Measure first, migrate later: Lessons from a 230% velocity boost

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Engineering leaders know the challenge: you need to modernize legacy infrastructure, but how do you prove the investment is worthwhile? And once you’ve made changes, how do you know they’re actually working?

Matt Buckley faced this exact dilemma at tax compliance software company Avalara, where his team managed Value-Added Tax (VAT) reporting products built from decades of acquisitions and integrations. With billions in tax remittance flowing through their systems and potential liability in the hundreds of millions, every deployment carried significant risk.

“We had subject matter experts, manual regression testing, conversations about ‘well, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that,’” Buckley says.

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