I joined a team in 2000 only to learn the platform I was training for was already obsolete. That platform was the HP 3000, and our organization ran a mission-critical business system across hundreds of mid-range servers. We were moving from green-screen terminals to a modern web application. The Internet era made this inevitable, but HP’s decision to kill the platform forced our hand. What followed took twelve years and taught me the true risk of platform migrations. ...
Legacy teams don’t need cake: they need a seat at the table. With modernization efforts, new systems often get the spotlight and celebrating those wins is important. But beware the “cake in the break area” trap. If your legacy support team’s main interaction with your modernization effort is a leftover piece of cake, you’ve fallen into that trap. Legacy engineers keep the present running while the future is still being built. They bring deep institutional knowledge, production support experience, and insight into why systems were built the way they were, knowledge earned through past rewrites, migrations, and upgrades. ...