by Jason Gardner (ed.)
Replacing a legacy system often begins with an inventory. Teams document existing capabilities, translate them into requirements and begin rebuilding them with newer technology. This process can feel thorough and responsible, but it can also carry years of outdated assumptions and unnecessary functionality into the new system.
Modernization gives organizations an opportunity to reconsider those assumptions. One question can help focus that work: If we were solving this customer problem today, what would we build?
The answer may look different from the system currently in place. Product thinking gives teams a way to explore that possibility while continuing to deliver useful results.
Begin with the customer outcome
Legacy systems grow over time. New capabilities are added to solve immediate problems. Workflows change, business policies evolve and customer expectations shift. Features that once served an important purpose may remain long after the original need has changed.
As a result, the complete feature inventory of a legacy system rarely provides a reliable picture of current customer priorities. Product thinking begins with the outcomes customers need to achieve. Teams can use the existing system to understand workflows, requirements and historical decisions while evaluating each capability according to its current value.
This approach gives modernization teams room to improve the product as they replace aging technology.
A water utility reconsidered its replacement effort
A major water utility needed to replace a decades old field services application used by engineers responsible for keeping water flowing to consumers. Modern security and mobility requirements made replacement necessary.
The initiative was originally budgeted for two years, and the organization anticipated potential cost and schedule overruns because of the number and diversity of stakeholders involved. Platinum Edge helped the organization establish a product vision and visual product roadmap for the replacement.
Within three days, a cross functional, self managing team was established. Participants defined the product vision and roadmap and determined what functionality would need to achieve to be considered done and releasable within weeklong sprints.
This gave the team a clear direction for development while leaving room to learn from stakeholders and working software. The legacy application remained an important source of information, while customer needs helped determine which capabilities deserved investment.
Product direction helps teams make better decisions
A modernization effort can involve hundreds of decisions about functionality, sequencing and investment. Clear product direction helps teams make those decisions consistently.
A meaningful product goal establishes the future state the team is working to achieve. The product backlog can evolve as the team learns more about customers, technology and business priorities. For leaders, this creates visibility into the outcomes the investment is intended to produce. For teams, it provides enough direction to make informed development decisions. For stakeholders, it creates opportunities to evaluate progress against real needs.
During modernization, this alignment is especially valuable because the team continually encounters features and workflows inherited from the existing system. Each one creates a decision about whether that capability still helps customers achieve an important outcome and whether it deserves further investment.
Short feedback cycles improve those decisions
The water utility team worked in weeklong sprints. During initial planning, stakeholders gathered around a visual product roadmap to identify priorities, gaps, relationships and dependencies. Once development began, stakeholders inspected progress with the team at the end of each sprint. Working functionality also reached production every sprint.
This cadence gave stakeholders frequent opportunities to evaluate the developing product based on actual use and observable results. They could identify capabilities that worked well, areas that required adjustment and needs that had not been apparent during planning. They could also reconsider functionality that once appeared necessary.
Those discoveries helped the team make better decisions about subsequent investment. Short feedback cycles allowed the organization to test assumptions before they became expensive commitments.
Releasable increments give leaders more choices
A long modernization program can consume substantial resources before customers have an opportunity to use the replacement. Earlier releases give leaders and stakeholders the ability to evaluate progress using current evidence.
They can continue investing in valuable capabilities, adjust priorities as conditions change and reconsider work whose value has become uncertain. They can also recognize when the product has reached a useful level of capability.
The water utility reached that point much sooner than expected.
Six months changed the original plan
After six months of an initiative originally budgeted for two years, stakeholders requested the new system and the retirement of the old one. The new application did not contain every capability available in the legacy system, yet stakeholders concluded that they could perform their jobs better with the new product.
That finding had significant implications for the remaining work. Some lower priority capabilities from the legacy application were rarely used. Others represented implementations that customers did not particularly value. The team did not recreate those capabilities.
The organization avoided the time and expense associated with developing functionality that would have contributed little customer value. The six month result also provided a useful measure of modernization progress because customer outcomes helped determine when the product was ready to serve its purpose.
Learning what to leave behind
Modernization creates an opportunity to examine years of accumulated product decisions. Some legacy capabilities will remain essential and deserve careful preservation. Others may need substantial improvement. New customer needs may require capabilities that never existed in the previous system, while some functionality may have reached the end of its useful life.
Teams can discover those differences by delivering high value capabilities early and gathering feedback from the people who use them. Product backlog ordering supports this process by directing attention and investment toward the work expected to create the greatest value. Each increment then provides additional information for future decisions.
Over time, the backlog reflects what the organization has learned about its customers and their needs. That can reduce unnecessary development while directing resources toward improvements customers will use.
Five practices leaders can apply
The water utility experience provides several practical lessons for leaders preparing for modernization.
- Define customer outcomes early. Work with customers to learn what they need to accomplish with the new product. For example, field engineers may need secure mobile access to complete essential work while away from an office. That outcome provides clearer direction for development.
- Evaluate legacy capabilities individually. Review existing functionality for current customer value, frequency of use and relevance to today’s workflows. A feature’s history can provide useful context for the decision.
- Create working increments quickly. Give stakeholders something they can inspect and use. Their reactions to working functionality can reveal needs and priorities that were difficult to identify during initial planning.
- Maintain the ability to release. A releasable product gives leaders choices about timing and investment. The water utility’s ability to release every sprint meant the organization could respond when stakeholders determined that sufficient value had accumulated.
- Revisit planned work as evidence develops. A backlog represents the team’s current understanding. Customer feedback and working results should continue shaping what receives investment.
These practices help organizations connect modernization spending to customer outcomes throughout development.
Measure modernization by customer value
A successful modernization effort should improve the customer’s ability to achieve meaningful outcomes. For the water utility, focusing on current customer needs helped them deliver the most valuable items and avoid working on low value items. Regular production releases gave the organization enough evidence to make a confident decision about moving forward.
The experience also demonstrates the value of agility during modernization. Product goals provide direction, short sprints create frequent opportunities for learning, stakeholder feedback informs priorities and releasable increments allow organizations to respond to what they discover.
Together, these practices help teams invest in capabilities customers value while leaving unnecessary legacy functionality behind. Modernization can produce a product shaped by current customer needs and future opportunities.
If your organization is preparing for a complex modernization effort, Platinum Edge can help establish the product strategy, team structure, scrum practices and coaching needed to support incremental, evidence based delivery.
Contact Platinum Edge to explore how your modernization initiative can deliver usable value sooner while reducing unnecessary work, cost and risk.
