When to rewrite vs. upgrade?

Posted by MrGumbe on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by MrGumbe
Published on 2010-05-04T15:31:56Z Indexed on 2010/05/04 15:38 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 185

Filed under:

sdlc

|

best-practices

|

project-planning

|

scope

All custom legacy software needs changing, or so say our users. Sometimes they want a feature or two added and all that is necessary to change a bit of code, add a control, or some other minor upgrade task. Sometimes they want to ditch their error-prone VB5 desktop solution and rewrite the whole thing as a rich Web 2.0 ASP.NET MVC application. More often, however, the scope of changes to legacy functionality lies somewhere between these two extremes.

What rules of thumb to you use to decide whether you should upgrade an existing application or start from scratch?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about sdlc

Mapping between UML Diagrams and SDLC?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What are different UML diagrams that I can use at different stages of SDLC? I am looking for mapping of possible UML diagrams to the different phases in SDLC. >>> More
client problems - misaligned expectations & not following SDLC protocols

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
hi guys, im having some serious problems with a client on a project - i could use some advice please the short version i have been working with this client now for almost 6 months without any problems (a classified website project in the range of 500 hours) over the last few days things… >>> More
Implementation Phase in SDLC

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What are the different things that a developer (or a team of developer or the manager) needs to consider if the project they are working is now in the Implementation Phase. I am probably asking 'best practices' during the said phase. Maybe also the tools that should be made available and should… >>> More
Question about SDLC. How to answer this?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have seen this asked many times in job interviews but I am still not sure how to answer this. I am a web developer for quite some time but I still have problem with explaining OOP and SDLC (Familiar with system development life cycle) . How to prepare for above 2 topics for an interview point… >>> More
SDLC/Deployment/Documentation ERP/framework that minimizes developer misery

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I was wondering if there are favorite SDLC/Deployment/Documentation/Versioning ERP/frameworks that work with popular SDLC methodologies, such as Agile, that minimize developer exposure to what most programmer hate to do most -- PAPERWORK ? Often, release management is extremely inefficient and there… >>> More

Related posts about best-practices

Batch Best Practices and Technical Best Practices Updated

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
The Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) and Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products (Doc Id: 560367.1) have been updated with updated and new advice for the various versions of the Oracle… >>> More
Partial template specialization of free functions - best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As most C++ programmers should know, partial template specialization of free functions is disallowed. For example, the following is illegal C++: template <class T, int N> T mul(const T& x) { return x * N; } template <class T> T mul<T, 0>(const T& x) { return T(0); } //… >>> More
Object Oriented PHP Best Practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Say I have a class which represents a person, a variable within that class would be $name. Previously, In my scripts I would create an instance of the object then set the name by just using: $object->name = "x"; However, I was told this was not best practice? That I should have a function set_name()… >>> More
Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed… >>> More
Notification Email Best Practices--From Server Setup to Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, I'm in the process now of building a SaaS tool that allows network admins to generate notification emails to the members of the end-users of our platform (among many many other things). I'm running into a bit of an "out of my expertise" wall, as I know there are a lot of variables involved… >>> More