Discovery consumes months before anything changes
Architecture interviews, manual code walkthroughs, and workshops just to understand what you own - before a single ticket is written.
Nobody has a complete map of the system
Documentation drifted from reality years ago. Business rules hide in untested paths. Surprises surface mid-migration and rewrite timelines.
Risk is impossible to quantify before commitment
Without evidence-grounded analysis, risk registers are guesswork. Boards need confidence - and gut-feel architectures don't pass scrutiny.
Estimates blow up once real work begins
The first sprint reveals dependencies no one knew existed. Scope expands. Velocity drops. The original roadmap becomes a liability.
Migration knowledge lives only in people's heads
Senior engineers carry institutional knowledge that isn't documented. When they leave or get reassigned, the program loses its compass.
No way to prove the new system behaves correctly
Without systematic equivalence validation, teams either over-test manually or trust that "it looks the same." Neither gives boards confidence to decommission.
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