The terms greenfield and brownfield are used in many industries including IT and it derives their meaning from real estate development.

A greenfield project is a fresh start or starting from scratch. A brownfield project is repairing or working on an existing project. Because the project already exists, there could be challenges reusing the already built functionalities, there may be deprecated functionalities, etc.

A greenfield project seems easier to manage and achieve success as there was no codebase, no existing team dynamics, no rigid processes. A brownfield projects come with the baggage of an old codebase, an existing team, and sometimes significant technical debts.

Let us do a comparison of the greenfield and brownfield projects.

• Project direction: In a greenfield project, the direction is not that clear as of the brownfield project.

• Development effort: As it would be work from scratch in greenfield, it would require more effort than brownfield.

• Dependency on the older system: There will not be any dependency of a deprecated system in a greenfield project, however, you may find legacy systems in brownfield projects.

• Development time: In the greenfield project, the development time may be comparatively more than the brownfield project.

• Degree of risk: The risk would be more in the greenfield projects.

• Re-engineering required: In a brownfield project, you would be working on an already existing project, you may need to tweak some changes and it may need to re-engineer some of the pieces of stuff.

• Costs: The cost could be higher in a greenfield project if the project direction is not clear, and in a brownfield project if you need to manage legacy systems it would also increase the overall cost of the project.

Which one is better?

The backbone of any product or service is the software and its delivery. As time has changed the best approach for software delivery is agile, however with agile in the initial phases of the release of software comes a bit of instability. At the same time, developing software in small iterations and getting them in the hands of customers for quick feedback, could lead the software delivery in the right direction. No one approach is better than the other, it depends on whether you want to develop a new product or want to improve the existing product, you go with the appropriate approach.

It does not matter what approach you take, it should always help the organization's needs and best interests.