title: Advice on working with legacy code
body: <p>I need some advice on how to work with legacy code.</p>
  
  <p>A while ago, I was given the task to add a few reports to a reporting app. written in Struts 1, back in 2005. No big deal, but the code is quite messy. No usage of Action forms, and basically the code is one huge action, and a lot of if-else statements inside. Also, no one here has functional knowledge on this. We just happened to have it in our contract.</p>
  
  <p>I'm quite unhappy about this, and not sure how to proceed. This application is invisible: Few people (but all very important) use it, so they don't care whether my eyes bleed while reading the code, standards, etc.</p>
  
  <p>However, I feel that a technical debt is to be paid. How should I proceed on this? Continue down the if-else road, or try to do this requirement the right way, ignoring the rest of the project? Starting a huge refactor, risking my deadline?</p>