Deploying the Swift Method to Modernize a Singapore Government Legacy System - Good description of what it feels like to be stuck in the legacy trap: “The [Singapore] government agency in this case study faced a similar issue with a legacy system that supported critical business processes, integrated with other business-critical applications, and was developed and maintained by third-party vendors. Over time, the codebase had become highly coupled within different business domains and contexts, making it difficult for developers to work on. This situation led to product development squads being slowed down by dependencies on the support team for this legacy system. The development squads also lacked confidence to make changes to this system themselves—given the low automated test coverage—and faced uncertainty about what they would be able to deliver for their own work streams independently.” You can see the original talk this is based on here.