[snarkypixel]

One thing I've learned from these large migration projects is that v1 always seems like total crap, while v2 appears to be the perfect dream. However, as you begin building v2, you start to realize that v1 was not actually that bad and had many great but unappreciated features. Additionally, you come to understand that many v1 features took a long time to develop, were battle-tested, and would require significant effort to rebuild in v2 with minimal benefits.

So, what I've learned is not to completely discard v1. Instead, it's better to refactor or rebuild only the parts that pose issues, even though it may not be as sexy or exciting as starting v2 from scratch.

In practice, I would begin by cloning v1 and deploying it to a development environment to start tweaking it. I would also ensure to implement numerous automated tests to safeguard against any potential issues caused by refactoring. Of course, if you can keep using the same database that's even better as you can test refactored features with real customer data and even run both builds in parallel to spot any differences.