What happens when only 3 out of 100 engineers can touch a critical system and nobody else wants to? This talk dives into a real story of a failing legacy codebase: programming language barrier, poor testing, outdated dependencies, constant outages and a team stuck in frustration with no investment in sight.
Instead of another failed “big rewrite” proposal, I approached the problem differently, using product thinking. By breaking the system into smaller, prioritized problems, aligning stakeholders and introducing measurable outcomes, we turned paralysis into progress.
In this lightning talk, I’ll walk through the exact steps I used to reframe the problem, gain buy-in and start delivering impact without having to think about rewriting everything. If you’ve ever faced a legacy system everyone avoids but depends on, this talk will give you a practical way forward.