The developers of a legacy application tend to have an important sense of ownership of the application: probably they’ve spent many months in its design, coding, stabilization and maintenance tasks. Also, they’ve got a lot to say about the future enhancements that should be made to the application, especially taking advantage of the features of the target platform after a migration is done.
In addition to this sense of “fatherhood” over the source code, developers have the best knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the application. Naturally, no one knows the code more than the ones who actually wrote it. Because of this, developers are among the key stakeholders that you must take into account when managing a migration project.
You may find the following tips useful when working with developers as a stakeholder group in migration projects:
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Most developers will feel very enthusiastic about the migration project. If they are part of the team that executes the migration, they will help keep the team motivated. If they are not in the team, it’s always a good idea to keep them informed of the technical details of the project.
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Some developers, especially if they are part of the team in charge of the migration, will feel tempted to do some enhancements to the application during the migration project. This may introduce some sort of “feature creep” to the project, possibly increasing the testing and stabilization costs. I guess you don’t want this, so make sure everybody stays focused on the goal of achieving Functional Equivalence first!
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Developers who are not skillful yet on the target platform will feel rightfully concerned about the migration project. Of course, they need training! Make sure they receive proper training on the target language and technologies before the migration project finishes and they have to continue their maintenance tasks in the new platform.