What we learnt from rescuing a mammoth technology integration
summary
A large subscription migration at Bloom and Wild moves customers off a legacy PHP app Bloomappy onto a single multibrand backend, unlocking mobile apps and richer calendar management but exposing heavy architectural debt and messy customer data. The program starts 17 Jan 2022 and ends 13 Dec 2023, involves 85 people, and finishes twice as long as planned and over budget. A temporary compatibility layer, tighter scope, and smaller focused teams ultimately deliver the new system and deprecate the old one.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:00Large tech integrations challenges
- 8:38Project goals and planning
- 13:39Milestone plan and first issues
- 17:31Architectural debt and coordination
- 20:23Adding people to late project
- 23:13Underestimating the tarpit
- 25:46Ignoring coordination overhead
- 27:30Pivoting to save project
- 31:45Project outcomes and learnings
- 36:59Final advice and books
- 38:02Q&A
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