[davismwfl]

Give a little and get a little. Tell them that the code really has served well until now but it has grown to a point now that it is like an avalanche of issues and you are convinced it won't support too many more features and changes. Then give them a few updates of the easier features in turn for letting you redo a section of code, and keep moving it forward that way.

To this exact point. I recently have been involved with a company in a consulting gig. The reality is they need to just shit can their code base and start over. The fact is they can't do that, so we are adding features to their code base while we are also revising it in significant ways. We were just very up front and said that we cannot guarantee the changes at this point because the code is extremely fragile.

Also, part of what helped sell them at least, was my discussion that hey, what worked a couple of years ago was great, but today it isn't serving the needs of the clients so we have to rethink what is being done. Not saying they prior team was bad or incapable, regardless of my personal feelings. Maybe the same will help you.