what does inherit mean here ? You were most likely not hired to refactor 700KLOC, because they would not have been in that position if they had a decent engineering process in the first place. Obviously, do not rewrite from scratch: it is a 700 KLOC piece of code so even at a completely unrealistic rate of 500 LOC / day, it would take you a 5-10 man years to do it, and I doubt the system is well specified.
First, I would focus on doing something visible for the client: show that you can deliver, and do it as quickly as possible. This means: do not try to understand everything, do not try to get a mental model of the whole thing. Once you get some buy-in from your customer and people within your client, you will have more flexibility to negotiate things, and be able to use most of the technical advices you were given.
If the customer is not willing to enter this kind of discussions after you showed you could deliver, I would just walk away if you can.
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what does inherit mean here ? You were most likely not hired to refactor 700KLOC, because they would not have been in that position if they had a decent engineering process in the first place. Obviously, do not rewrite from scratch: it is a 700 KLOC piece of code so even at a completely unrealistic rate of 500 LOC / day, it would take you a 5-10 man years to do it, and I doubt the system is well specified.
First, I would focus on doing something visible for the client: show that you can deliver, and do it as quickly as possible. This means: do not try to understand everything, do not try to get a mental model of the whole thing. Once you get some buy-in from your customer and people within your client, you will have more flexibility to negotiate things, and be able to use most of the technical advices you were given.
If the customer is not willing to enter this kind of discussions after you showed you could deliver, I would just walk away if you can.