and MVP-based strategies. By breaking down monoliths into manageable and deployable MVPs, organizations can mitigate risks, accelerate time-to-market, and deliver value incrementally. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Organizations that are so focused on achieving immediate parity before deploying anything to production are going to have unpredictable delivery, poor feedback loops, and a lengthy roadmap of re-work.