Week 7 — Monday S3

A COBOL developer. A regulatory notice. 18 months. The clock is already running.

The letter arrived on a Monday.

Regulatory body. Compliance requirement. The core policy system - COBOL, 40 years old - needed documented logic and a migration path. 18-month window.

The COBOL developer: 64 years old. Planning to retire in 9 months. Documentation: essentially none. Internal capacity: also essentially none.

This isn't rare. It's one of the most common ways a legacy crisis starts - not with a failure, but with an external deadline that arrives before anyone was ready.

What do you do on the Monday morning you receive that letter?

Full story - Friday.

A few quick questions

Optional — answer as many or as few as you like. No follow-up unless you want one.

Is there any regulatory or compliance pressure tied to your legacy system?

Is the key person who maintains it approaching retirement or planning to leave?

Curious how we approached a situation like this?

My thoughts

Anything else on your mind — your situation, a question, a reaction. Completely optional.

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