Project-Level Refactoring

by Jim Highsmith

Earlier this fall I worked with a client that was considering a multiyear, multimillion-dollar system redevelopment project. The company's existing system -- 20+ years in its evolution -- contained several million lines of code. While the product had been instrumental to business success, it was viewed as an anchor to future progress. Maintenance and enhancements were taking longer and longer to implement and the costs of integration and regression testing had increased substantially. At the same time, the company's customers are increasingly asking for shorter response times and lower costs. The solution to the problems of a creaky old system was seen as replacement. My caution to them was that the new product would face similar problems within five years if they didn't include a systematic product-level refactoring discipline in their development process.