When to Rewrite from Scratch – Autopsy of Failed Software
Unfortunately this is a lesson that often has to be learned the hard way when you have a lead or team that lacks experience/wisdom.  If you can survive that educational expense, you end up much better for it but it's painful nonetheless.Aesthetics are never a legitimate reason to replace a functioning system with something else.  I do not care how it offends the eye, the mind, the ear, or any other sensation you have... if it does not have a fundamental functional problem your best option is to maintain or plan an incremental rolling replacement that is tightly scoped at each step.For large systems that do present functional problems, identify the egregious offenders in that system, abstract the entities/behaviors most responsible, and replace-in-place in a Ship of Theseus fashion.  Despite how familiar you believe you are with a monolithic or complex inter-dependent system, you will discover how much you don't actually understand about how it works as a whole if you try and re-implement in its entirety.