In the fast-paced world of software technology, yesterday’s state-of-the-art application is today’s legacy system.

With the emergence of SaaS, social media, mobile and open interfaces, the demands being placed on legacy systems are just too great to support the rapid rollout of relevant new features to market. Nimble and disruptive web start-ups, going to market unencumbered by past successes, are creating real competitive threats as they rapidly catch up and then exceed the functional richness of more established players.

Large or small, it is critical to understand how to align product or platform with an ever-changing business strategy.

In this meeting we discussed how to balance the cost pressures to use legacy assets with the need to keep up with the market. Also we learnt how to remediate legacy systems quickly without investing in a massive and risky 'big-bang' re-platforming.
Our experts were addressing the challenges being faced by technology leaders today:
  • Evolving your architecture safely and incrementally
  • Using visualization techniques to identify risky areas of your code-base
  • Test strategies that minimize the risk of changing 'unknown' areas of the system
  • Release planning approaches that maximize market impact
  • How to make the business case for a successful platform migration
  • How to identify technical debt, and strategies to avoid introducing it



About the presenters


Matt Simons is an Offshore Principal for ThoughtWorks. He has spent many years as a consultant helping organizations around the world remediate or replace core enterprise technology platforms. Matt also spent a number of years working in Bangalore, India to establish and strengthen ThoughtWorks' global delivery offering. He writes and speaks regularly on distributed agile development and other hot topics in enterprise software development.

Jonny LeRoy is a Technology Principal at ThoughtWorks. He is a technical generalist with expertise in helping organizations become more effective at creating excellent software products. He has advised ThoughtWorks clients in the retail, telecoms, mobile, banking and search sectors on architecture, testing, build and collaboration. His consulting work is backed by his prior experience as CTO of a successful London-based travel and entertainment start-up, and continuing hands-on technical involvement. An evangelist of simplicity, sustainability and collaboration, he tweets, blogs and speaks regularly.

Santa Clara
22nd September 2010