Platform Forward Group
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Casebook

32 entries

· 3 min read

SharePoint 2016 and 2019 lost support on July 14

Two versions, one date, and the farm still runs. Find the farms, name an owner per farm, then pick a destination per farm instead of per estate.

#sharepoint#eol#inventory

· 1 min read

The Windows 10 estate: year-two math

Consumer ESU runs out in October. Enterprise ESU doubles every year. If the fleet is still on 10, the spreadsheet decides this one.

#windows#eol#planning

· 2 min read

The batch job nobody knew

The estate's most dangerous resident is scheduled, unowned, and load-bearing. Finding the batch layer before it finds you.

#inventory#batch#risk

· 2 min read

The inventory always surprises

Nobody has ever handed us an accurate list of what runs. What two weeks of walking the floor finds, and why the surprise rate never drops.

#inventory#legacy#discovery

· 2 min read

WebForms, and the right order to retire it

There is no lift for WebForms, only a sequence. Which pages move first, what the grid becomes, and the trap in rewriting the whole UI at once.

#migration#dotnet#webforms

· 2 min read

Datacenter exit with a deadline

The lease ends on a date. The estate moves or it pays. Sequencing a forced exit so the date does the deciding for you.

#migration#datacenter#deadlines

· 2 min read

The first ninety days of a roadmap

A modernization roadmap earns trust or loses it in its first quarter. What to schedule in days 1 through 90, and what to refuse to.

#roadmaps#planning#delivery

· 2 min read

WCF to modern .NET, in the right order

The WCF estate can be moved. There is a wrong order to do it in, and most teams pick it. The sequence that works, current as of .NET 10.

#migration#dotnet#wcf

· 2 min read

The rollback plan that got used

A war story with the serial numbers filed off. What a real rollback at hour four of a migration window teaches about writing the plan.

#migration#rollback#war-story

· 2 min read

Lift and shift, and the regrets thereof

Moving servers unchanged into the cloud is sometimes right and usually regretted. The three regrets, and the narrow case where lifting wins anyway.

#migration#cloud#cost

· 2 min read

Pricing the standing stock

What the estate costs to keep is the number nobody has. Licenses, infrastructure and people-hours, counted the way an appraiser would.

#inventory#cost#licensing

· 1 min read

Slice the payment rebuild by invoice type

The safest seam in a billing migration is the one finance already drew. A worked pattern, with the case study we keep pointing at.

#payments#strangler-fig#decomposition

· 1 min read

SQL Server 2016 has ninety days

Extended support ends July 12, 2026. The one-week triage for anyone starting late.

#sql-server#eol

· 2 min read

Decommissioning is a project

Turning things off is scoped work with an owner, a sequence and a budget. The modernization industry's least favorite fact.

#roadmaps#decommissioning#cost

· 2 min read

The vendor contract time bomb

The estate's biggest risks are filed in procurement, not running in production. Reading the contracts folder like an engineer.

#roadmaps#vendors#licensing

· 2 min read

The server under the desk

Every estate has one. Finding the unracked, unpatched, load-bearing hardware before its retirement finds you.

#inventory#shadow-it#risk

· 2 min read

Monolith seams, and where to find them

The monolith already knows where it wants to split. Reading the four seams that exist before drawing the ones you wish existed.

#decomposition#monolith#seams

· 3 min read

What we tell boards about rewrites

The full-rewrite pitch reaches every board eventually. The four questions that separate the rare good one from the expensive kind, with numbers.

#rewrites#roadmaps#strangler-fig

· 1 min read

The freeze that wasn't

A change freeze is a promise everyone makes and one team keeps. War story, then the enforcement checklist.

#cutover#change-control

· 2 min read

Leave it alone, on purpose

The most underused line on any modernization roadmap. When not touching a system is the correct engineering decision, and how to make it stick.

#roadmaps#strategy#risk

· 2 min read

Parallel running without tears

Run old and new side by side, compare everything, believe the diffs. The discipline that removes drama from cutovers, and its three costs.

#migration#parallel-run#verification

· 2 min read

Retirement wave planning

The systems are not retiring. The people who understand them are, on a schedule HR already knows. Planning for the knowledge exit, not the technology one.

#inventory#people#risk

· 2 min read

The cutover checklist

The list we tape to the wall the week a workload changes homes. Twenty-two items, each one purchased with somebody's bad weekend.

#migration#cutover#checklists

· 1 min read

Put January 2027 on the wall now

Windows Server 2016 extended support ends January 12, 2027. Thirteen months is exactly enough time, which means it is almost too late.

#windows-server#eol#planning

· 1 min read

Pin the migration to the LTS

.NET 10 shipped this month with three years of support. That release cadence is your planning tool. Use it.

#dotnet#roadmaps

· 2 min read

The database that stayed

Every decomposition plan meets the shared database and blinks. Why the database moves last, moves slowest, and sometimes rightly never moves at all.

#decomposition#databases#data

· 1 min read

Name an owner

One name per system. Not a team, not a committee, a name. The cheapest control in the whole modernization toolkit.

#inventory#ownership

· 2 min read

Strangler fig, in practice

The pattern everyone cites and half-implements. The three rules that make it work on a real estate, learned the expensive way.

#decomposition#strangler-fig#migration