Platform Forward Group· 2 min read
Put the freeze on the calendar
The December change freeze is coming whether you plan it or not. Planned, it is the most productive fortnight of the modernization year.
#change-freeze#planning#operations
Roadmaps
14 articles
· 2 min read
Four Microsoft clocks stop on Tuesday
October 13 ends Office LTSC 2021, Server 2022 mainstream support, Windows 10 ESU year one and the last year of Server 2012 ESU. One query sorts the estate before then.
#microsoft#eol#planning
· 2 min read
Negotiate the exit at signing
Signing day is the strongest you will ever be with a vendor. A casebook note on buying the exit while you still hold the pen.
#contracts#vendors#exit
· 1 min read
.NET Framework 4.8: supported forever, and that's the trap
The runtime ships with Windows and will be patched for years. The ecosystem around it left anyway. Reading the difference before it reads you.
#dotnet#legacy#planning
· 1 min read
Every plan runs on two clocks: effort and calendar
Effort time and calendar time are different clocks, and modernization plans keep reading the wrong one. Four hundred words on telling them apart.
#roadmaps#planning
· 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
· 3 min read
Modernization is a staffing problem wearing a technology costume
The estate is not the constraint. The fourteen people who can safely change it are. A longer piece on planning around humans, with dates attached.
#staffing#roadmaps#legacy
· 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
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
· 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
· 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
· 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