6.4 Risk Identification and Mitigation Strategy

Risks are inherent in any complex legacy application modernization project no matter which migration strategy and transformation toolset is used. Some of these risks have been described by a group of Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the report “Why Reengineering Projects Fail”, dated April 1999 which lists the reasons for legacy modernization effort failure. Key risks and their mitigation strategy are set forth in Figure xx.

Legacy Application Modernization Risk	Mitigation Strategy
The organization inadvertently adopts a flawed or incomplete modernization strategy.	Adopt six-step process framework: Discover, Design, Build, Integrate, Validate, and Cutover and associated Checklists.
The organization does not effectively use outside consultants and outside contractors.	The Framework and its associated Checklists can provide a starting point for discovery assessment and analysis activities and tasks to build the business case and AAM Plans
Cultural issues - workforce is tied to old technologies with inadequate training programs.	Just-in-time AAM Training Sessions and Cloud Migration Training provided by AAM contractor project team.
The organization does not have its legacy system code baseline under control.	Discovery tools are adopted in the Discover phase to analyze and report on “as is” code base and hosting environment.
There is too little elicitation and validation of requirements.	Design phase generates and validates the application transformation and refactoring processes, tools setup, application blueprints, architecture, data migration and additional cloud infrastructure components required to deploy a modernized Cloud-ready App.
Software architecture is not a primary application modernization consideration	Design phase generates “To Be” Architecture Runway and Infrastructure Architecture Document.
There is no notion of a separate and distinct “application modernization process.”	Major application modernization considerations such as defining the operational system concept, migration strategy, and software architecture for the target system are resolved in the Design phase before the actual transformation and refactoring occur before executing the Build, Integrate and Validate stages in the development Sprints.
There is inadequate planning or inadequate resolve to follow the plans.	The iterative Build, Integrate and Validate Development Sprint iterations develop Just-in-time plans to support Transformation, Refactoring, Integration and Test tasks.
Organizational issues - upper management pre-determines solution space before analyzing the system and the involving the AAM project team	Adopt six-step process framework: Discover, Design, Build, Integrate, Validate, and Cutover; follow checklists of tasks, work items & deliverables; and adopt Agile iterative Development Sprint execution practices with Demos to the Product Owner to give upper management confidence in the AAM project direction and execution.

In summary successful AAM projects require a solid modernization strategy, architecture design and attention to implementation detail.