Learn your Why…. and get your team aligned on the “how” and detailing the benefits produced.

1. Application refactoring – usually considered as the most palatable approach for IT leaders as it seems to reduce risk by delivering value slowly, reducing scope and complexity, reducing the impact of changes, and seems to be a cost controllable approach.
2. Application rewrite – usually considered by core IT as a preferred methodology to eliminate technical debt and introduce new technologies and architectures.  This usually has the longest timeline for value realization and carries the highest risk of success (high costs, lengthy timelines, and lack of focus).
3. Tool based modernization – whole or in parts is not a commonly known option for modernization.  Tools allow an application language to be modernized, new architectures and patterns to be introduced, and time to market is normally very short compared to other approaches.

1. The organization is undergoing a digital transformation and
   1. COTS tools are not aligned with product/feature team methodologies being adopted by most digital organizations
   2. There are so many change management headaches across the organization that moving to new systems may be too much

2. Organization has heavily invested in creating unique value by building and maintaining internal software

3. COTS tools feel too simple, generic, not aligned with our core values, not aligned with your functional value schedule/roadmap,  too bureaucratic, too costly, too time-consuming to implement (get back to current parity)

4. Internal IT and business teams would be too disrupted by choosing an alternative

5. COTS tools don’t provide speed to market possible of an internal tool
6. COTS tools oversell the savings and/or the process by which the business can maintain and take on functionality
   1. Perhaps your business team is not prepared/ready to take on IT-centric processes

7. Existing system functionality fits the organizations’ core competency and complexity

8. Building custom software will further your organizations focus on market differentiation and furthering core objectives (i.e. customer service and experience, unified experience for broad customer system exposure)

9. Your team has grown weary of continual patching, hacking, and piling on the bad technical debt with a core system

10. Your team has a plan to rebuild, they like to use the words “strangler pattern”, and their timeline is already years out

11. Cost of Delay when associated with transformation and strategy of the organization make sense to figure out methods to speed up modernization

If you can answer yes to any of the above application modernization may be a good fit and can help lessen your team’s burden.