Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive in this competitive industry. Any freelancer or developer under pressure knows that it is better to start a new project from scratch. Working with a project that has an with a lot of issues is more trouble than it's worth. And, sometimes, the client will not pay for your extra time spent sorting through a legacy mess. ancient code You'll run into , like missing deadlines. Or features that grow into a separated project over , a client that can't pay for , code that won't be , etc. default problems time & budget code quality tested appropriately It should work, but with a few "small" add-ons that will force you to redo your DB architecture. We all know how hard it is an old code. It's always easier to start from scratch and spend a lot of time while and custom solutions. to support building complex I'll say it again and again, you or your team should take responsibility for project competition. What steps should you take that will simplify your work and help you to ** **a bad experience? Not an easy question, I admit. But it is necessary to mention that we all should understand that the market will dictate terms on how to deal with the old codebase. avoid Markets and Leadership Will Guide Us Depending on the market, . A complex fintech project will be pretty hard to update and support. development speed can vary Security, and working with financial transactions . This is why and . are not simple banks usually have huge teams. It is much easier to update "an ordinary dev project". Yes, the project type health tech companies will reflect the costs of the upgrade Documentation should be prepared and approved by . No, you can't . Even if everyone knows what he or she is doing. Would you undergo surgery without having a thorough examination? executors and decision-makers start coding without it (Hint: NO, you wouldn't; and this is why someone should play a bad cop with a pessimistic attitude. It's part of a leadership role.) It can't be a manager or developer that doesn't give a f. I mean, besides shareholders, someone in your team should be your And don't forget to provide him with a bonus. If you don't, you're just stupid. " ." product manager Documentation Must Be Created! Not just for fanciness. It should be your main document, verbally. I'm not against that, but it is always better to keep everything in written form. after having a quick chat. And it will be gone in 1 day. a roadmap that everyone will always have at hand and can navigate it pretty quickly. It's easy to test if you have created a great resource: people have stopped asking questions Everything can be missing Do you know the Sydney tourist attraction, the Opera House? This project is a playbook story for project managers. It was a PM disaster. They spent three times the budget and missed all their deadlines. I think may have been involved, because we are pretty good at missing our deadlines. software developers Are you sure that your clients or shareholders are ready to deal with the same kind of situation? Usually, they don't, and they __ __even if your intentions were good. So be careful with the old code that has a lot of tech debt. There is a reason why it is better to fix it during the development phase, not after. WILL Blame You Subscribe to ’s thematic newsletters via our subscribe form in the footer. HackerNoon