Modernizing .NET Applications

Chapter 10. Your Call to Action

When I finish watching a fixer-upper show on HGTV, I go on with my day and pay no heed to what I observed. I don’t want you to do that after you read this book! No, you have some clear next steps to ensure that you regain control of your .NET portfolio and start realizing new value from your existing assets. I’d like you to do four things.

Step 1: Assess Your Portfolio

First, you need to get a handle on what’s in front of you. Scour your landscape to get a sense of which .NET project types you have. Go back to Chapter 2 and list your software for each category.

Consider a few vectors when plotting your portfolio. For example, you might want to create a chart that grades technical debt on the y-axis, and business value on the x-axis (see Figure 10-1). The circles that you plot represent the .NET apps, and the circle size corresponds to how well that app represents what’s in your overall portfolio. That last factor matters because you want to tackle modernization of apps that generate patterns you can use elsewhere.

Figure 10-1. Plotting your application portfolio

In Figure 10-1, circle A is a poor candidate for modernization. It has low business value and a high degree of technical debt, and upgrading it doesn’t help us elsewhere in the portfolio. Contrast that with circle B, which still has some serious technical debt to overcome, but it has strong ...