“Measure what is important; don't make important what you can measure.”
— Robert McNamara, former US Secretary of Defense
Value is an elusive concept. It’s in the eye of the beholder, subject to his or her context at a moment in time, and fluctuates depending on what else is on offer. Organizations have many beholders (stakeholders), who all have slightly different and shifting perspectives, contexts, and options.
And yet.
We must have some sort of way to measure value, especially, say, when making a multi-million dollar, possibly years-long commitment to modernize a system that is one of the operational backbones of your organization. Even if these metrics are over-optimistic, courtesy of the confidence theater of traditional procurement practices, we cling to them because 94% of respondents “agree” or “strongly agree” that concrete numbers sound authoritative.
Industry marketing material often gushes about how quickly legacy code can be converted: “We transformed 8,000 lines of Assembly to Java in 1 month!” or “We converted 84,000 lines of COBOL to Java in 1 month with 99.99% automation.”
These feel and sound good because they’re impressive numbers and easy to communicate. But they have about as much value as the word count requirement of a high school essay.
Converting lines of code is the easy, upfront part of the typical approach to modernization. The real challenge, and where most projects stumble, comes afterward. It’s the painstaking and unpredictable work of untangling integrations going back decades, reconnecting business logic, testing extensively, and generally making sense of a new codebase that’s often confusing.
In other words, defining value primarily by how fast code gets converted obfuscates the true cost and complexity of the project because the hard part isn’t included. Code conversion stats are isolated metrics that don’t capture actual value.
Contrast that with integrated metrics, like working software. Integrated metrics factor in all the difficult, often-incidental-but-stubbornly-real factors that must be slogged through before realizing genuine value.
Modernization isn’t a one-time translation exercise. It’s a constant, ongoing exercise of improving working software and minimizing technical debt. But too often, the idea of continuous modernization runs counter to today’s RFP cycles, short project tenures, and TCO/ROI/NPV/IRR-obsessed procurement teams.
It takes guts to buck the status quo and demand a safer, more effective approach to modernization. The breakthrough starts by redefining value in integrated, not isolated metrics.
At Mechanical Orchard, our metric is clear: “In Production.” Because if it’s not live, it doesn’t matter.
Speaking of metrics, we’re not even sure which ones are valuable when discussing AI overall. Benedict Evans explains.
American Airlines is the latest airline to cancel flights due to a “computer glitch”. This follows the Newark air traffic control debacle, which appears rooted in Windows 95 and floppy disks.
Hype cycles are moving faster these days, which means there's a lot more washing of all sorts of things. Gartner predicts that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027. Separately, an unsurprising and academic take on the relationship between swagger and hype.
Now that it’s going away, we’re going to miss it, aren’t we? Microsoft is replacing the Blue Screen of Death. End of an era.
How do we make the AI-generated code trustworthy in modernization? Adam Bray and Sam Sanders explain.
Take little steps but carry a big vision. Mark Forsthoffer joins Federal News Network to talk about how federal agencies can modernize without a high-risk big bang. Better yet, we’re “Awardable”—find us in the Tradewinds Solution Marketplace (login required).
It’s hot in the Northern Hemisphere, but Gartner thinks we’re cool. They named us a Cool Vendor in AI Code Assistants. Download the report from our partners, Thoughtworks.
Curious to learn more? Say hello@mechanical-orchard.com.
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*Issue first published on June 30th, 2025. View all newsletters here
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