Skip to content
Architect's Handbook Wiki

Moving to an agile approach

Practice · Chapter 14

The idea

Section titled “The idea”

A legacy application carries not just technology but the development methodology it was built with — and that methodology may still be in use. If it’s outdated (e.g. Waterfall), part of modernization is changing how the team works.

Why agile fits legacy modernization

Section titled “Why agile fits legacy modernization”
  • Traditional methods emphasize heavy up-front planning and design; agile expects and embraces change.
  • Agile is adaptive rather than predictive — it optimizes for adapting to change instead of predicting outcomes, which matters in a competitive landscape.
  • It enables the incremental improvement work legacy systems need: each sprint targets specific goals, matching the “small, incremental changes” approach to refactoring.
  • It complements introducing microservices and gives the team an effective collaboration structure.
  • It’s well suited to modern build and deployment processes.
Section titled “Related”

Citations

Section titled “Citations”
  • Software Architect’s Handbook (Packt, 2018), Ch.14 “Moving to an agile approach”, p. 1063.