Architecture vs. Archaeology - How I Survived an Acquisition Without a Map
By a Co-Founder at Priset
A few years ago, I served as an architect during a major enterprise acquisition. On paper, the deal was a masterpiece. In reality, it was a technical nightmare.
We were tasked with migrating the acquired company’s operational system and procedures, their heavily customized data handling, and a proprietary client tool. There was almost no documentation. To make matters worse, the original engineering team was—understandably—uncooperative. Fearing they would be made redundant the moment we "figured out" their system, they held the institutional knowledge hostage.
I spent months doing "Code Archaeology." I wasn't building for the future; I was digging through layers of undocumented, "black box" logic just to understand how the business actually functioned.