The Divestiture Challenge: Quickly Separating Legacy UI Components During Business Spin-offs

The clock starts ticking the moment a divestiture is announced. For the Enterprise Architect, this isn't just a business transaction; it’s a high-stakes surgical operation. You have a fixed window—often governed by a Transition Service Agreement (TSA)—to decouple critical business units from a shared legacy monolith. If you miss the deadline, the penalties are measured in millions of dollars per month.

The core of this struggle is what I call The Divestiture Challenge: separating deeply entangled UI components and business logic from a system that was never designed to be split. When 67% of legacy systems lack updated documentation, you aren't just migrating code; you’re performing digital archaeology under a microscope.

TL;DR: Modern divestitures fail because manual UI extraction takes too long (40+ hours per screen); Replay’s visual reverse engineering reduces this to 4 hours, allowing companies to meet TSA deadlines and exit legacy monoliths in weeks instead of years.

The High Cost of Entanglement#

In a typical enterprise spin-off, the "NewCo" needs the functionality of the "ParentCo" systems but cannot legally or technically take the entire codebase. You are tasked with extracting specific workflows—loan origination for a spin-off bank, or claims processing for an insurance arm—without bringing along the $3.6 trillion of global technical debt that anchors the parent organization.

The traditional approach is a "Big Bang" rewrite. History shows this is a recipe for disaster. With a 70% failure rate for legacy rewrites, betting the success of a multi-billion dollar divestiture on a manual rebuild is a career-ending move.

Why Manual UI Separation Fails the Divestiture Challenge#

When you ask a senior developer to "just pull the UI" from a 15-year-old JSP or Silverlight application, you are asking them to untangle a web of global state, undocumented CSS dependencies, and hidden API calls.

Manual extraction averages 40 hours per screen. In a standard enterprise suite with 200+ screens, that is 8,000 man-hours. That’s four years of work for a single developer, or a massive, uncoordinated team effort that inevitably breaks the business logic.

⚠️ Warning: The "Copy-Paste" trap is real. Copying legacy UI code into a new repository usually brings along 80% of the parent company's technical debt, creating a "NewCo" that is born with systemic architectural rot.

The Solution: Visual Reverse Engineering with Replay#

The future of divestiture isn't rewriting from scratch—it's understanding what you already have. Replay changes the paradigm by using the running application as the source of truth. Instead of reading dead code, we record real user workflows.

By recording the legacy UI in action, Replay captures the DOM state, the network calls, and the user interactions. It then synthesizes this into clean, modern React components. This is "Modernization without rewriting."

Step 1: Record the Workflow#

Instead of digging through thousands of lines of COBOL or legacy Java, a subject matter expert (SME) simply performs the business process in the browser. Replay records every state change and API interaction.

Step 2: Component Synthesis#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite analyzes the recording. It identifies UI patterns and generates a structured Library (Design System). It doesn't just "scrape" the UI; it understands the component hierarchy.

Step 3: Extracting Business Logic#

The most dangerous part of The Divestiture Challenge is losing the "hidden" business logic—the validation rules that aren't documented but exist in the frontend code. Replay extracts these into clear API contracts and E2E tests.

typescript
// Example: Replay-generated React component from a legacy recording
// This preserves the business logic captured during the "Video as Source of Truth" phase.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { Button, Input, Alert } from '@/components/ui'; // From Replay Library

interface DivestitureFormProps {
  initialData?: any;
  onSuccess: (data: any) => void;
}

export const ClaimsProcessingModule: React.FC<DivestitureFormProps> = ({ onSuccess }) => {
  const [claimStatus, setClaimStatus] = useState<'idle' | 'submitting'>('idle');
  const [error, setError] = useState<string | null>(null);

  // Replay automatically identified this validation logic from the legacy trace
  const validateClaim = (amount: number, category: string) => {
    if (category === 'Medical' && amount > 5000) return false;
    return true;
  };

  const handleSubmit = async (event: React.FormEvent<HTMLFormElement>) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    const formData = new FormData(event.currentTarget);
    
    if (!validateClaim(Number(formData.get('amount')), String(formData.get('category')))) {
      setError("High-value medical claims require manual supervisor override.");
      return;
    }

    setClaimStatus('submitting');
    // API Contract generated by Replay based on recorded network traffic
    const response = await fetch('/api/v1/claims/process', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: JSON.stringify(Object.fromEntries(formData)),
    });

    if (response.ok) onSuccess(await response.json());
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit} className="p-6 border rounded-lg shadow-sm">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold mb-4">NewCo Claims Entry</h2>
      {error && <Alert variant="destructive">{error}</Alert>}
      <Input name="amount" type="number" placeholder="Claim Amount" required />
      <Input name="category" type="text" placeholder="Category" className="mt-2" />
      <Button type="submit" disabled={claimStatus === 'submitting'} className="mt-4">
        {claimStatus === 'submitting' ? 'Processing...' : 'Submit Claim'}
      </Button>
    </form>
  );
};

