Use the Mikado Method to do safe changes in a complex codebase
Summary
This article presents the Mikado Method as a structured approach to making safe, incremental changes in large, legacy-like codebases. It uses a concrete upgrade example (ORM dependency) to illustrate breaking down changes into subgoals, timeboxed iterations, and reversible steps, with a lifecycle from planning to verification. The author also provides a practical recipe (FDs, slash commands, and a dev loop) and discusses cognitive load and other hard problems.