Rewrites Have Two Teams – Team Rewrite and Team Maintenance.  Join Team Maintenance

When management agrees to rewrite software, they inevitably split the existing team in two – Team Rewrite and Team Maintenance.  Team Rewrite is in charge of creating a brand new system that recreates everything useful and good about the legacy system.  Team Maintenance is in charge of maintaining the legacy system until Team Rewrite completes the rewrite.  Everyone wants to be on Team Rewrite and no one wants to stay on Team Maintenance; everyone is wrong.

The benefits of Team Rewrite are obvious, you get to write new code without all the horrors of the legacy system.  You’ll use the latest technology!  You’ll do things the right way!  Your work won’t be in production, so you won’t have production incidents!  No angry customers!  The list goes on.

The benefits of Team Maintenance aren’t clear.  You get to work in the horrible legacy system.  The system that is so bad, so unfixable, that management has agreed to a rewrite.  Plus you’ll be responsible for incidents and outages!  Why would anyone join Team Maintenance?

Because Team Maintenance is both a flight to safety and an opportunity. 

It’s not glamorous, but the people maintaining the legacy system are critical.  The members of Team Rewrite contribute to theoretical future value, Team Maintance’s work supports customers today.  If things go badly with the rewrite, and usually do, the entire rewrite team can be fired.  The maintenance team remains critical so long as the legacy system lives.

Team Maintenance is also two kinds of opportunity.  

First, is the opportunity to clean up the legacy system.  The legacy system doesn’t have to continue to be terrible.  It’s likely that most or all of the people who said it couldn’t be fixed are now on Team Rewrite.  Everyone left is committed to working on it for the duration.  It’s a great time to clean things up; not to save the system, but for your own sakes.  Very quickly the legacy system won’t be horrible.  It may never be great, but you can work on it sobbing.

The second opportunity is new features.

Customer needs don’t stop just because there’s a rewrite going on.  Management will limit the new features so that the rewrite isn’t trying to hit a moving target.  You’ll only be working on the most important, most critical, and most impactful features.  And you’ll get to work on the critical features, because you’re Team Maintenance.

Does this mean you join Team Maintenance rooting for Team Rewrite to fail?  Not at all!  If Team Rewrite succeeds that’s also great for you.  You’ve shown that you’re a selfless team player – you took on the work that no one else wanted!  Seize the opportunities that come along and you’ll show that you can be trusted to improve your team and deliver critical features.

When a rewrite comes along, your best move is to join the maintenance team.  Volunteering for Team Maintenance is safer, comes with more opportunity, and brings you to management’s attention.  Rewrites usually fail and Team Rewrite leaves the company.  Join Team Maintenance for career growth!