From Black Box to Documented Codebase#

The biggest risk in a divestiture is the "Knowledge Gap." When the engineers who built the original system in 2008 are long gone, the system becomes a black box. Replay turns that black box into a documented, modern codebase in days.

• •Flows (Architecture): Visualize how data moves through the extracted components.
• •Blueprints (Editor): Fine-tune the generated React code before deployment.
• •Technical Debt Audit: Automatically identify which parts of the legacy logic are redundant or hazardous for the NewCo.

💰 ROI Insight: For a typical Financial Services divestiture involving 150 screens, manual extraction costs approximately $1.2M in labor. Using Replay, the cost drops to under $200k, while accelerating the timeline by 15 months.

Handling Regulated Environments#

Divestitures in Healthcare (HIPAA) or Government sectors require more than just speed; they require absolute data sovereignty. Replay is built for these high-stakes environments.

1. •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Your data is protected throughout the extraction process.
2. •On-Premise Availability: For organizations that cannot use cloud-based AI, Replay offers on-premise deployments to ensure no sensitive code or PII ever leaves your firewall.
3. •E2E Test Generation: Replay doesn't just give you code; it gives you the tests to prove the new system matches the legacy system's behavior exactly—a requirement for regulatory audits.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Replay’s "Blueprints" to map legacy API endpoints to new microservices during the extraction phase. This allows you to modernize the backend and frontend simultaneously without losing sync.

The Divestiture Roadmap: 4 Steps to Separation#

Step 1: Discovery & Scoping#

Identify the specific business flows that must be moved to NewCo. Instead of reading documentation that doesn't exist, use Replay to map the actual usage patterns of the current employees.

Step 2: Visual Recording#

Record the identified flows. Replay captures the "Visual Source of Truth." This ensures that every edge case—like that weird tax calculation for residents of a specific zip code—is captured.

Step 3: Automated Synthesis#

Run the recordings through the Replay AI Suite. Within hours, you will have a library of React components, CSS modules, and API contracts.

Step 4: Validation & Cutover#

Compare the generated components against the legacy system using Replay’s side-by-side validation tools. Once the E2E tests pass, you are ready for the cutover, months ahead of the TSA deadline.

typescript
// Example: Generated E2E Test to ensure parity during divestiture
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('NewCo Claim Entry matches Legacy behavior', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/newco/claims');
  
  // These selectors and actions were automatically mapped from the legacy recording
  await page.fill('input[name="amount"]', '6000');
  await page.selectOption('select[name="category"]', 'Medical');
  await page.click('button[type="submit"]');

  // Asserting the business logic preserved from the legacy system
  const errorMessage = page.locator('.alert-text');
  await expect(errorMessage).toContainText('supervisor override');
});

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does Replay handle complex business logic hidden in legacy code?#

Replay doesn't just look at the code; it observes the execution. By recording the inputs and outputs of every function and network call during a live session, Replay can reconstruct the underlying logic even if the original source code is a mess of "spaghetti" logic.

We are under a strict TSA (Transition Service Agreement). How fast can we see results?#

We typically move from a kick-off call to a fully functional, extracted React component in under 48 hours. For a full-scale divestiture of a medium-sized application (50-100 screens), the entire extraction process usually takes 4 to 6 weeks.

Does Replay support legacy frameworks like Silverlight, Flash, or Mainframe emulators?#

Yes. Because Replay uses visual reverse engineering and DOM-level recording, it can extract workflows from any system that can be rendered in a browser or through a web-based terminal emulator.

What about the backend?#

While Replay focuses on the UI and API layers, it generates precise API contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger) and documentation. This provides your backend team with a perfect blueprint of what needs to be built or migrated to support the new frontend.

The Future Isn't Rewriting#

The $3.6 trillion technical debt problem won't be solved by throwing more developers at manual rewrites. The Divestiture Challenge requires a surgical, automated approach. By leveraging visual reverse engineering, enterprise leaders can stop being archaeologists and start being architects again.

Stop fearing the TSA deadline. Start recording your way to a modernized enterprise.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.