Easy and Proven Way to Turn any Codebase to Brand New

Do you work on a legacy project you want to improve for years,
but don't know where to start?

Do you feel there must be an easier and sustainable way to upgrade
without burning your full year budget?

Are you curious about hidden gem tools that handle work for you and give you space and time for creative and important work?

Are you dedicated to invest a year to erase 10 years of technical debt and keep it upgraded forever?



This is the book for you →


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In writing since May,
to be released by end of 2025

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5 Skills this Book will Teach You

  1. Build a 1-year strategy for upgrading one step every day
  2. How to choose the right priorities from amidst legacy project tool chaos. You'll know what is important and what is nice–to–have trap of useless work
  3. Discover new upgrade tooling you can delegate tedious boring work to
  4. Learn how to use tools in the optimal order, to get most value with least manual work from your side
  5. Most importantly, how to keep the codebase in a shape for decade to come for fraction costs with lazy automation, strategic planning and precaution measures.

5 Practical-Content Parts

I. Mythbusters

14 chapters

In first part, we'll look at most spread myths. They're often based on single failed upgrade, but one experience is not enough to set a standard. Their adoption lead to overpriced upgrades or even worse shape than before.

We'll compare them to dozens of successful upgrades and see why they have no solid base.

II. Prepare

14 chapters

Before we jump into an upgrade work, we have to be prepared: set the right expectations to our client and make sure upgrade is the right solution here. We have to verify, CTO, dev team and CEO are all on-board.

We'll learn how to talk with new client, learn more about their problems and build trust that leverage the effect of upgrade work.

III. Analyze & Plan

~10 chapters

We'll learn what patterns to look for, what metrics to measure and how. Once we decide do the upgrade, we need to analyze the codebase first.

Once we deep dive alone to the codebase, we'll prepare a tailored battle plan and realistic timeline to achieve upgrade goals.

IV. Execute

~15 chapters

We have a plan, a vision and everyone is on-board. Now it's time to execute. How exactly and what tools we can use. What is the best tool + step order to avoid manual work as much as possible.

How to combine PHP version and framework upgrade. What are ways to lower difficulty factor, how to prune your codebase, how to split huge changes into small, doable steps.

V. Case studies + Q & A

5 chapters

I'll share couple anonymous case studies of real projects I've done, so you can find some inspiration. It's easier to replicate something real you can see in a full raw story.

In this special part, I will also answer your questions. Are you an early reader? You have a chance to send me your questions. It will be focus on practical solutions, with what worked and what didn't.


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About the Author


Tomas Votruba is a father, a trainer, a book author, technical blogger, a developer, a coach, an upgrade master and the most frequent lover of legacy projects.

He used to do legacy project upgrade trainings back in 2015-2017. On one training, he felt he's having a "deja vu" moment. He was there before. Yes, he was, he did training in the company exactly a year ago. Not only the same company, but the very same training.

To his surprise nothing has changed. But to the audience, everything seemed new and interesting.

"Not possible" Tomas thought, "in year they must have solved it". Well, they did not.

Upgrade project workload was the bottleneck. To solve it, he made well-known tool to automate the upgrade work - Rector. His goal was to remove "legacy" from developers' vocabulary by 2025. As you know, it did not happen.

More and more clients have been reaching out to him, to ask for help with upgrades.

Nowadays, the knowledge is the bottleneck.

You won't learn how to drive a car by buying one. You have to take driving lessons, then get experience out in the wild in various situations and weather conditions. You master by doing.

Same applies for legacy project upgrades. First upgrades are the hardest, but that's usually the last upgrade most people do. They should take on 2nd, 3rd and next instead to get more experience.

He wants to speed up learning curve of aspiring upgrade masters, so he started writing a book to share his 50+ project upgrade experience with you. To get you to the clean code faster, cheaper and with struggle that is meaningful.

© 2025 Tomas Votruba