6 Common App Modernization Pitfalls
Oct 22, 2024
By Kevin Epstein
Modernizing legacy applications has the potential to create tremendous value for your business. Modern applications scale more easily and deliver value faster to end users. They are also easier to maintain and more cost-efficient when configured correctly. Yet, there are many ways that the application modernization journey can go wrong.
Here are the 6 most common modernization pitfalls we see as an experienced provider of application modernization services.
Trying to Modernize the Entire Code Base at Once
It’s tempting to want to modernize an entire legacy codebase. However, we don’t recommend this approach, especially if your team is less experienced with application modernization. Modernizations are complex projects, and the larger the codebase, the longer the modernization journey takes to get right, which introduces significantly more risk. Engineers can miss critical dependencies and underestimate the difficulty of optimizing for the cloud.
Worst case scenario is businesses experience extended downtime when trying to make the transition. The better approach is to break a larger modernization project up into much smaller pieces.
Failing to Rationalize and Prioritize
Another common pitfall we see is business leaders and IT teams failing to prioritize their app modernization projects. In general, we recommend starting with a smaller Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for a non-critical application or feature. A PoC is a great opportunity to test the process, identify any skill gaps on the team, and ensure cloud readiness. After a successful PoC, it’s up to decision-makers to prioritize the rest of the roadmap according to the needs and capabilities of the business.
This could mean modernizing applications in order of least critical to most crucial for the business to gain more experience. It could also mean starting with the most outdated applications that would see the biggest jump in performance. Every business will prioritize differently, but what’s most important is that the group does go through a rationalization and prioritization exercise.
Forgetting to Align with Business Stakeholders
Business stakeholders should be included in modernization conversations from the beginning. After all, the point of modernizing legacy applications is to generate positive results for the business, not just to achieve better technical performance.
Business stakeholders bring an important perspective to the conversation that should be incorporated into prioritization efforts. Application modernization should happen within the context of a goal that puts the business in a better position to serve customers, deliver services, and grow.
Neglecting to Include Modernization as Part of the Broader Org Strategy
Related to the point above, application modernization has the potential to impact enterprise strategy more broadly. Modern applications allow engineers to focus more on innovation and feature development. They create budget capacity for team leaders and enable companies to iterate faster based on customer feedback.
As a result, modernization should be included in the larger conversation about what the organization can achieve in both the short and long term. Leaving app modernizations out of business strategy discussions is a missed opportunity.
Failing to Build or Acquire the Skills Needed for Modernization
Re-writing or replatforming legacy applications effectively is not easy. Engineers should be confident when working with containers, serverless architecture, and cloud solutions. They should understand the end-to-end process of auditing existing applications, mapping dependencies, projecting costs, and building project plans on timelines that make sense.
And IT teams should know how to continually optimize applications on the cloud through performance monitoring, robust access controls, proper configurations, and much more. When crucial modernization skills don’t exist in house, businesses should bring in outside expertise, like ClearScale, to guide the project.
Forgetting to Align People, Processes, and Tooling
Maximizing application performance requires giving talented people high-quality tools within well-defined processes. If one of these dimensions is not aligned with the other two, or all three are implemented in isolation without consideration for the others, business applications won’t reach their full potential.
Everyone involved in maintaining modern applications – DevOps engineers, platform engineers, cloud engineers, software engineers, business stakeholders – should agree on what tools are needed and what processes would accelerate software delivery. Getting everyone on the same page unlocks the true value of modernized applications.
Avoid Application Modernization Pitfalls with ClearScale and AWS
If any of these application modernization pitfalls represents a real risk for your business, consider modernizing legacy applications with ClearScale. Our team has helped businesses in many industries migrate and modernize applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We know how to design modernization journeys that minimize risk, avoid downtime, and elevate application performance dramatically. You can read some of our case studies here.
To learn more about our app modernization approach, schedule a call with one of our cloud experts.
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