TLDR Tech / Data
Your Data Model Isn't Broken, Part I: Why Refactoring Beats Rebuilding
Big-bang rewrites of legacy data systems, often triggered by new leadership or platform migrations, consistently underestimate essential business complexity and the institutional knowledge embedded in existing models. Refactoring (small, incremental improvements with rigorous testing) preserves critical, undocumented logic and avoids the 45% average IT project overrun and 56% value shortfall documented by McKinsey. Treat legacy complexity as indispensable knowledge, methodically improve it, and avoid discarding years of hard-earned operational understanding.
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