Initial steps in upgrading monolith Web Forms app and who to bring on?

Brian 161 Reputation points
2022-06-07T20:23:08.06+00:00

I'm a developer and part of my responsibility is to maintain and update a monolith web application - .NET Framework 4.8, Web Forms, VB.NET, 200 database tables, about 1,000 stored procedures, massive code behind files with loads of business logic, hundreds of thousands lines of code, minimal documentation.

I'm the only technical person in my department and we've wanted to upgrade this application for a while -- giving it a fresh look, making it responsive, making it more robust, I'd like to upgrade to .NET 6 / C#, etc.

It such a large project, that I'm at a bit of a loss knowing which initial steps and direction we should take. Any suggestions?

Also, I'm thinking to tackle a project of this size would take an experienced small team (agile project manager, software architect, backend and front end developers, designer...), but am told for budget reasons we can only bring on one other person. We've also had a lot of trouble finding good programmers in the past especially with the current market. Along with this full-time employee, I'd probably be able to put about 10 hours a week into the upgrade of this application.

What sort of position would be the most helpful?

With only 1.25 full-time employees it doesn't seem feasible to me, but figure might as well try and learn during the process.

ASP.NET Core
ASP.NET Core
A set of technologies in the .NET Framework for building web applications and XML web services.
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  1. Rena Ni - MSFT 2,061 Reputation points
    2022-06-08T08:07:55.953+00:00

    Hi @Brian ,

    Web Forms uses .Net Framework which is quite different from .Net Core. You need entirely rewrite your project.

    Here are some helpful official documents help you migrate:

    Then I suggest you use ASP.NET Core Razor Pages which is more similar with Web Forms, here is the document reference:

    Tutorial: Get started with Razor Pages in ASP.NET Core

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    Best Regards,
    Rena

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