4 April 2026 · 4 min read
Why rewrites stall
A rewrite means running two systems, feature-freezing one, and delivering no user value until it is finished. Business pressure eventually forces features into the old system, and the rewrite never lands.
The strangler pattern avoids this: route by route, the new system takes over while the old one keeps serving everything else.
Start with characterisation tests
Inherited code rarely has tests, and the behaviour is the specification. Write tests that capture what it currently does — bugs included — before changing anything.
These tests are what make refactoring safe rather than hopeful.
Upgrade the runtime first
Moving to a supported PHP version usually delivers immediate performance and security wins, and it is cheaper than any architectural change.
Do this before deciding whether a migration is needed at all. Sometimes it is enough.
Where to go from here
If you are weighing legacy modernisation for an upcoming project, the useful next step is usually a short scoping conversation rather than a longer article. Bring your constraints — budget, timeline, existing systems, and the team you already have — and the decision usually resolves itself in an hour.
We run these as a fixed-scope discovery session with a written recommendation at the end, including the cases where our advice is that you do not need us.
Working on something like this?
Send us the brief. We will tell you what we would build, what we would cut, and roughly what it costs.
Talk to us