Replace fragile legacy scripts with cloud-native stability by mastering documentation, phased delivery, and knowledge transfer to eliminate single points of failure in your architecture.
Berlin • November 9 & 10, 2026
AI. Burnout. Big decisions.
The pressure is real. Berlin is where you work through it.
Moving legacy systems to the cloud is often sold as a solution, but a “lift-and-shift” without a longer-term plan only relocates the problem. When mission-critical architecture relies on decades of legacy Bash and PL/SQL scripts maintained by a single person, that individual becomes a single point of failure. Their departure doesn’t just leave a vacancy; it leaves a “black box” monster that no one understands and everyone is afraid to touch.
This platform-agnostic session provides a survival guide for inheriting these systems. We will explore why the foundation of modernization isn’t code, but documentation and knowledge gathering. We’ll discuss how to audit undocumented scripts to build a source of truth before a single line of code is rewritten.
A key focus will be practical application of the strangler fig pattern. Instead of a risky “big bang” rewrite, we examine how to balance ongoing maintenance of the old system with the development of the new. You will learn how to establish realistic dates and deliverables that prioritize stability—such as replacing outer Bash wrappers first while letting complex but stable PL/SQL logic run until a later phase. This talk provides a blueprint for turning a fragile, person-dependent script library into a resilient, documented, and modernisable cloud asset.
Key takeaways
- Identify and mitigate “”Single Points of Failure”” by converting tribal knowledge into technical documentation
- Develop a phased “”piecemeal”” migration roadmap that prioritizes wrapping scripts over deep logic
- Balance the “”business as usual”” maintenance of legacy code with the development of new architecture
- Establish a framework for setting realistic deliverables and milestones during a high-risk cloud transition
