16.2 Reconciliation Objectives

The reconciliation effort decides the order of componentization. Stakeholders evaluate the qualities of the various code migration strategies and make trade-offs. The qualities evaluated include risk, costs, measurable progress, and others derived from stakeholder priorities. This process results in a high-level schedule supported by the stakeholders.

Given the inflexibility of the legacy RSS, limited resources, and high visibility, compromise is a necessity. This was apparent as soon as stakeholders reviewed the initial migration plan. Stakeholders observed that the only business object fully completed before the end of the project in the initial code migration plan was the small and poorly understood Match Doc. The testable, measurable progress goals they sought were subjugated by the quest to minimize adapters. Migrating a percentage of program elements had no appeal as a progress measure. The lack of interim products did not fit with their expectations of an incremental approach.

The high-level schedule resulting from the reconciliation process accomplished several goals: It provided a consensus plan for which a cost estimate could be developed, established a notional schedule, and determined the order for business object completion. Order is important because extracting a program element from its environment creates loose ends that require adaptation. Adapters add complexity, can be difficult to build, and must ultimately be thrown away ”all of which increase the cost of the modernization effort.